The Meaning of Life Fanlistings
It’s been over a year since the last post. I was never much of a blogger. But this year has been really hard. 2006 was a weird and kind of crappy year as far as specific events went (except for Lumos, woo!) but since before January hit I’ve been depressed. Eight months after crying on my boss’ shoulder and I’m still struggling.
Yesterday I was angrier at my mom than I’ve been in awhile. I finally caught her red-handed, smoking in the living room.
And right now, I’m on the computer, which I haven’t touched for days, sorting out some website stuff. I deleted Moonflower.vu and emailed the Vunic hostmaster. I apparently forgot to renew the domain last year and it’s been sitting there ever since. I’ve gone back through the fanlistings I’ve adopted from people and emailed one, can’t find two, and still have another to email. And then, I may close what fanlistings can’t be adopted out.
I can’t remember why I started doing fanlistings. Does it make you a bigger fan to have the “approved” fanlisting? A better fan? A better web designer? Is there any point to fanlistings other than to draw women together in a community for fans of being fans?
It’s not like the fans on the lists are there to be a community. It’s not like the fanlist owners or TFL aim to truly list every single fan in the world out there. I remember that the first couple fanlistings I had, and my most beloved ones, I wanted to make into more than a fanlisting. Harry/Draco was to be a full fledged fansite with stories, art, essays, and forums. Discworld was to be informational. John Lennon to have information and graphics. But the procrastinator in me gets stuck on brainstorming and can’t get past the big dreams to take the first step and make it to the finish.
I may leave behind all my fanlistings soon (though I haven’t given up on the Discworld dream) but I’d like to go back and join all those fls I never caught up on. I still love having little pictures of those things I like to have on my website. “Look! There’s a small Led Zeppelin graphic! And then there’s a bigger David Bowie graphic!” I’m still a sucker for pretty graphics and for listing my favorite things. However, there’s a difference in my love of David Bowie and my like of Led Zeppelin. And my love of the Beatles is in a whole other category. I would never join every fl of songs I like. If there is only one song I really dig by an artist, I’ll join the fl. If there is one or two songs I really love over all the others songs by that artist that I really like, I’ll join that. My one song fl I started was for my favorite song by one of my top… 20 bands and is one of a handful of songs I could name off the top of my head in the last 15 years that was one of my favorite songs. So I want to be a bit selective and organized as I go through the fls. And make sure there’s a button I like for each one which completely explains why I only have 5 fls on my joined page. But that joined page is not as important as this post or any other post I can write. I should be taking the time to express myself through words and not just list of things I like. We are not made up of our likes and dislikes.
So why did fanlisting collectives become such a trend? Who looks through fl collectives to see what fls someone owns? Shouldn’t your joined list be with your personal site? Is there even a weblink between the two? Aren’t they connected? Because a fl collective doesn’t really tell you jack about who the person is or even who they are as a webmistress. Fls are relatively easy in the website upkeep. Visitors don’t need to come back often and probably don’t need to see a new layout.
So don’t “collect” fanlistings. Make them, run them, and if you get the time, play with them. Don’t stress over them because, someday, you’ll move beyond them. But hopefully not just because you’re stressing over things like alcoholic mothers, sick probably-already-owned cats, dirty houses, clutter, idiotic and bitchy coworkers, boring classes, malfunctioning cars, high body fat, low energy, insomnia, money, the future, and how much more fucked up you can get.
Or does that only stress me out? Well, no worries then.
