How old?

[beccaelizabeth]

Someone called themselves fandom old because they'd been in fandom this century so far.

So I got to thinking.

In September it will be twenty years I've been going to conventions.
In April, as in a couple of weeks away, I'll have been in this flat twenty years, and I was definitely in online fandom from my first flat.
And according to my Ao3, which I worked out as close as I could when I first posted things, it has been 20 years, 4 months and 2 weeks since I posted fic for a Halloween challenge.

(It was bad. But it's still up. Because archive.)

I didn't jump straight in at fic posting. I'd joined and started groups before that. I was trying to be in XF fandom way back when I didn't have a computer and needed someone else's login to use the computers at the UEA.

So that's probably 21 years as an active fan.

I dont feel fandom old. Probably because I go to conventions and groups where I'm among the youngers. But that's certainly internet old and fandom middle aged.

Comments

[kerkevik_2014]

Don't know if it counts these days, but I've been going to cons (long break now of near a decade since my last - and L Word con) since the mid 80s; writing fic since very soon after the final episode of Blake's 7; started posting online with Buffy fandom shortly after Seeing Red aired; writing fic from about the same time - but I'd been reading Kerry Weaver fanfic online from sometime earlier - but I didn't get an lj until the closing weeks of 2009; though I'd been on the Willtara yahoo group from the first Library day after Seeing Red aired in the UK.

There was a huge break from writing stories after Blake's 7 and 2002 when I started writing Buffy ~well Willtara~ stories - though I have found evidence that I was writing down ideas through the 90s.

Not sure I'd consider myself much of an active fan these days, since a lot of Buffy fandom seems prone to what amounts, in my book, bullying and every other one I could have seen myself, once, joining in with so small and clique-y as to be reminiscent of being back at school.

Mostly I find myself talking with one or two people that I know from various fandoms and just keeping an eye on the rest; most of the people I used to converse with regularly have disappeared from fandom and woman_of_ passed away a few years ago.

I feel old fandom-wise; older sometimes than I do in RL.

[baronjanus]

I feel kinda old but mostly because I'm angry at various nonsense the youngins are doing, and let's be honest, I've been grumpy since 2001 at least. I've been in fandom online for several years before that. I've been fannish for many years before that, but not in a participatory way - had nothing to participate in, really, due to location, age, and so on. But who is older? The 28 year old who've been posting since they were 12, or the 65 year old who discovered fanfic two years ago?