I made a timeline

[sombrefan]

Darling lurker,

Having depressed a few hundred fans today with this (and no, I'm never doing "mom? mom? mommy?", there are limits), I was wondering about the stages of fandom. Now I know you read this LJ for wank but really stay for the insights too.

Here's what I would consider to be the four broad stages of the Buffy online fandom.

1997-2001 Personal fan sites form, message boards and forums come into being. It's the age of Geocities. 1000s upon 1000s of daily posts about the show. A time of matriarchal wonder.
2001-2003 The shipping wars and the great retreat. Many fans flee to Livejournal.
2003-2007 Fans reclaim the characters. Like-minded communities predominate. Relative peace exists.
2007-2010 Season 8 causes friction among the die-hards and the young turks. Canon war begins. Rivalry between shipping factions threatens to break out into open conflict again. The rise of Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook threatens LiveJournal hegemony. Existence of an independent Whedon fandom irks/pleases many.

Comments

[menomegirl.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty accurate timeline.