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.