Irrelevance to the new fen

[dalekboy]

This post is taken from a bunch of replies on a friend's journal, that it was decided we should stop hijacking and move the discussion somewhere else.

The problem is that a lot of fans want to get along, and many longer term fans don't like change, so the old fans don't change and the new fans try to fit in. The newer folks aren't encouraged to exptress their ideas, and fans have always been good at shouting down those they see as wrong.

I tend to think that when one is well-known and respected in the scene, they have a responsibilty to the newer folks to keep an open mind and to give them the chance to express themselves.

For instance, I have the newer people in Melbourne saying they don't see the point of having fan guests. I disagree with their opinion, but respect and understand that if they feel that way, then many more new folks will as well. So I either need to justify why we do it well enough that they can see my point-of-view, or rethink having fan guests in order to be relevant to the newer folks.

Though that said, I think the fan guest issue is a tiny one compared to how magnificently irrelevant our style of cons currently are to the new crop of fans.

New fans aren't coming to cons. They see them as over-priced, they don't see that they will get any value for money, and when they do come along, they have a hard time making friends because they're shy and because many of us are shy, we're more comfy talking to people we already know.

And then they hear us slagging off 'mundanes' and similarly showing fandom's intolerance for those not like themselves. So to new folks we come across as more exclusive than inclusive.

So discuss... and especially if you're one of the newer fans, please, please, please speak up and tell us what you'd like to see at cons, and what you think needs to be changed.

Comments

[magnapops.livejournal.com]

My first con was Aussiecon 2, huge by Australian standards, I didn't know anyone, or even that fandom existed. I met a lot of Americans, I still had such a good time that I signed up and went to Swancon (1986) where I met some Australians. Some of these people were running a con in my home city Melbourne. They invited me to help out, hey it sounded like a great idea at the time. I was then involved in fandom.

Fan Guests I have always thought of as a thread of history of fandom, I could listen to their stories, I could see the people they talked to and build my understanding of this new group of people.

Mundanes, muggles, non-IBMers, whatever group you are in human kind seems to need to have a category name for people who are not in that group. I have not attended that many cons in recent years but if I ever did hear people discussing mundanes it was used to identify the group of people, not to "Slag off" at them. The only group of people I ever heard being slagged off were the network TV schedulers who decide ahead of time that an SF programme will not rate so lets show it at 11:30 out of order, unless we can bump it for something else, but then they deserve to be slagged off.

It's nice to see that the problems people perceive to be there are not political (Fannish).

Cons have always been on the expensive side of things but if this years swancon was only $150, I would be hugely impressed as it would not be much different from what I paid in '86.

If you are going to change the way a con runs for the sake of newbies, then ensure that you aren't cutting off your nose to spite your face, the reason I turn up to cons is to catch up with my friends that I made when I first started going to cons, I wouldn't like to think that doing that is not kosher anymore.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I agree with this point about the term - you need a term for non-fans, its a natural human impulse to come up with a slang term for it, and terms like 'mundanes' get used for practical reasons rather than to exclude mostly.