#rather than only representing one particular corner of medias and fandoms

[goodoldfashionedmurderboy]

Argh there are far too MANY good murdergirls, I've narrowed the list down to 36 but I still need to eliminate 4 people before I even start the polls.

#I want girls from as wide a scope of media as possible is the thing #comedies dramas cartoons anime books plays video games soap opera #everything #you know? #rather than only representing one particular corner of medias and fandoms #but I ALSO don't want to elminate characters that definitely deserve to be there

[calamity-bean]

Under a cut because this got a bit long and also is more just me rambling about something I’ve observed rather than a definitive analysis/argument, but... There’s this thing I’ve noticed that crops up a lot in all manner of discussions on this site -- ship drama, debates on what is/isn’t problematic, call-outs for popular bloggers, etc. And it always makes me tilt my head. Not because I’m necessarily invested in the discussion or even think the claim is definitely wrong, but simply because I’m always so curious about where it's coming from: people bolstering their argument, whatever it might be, by making broad statements about the predominant age demographics of any particular group on this site. 

E.g.:

“Most of [problematic blogger]’s followers are minors!”

“Most of the people who ship [X pairing, regardless of whether the media is rated PG or R] are [teens, or adults, or middle-aged, etc.]!”

“Most users who do [X] are [X age], etc., and therefore it is or is not okay for them to do!”

And it’s like... Maybe? Maybe most people who do X are X age! But how the fuck do you know? 

Did you take a poll? Did the respondents comprise a truly broad, representative swath of the fandom? Did I miss the feature of this website that publicly informs everyone of every other user’s age so that random people can claim to know how old other random people’s followers are? I have no idea how old most of my own followers are, let alone anyone else’s. Did you somehow identify and visit the blog of every user in that fandom, every user who ships that ship, every user who follows that blogger, etc., and record their age in a spreadsheet and then examine the stats? What about the bloggers who don’t advertise their ages? Or is this just your perception of this group’s demographics based on your own judgments about who the media would appeal to and/or what you know about the ages of the users that you have personally crossed paths with?

Like I said, this isn’t about one discussion/topic in particular, because I’ve seen it in all sorts of contexts, but just for example: I saw a claim today that most people who ship a certain popular pairing are teens. Again... Maybe? But how do you know? I ship it, and I’m not a teen. I don’t know the ages of many of the people I follow, but of the ones I do know, most are in their twenties or thirties, and many of them ship it too. Does that mean that most people who ship it are in their twenties or thirties? Of course not! It also doesn’t mean that they aren’t. It doesn’t really mean anything, broadly speaking; it’s just my personal experience in my personal corner of a massive fandom on a massive site. Hell, it’s really just my personal perception of that experience. Are people just assuming that most people on this site in general are teens? When I look up actual semireputable articles about tumblr’s overall demographics, the reported stats vary, but in general I find 18-35 claimed as the largest age cohort, or at least 18+. Ages will surely vary between different subgroups on the site, of course... But how do they vary, exactly, when it comes to a given group? I don’t know. I really don’t, and I don’t know of an accurate way to know.

Perhaps, in one of those very small fandoms where most people all kind of know each other, perhaps then you can get enough information about enough users to make fairly accurate generalizations. But those massive ships with thousands of fics, thousands of posts in the tag, thousands of people creating fan content and thousands more consuming it? There are occasionally well-trafficked fandom surveys that sometimes give us info on some of these groups, but for the most part, who among us really has enough information about our fellow users -- on tumblr or AO3 or elsewhere -- to make such a claim?

I don’t know why this irks me so much, especially since I’m seldom personally invested in the discussions where I see people make these claims -- a lot of times they’re about media I haven’t read/watched or a blogger I don’t follow, and I’m only reading the thread/notes because I’m a nosy bitch who’s curious about the drama. Maybe it irks me because it’s part of a larger trend of people claiming that tumblr and fandom spaces in general are predominantly for kids, which, like I said, doesn’t appear to actually be the case. Maybe it irks me because I’ve seen people use these unsupported generalizations to be very vicious, sometimes, demonizing people or groups for behaving in a way that’s supposedly not appropriate for the supposed age demographic of the group, and maybe it also irks me because I’ve also seen people use it to defend behaviors, and regardless of whether or not I agree with the behavior in question, it just feels like a very thin, insubstantial defense. I guess it irks me because it just seems like such an OBVIOUSLY unsupported argument, regardless of what it’s being used for, and yet I see people seeming to take these claims quite seriously all the time.

#idk how to tag this? #fandom #i guess #op