it's academic, my dear love toy

I just posted this i a comment but it occurs to me that it might make a pithy post, also. So: waste not, want not, I say, and recycling (comments) can't be bad for the planet! This is to do with recent academic fan debates wot i have to admit, i have only followed at second hand. Which does not stop me from having views on it, of course!

I am puzzled by this notion of 'influence and rhetorical power'. One part of me nods and thinks, of course, because I have a Ph.D. and teach students in a university and occasionally give research papers, I am so much more articulate than the common rabble out there in my local supermarket. Another part of me wonders where the reality of all this comes from. Teaching students means I constantly have to school my words and simplify them so that they can understand so I don't seem to be wielding much rhetorical power -- although I do like to think I am moulding young minds, hah, but I'm not sure that's what the ranters have in mind. I teach at a crap university. I get paid less than the local area manager of McDonald's (where's the influence?). My department was closed down so I get to talk to fellow-academics in my discipline maybe once a year, if lucky, and the other academics in my institution talk about anything but high-falutin' stuff: it's all about marksheets and retention figures and recruitment drives and re-sit statistics.

I do like to talk clever but is that because I'm an academic or is that because I'm me, and because I'm me and I love words, I chose this profession to begin with? (Only to wake up disillusioned 15 years later...) And I can talk mighty clever with people who are not academics at all, and a lot of those are on my Friends list, and they are very rhetorically persuasive and witty.

Also, I love novels and fiction (duh, why else be in slash?) And most novelists are not academics (although some are, and why not?) But all novelists, be they academic or not, are persuasive and rhetorically sophisticated.

As to influence? *sighs* That seems to be another kettle of fish, not to do with academe at all, but with the whole BNF thing. Which requires blood, sweat and tears, obsession so that you put in the time, and a network as wide as the world. People cleave to BNFs, it seems to me, because they love them. It's not some evil mysterious 'influence'; it's fans actively choosing to follow that person around because they're getting loads out of her. And once they stop getting loads out of her, they either become her friend and stick around, or they flit off to other pastures. And what's wrong with that?

I am having an academic identity crisis!! I've been having it for years! Will it ever stop???

To Be or To BNF

About a year after I discovered fandom, I heard the acronym BNF and found out that it means 'Big Name Fan'. I had no clue what this BNF thing was. This was especially odd as some people told me I myself had been a BNF once upon a time!

The acronym and the whole attitude behind it immediately got on my nerves. But I also recognised something in it and something in me. I, too, have been in awe of certain people online and pulled up my socks when leaving comments in their LJ, or even never left comments because of excess nerves, or left them with a beating heart. I, too, have gawped in envy / incomprehension / slight miffedness at those whose every post garners a gazillion comments, and that's before the poster has even replied! (Hah, we all know how to bulk up those comment counts by starting up little one-on-one dialogue threads within the commentage. How crafty are the Livejournalers.)

LiveJournal, perhaps more than the yahoo lists with which I was familiar before, makes popularity plain for everyone to see. When it's no longer a matter of on-list chatter and private emails, it becomes statistical hard currency. I count my comments and I gauge my influence!

(I learned the hard way that lots of comments don't necessarily mean that the people love you. The people may wish to attack you and annoy you, alas. But still. If it's a fic and there are loads of comments, the likelihood that these are positive feedbacks is rather high!)

But I have thought about this and about my miffedness and I've mellowed. It is actually very easy to become a BNF, and it is no mystery. The main ingredient is time spent on-line, and the main motivation behind spending time on-line has to be obsession (otherwise: why oh why?). And this is where fandom comes in. Because if you are in fandom and you love your fandom and you think night and day about your fandom, you will want to spend that time. You can't help putting in that time because you are so obsessed! You post, you comment, you squee, you scour the internet for rare pics and you post them, you start lists and groups and competitions and challenges, you analyse and meta, you produce vids and art, you teach yourself impossible new skills, you purchase extra bandwidth, buy journals to scan in, buy DVDs to upload... and before you know it: everybody knows you, everybody loves you, and hey, you're a BNF.

Some are BNF because they write fic that the people love. I have fangirled over writers and been in fluttersome awe, and sometimes I have been one among five others, but sometimes I have been one among 182 others, and then that writer is, I guess, a BNF.

Some are BNF because they run popular challenges or lists, and if the fandom is big, they may have 1,000 members on their communities, and everybody knows their name. And then that person is, I guess, a BNF.

The thing is I do believe that you get to be a BNF purely on merit. You put in the hard work (which doesn't always feel like hard work because you love it and are obsessed and, also, because it seems just a tiny bit absurd to call drooling over boyband pic or over second-rate television serials 'hard work') so kudos to you! Fair dinkum, good for you, hey, you deserve all the Big Name recognition you can get!

So that's my current take on the matter, anyway. And as I'm currently not putting in the time and hard graft at all, I am quite content to be a very little-name-fan in my own niche of the woods. There should be an acronym for us, too: LNF.