I would like to share the secret of profit online
Learn How I Earn $50 to $250 Every Day!

http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com

This group's demographic distinction and inability to recognize that and try to step out beyond their own interests to represent fandom are summed up pretty well by Farla on her critique of an Archive of Our Own, where she says:

The system also chokes and dies on distinguishing between minor characters, original characters, “main” characters without canon personality, and most gen fic. Ie, anything that doesn't come up when you're writing Supernatural incest. It's not that I don't think writing smut for various Tv shows isn't a valid use of your time, it's just I'd like some way to indicate “the various canon cast show up in a general sort of way” without it looking like an orgy is taking place and cluttering up the results for everyone looking for character-centric fic for particular characters. (Oh, and they have no straight original character designation – it's “original female character” and “original male character”. Presumably so people can better avoid the former.)

The trick is when you're trying to represent a broader group and you don't have adequate representation from points of view that you represent is to do the research, be aware of them, recruit people to do that… and fail. If they weren't doing the whole “We represent all of fandom” and were instead doing “We're representing the interests of the meta community on LiveJournal,” this wouldn't be an issue.

Most organizations are run by those older, richer and more active than those which they serve. Furry conventions cater to fans from about 16 and up, but they're actually run by those in their late twenties, thirties or fourties who have spent days, weeks or months planning their involvement in the event, largely because these people have the skills and experience necessary to be successful in those positions. There are exceptions, but that's what they are.

Permanent accounts were once sold for $100. Ahh, inflation . . .

There is always some fantastical book or movie or trend that affects a given generation, but the percentage of those folks who actually remain in fandom or even care about the issues of fandom is rather minute.

Also, people don't dislike Twilight because it's for young people. They dislike it for content, such as glorifying stalkers as “romantic”, and having men bond sexually with infants, and also some of the offensive and archaic stuff surrounding sex and virginity. Also, perhaps the vapid dialogue and the stupid heroine. There are plenty of books for young people that don't contain any of these things (even if they are also flawed in certain ways). Like, say, Harry Potter.

But you know, what do I know, I am elderly, because I can pay my own bills and have a job.

Example: I cannot say at my age why teens apparently do not use twitter because… I am not a teen and have not been for over 10 years. Same issue for Twilight. I am a Anne Rice fan who detests that Meyer made her vampires pansies and removed a lot of the romanticism that even psych/sang vampires of today's underground would yack. Vampires sparkle? Leave the sparkling to the fairies or at least write them to be tougher than the fae in Karen Monning's books.

I asked Laura to try other fandoms like Star Trek and older fandoms in which older crowds work better. I find in my experience as a leader within the InuYasha fandom that people older than myself regard the fandom like its a soap opera (ready to go batshit at any moment and argue like hell in the InuYasha Fan Guild over ridiculous topics) while the younger crowd walks in with fresh eyes and some end up leaving. There was a small skit in Robot Chicken over this, using the InuYasha fandom as an example. I would like to see younger folks get interested. Though I am not sure having a 13-17 year old writing news for a fandom unless they were mature (there are some cases of this), I highly encourage.

By the way, de-lurking yourself is to comment not lurking and makes you an active participant of any fandom.

I'm hearing Jamie Hyneman's voice in my head right now, saying, “Well, *there's* your problem.”

She's a history major.

There have been many, many studies done, in many, many fandoms to try and get a sense of age groups on LJ based fandom. And for every fandom it differs. Just as the source material for those fandoms tend to target different age groups. SGA is going to have a much older demographic, both in viewers and in fannish followers, than something like Twilight because of the different ways they are each marketed. Why you're using a fandom that's aimed at YOUNG GIRLS to try and “prove” your point about how oooooold OTW members are is beyond me. Comparing ANYTHING to Twilight fandom is going to give you very skewed numbers.

FTR I'm not a member or watcher of OTW, I don't use AO3, I'm not even a fic writer or vidder. Just a pan-fandom lurker who reads and occasionally metas. I just don't see the point of this “study” of yours. Dubious results at best. This screams of grudgery, TBH. Not sure if you have some kind of history with someone at OTW, but that's my read on this entry.

And no, metafandom is not representative. The community is too small, the actions taken by the admins content wise have specifically worked towards an audience that is friendly towards an otw_news audience. (Deliberate exclusion of points of view that contradict their own, not allowing a broader focus in terms of what is being covered, etc.) If you have reason to believe that metafandom is representative of fandom as a whole, please share. I'd love to understand your rational for thinking they are.

I don't think a rational person is going to say, “Yes, 35 year old women are the norm for fandom.” The trend in fandom is for people to get into fandom during high school and college. After they finish college, they tend to gravitate away from fandom.

And the data supports just such a conclusion. Community after community that does not have an audience of academics or academically minded fans who are into community activism and textual analysis as their primary one.

dracotrilogy, a community on LiveJournal for fans of Cassandra Claire, has an average year of birth of 1975. ashley_t_fans, dedicated to Ashley Tinsdale, has an average year of birth of 1987. dramonione, dracotrilogy, draco_and_ginny, dhr_101, deleterius, daily_snitch, da_family, silver_sporks, caput_draconis are all Harry Potter communities. When they are combined together, we still get a year of birth of 1982, which is 7 years younger than OTW_news members.

I wouldn't characterize Mad Men as representative of fandom… (they simply lack the same number of fans to represent a big enough proportion of the fan community) but even they are younger with if you assume coloringmadmen reflects their fan base: The average year of birth is 1980.

We can be generous and go with the idea that fanficrants is representative as a meta type community to establish norms as they represent a wide cross section of fan communities on LiveJournal. There the average year of birth is 1983, median year of birth is 1986 and the mode year of birth is 1988. That puts the community much closer to lion_lamb.

We can chuck LiveJournal for a second and go with Facebook. How many people from the United States are 35 and list fan fiction as an interest? 20. How many people who are 18 and list fan fiction as an interest? 40. If we go from 13 to 18, we get 240 Americans on Facebook listing fan fiction as an interest. If we go from 33 to 38, we get 140 people. I suspect if we averaged those ages out on Facebook, we still would not see a year of birth/age that puts fan fiction people in their mid 30s. That pool isn't representative either.

If you have any more questions about community age, please let me know. I would love to begin to get a picture of the demographic characteristics of the average fan are.