> “In my formative time in fandom [before Tumblr], learning the rules and etiquette of the space was not optional, it was baked into the entire structure of fan

> “In my formative time in fandom [before Tumblr], learning the rules and etiquette of the space was not optional, it was baked into the entire structure of fandom,” Danielle said. “There was a hurdle of entry to fandom; it was organized into moderated communities and kinkmemes and other places that had rules, and even more than that had real live people who ran stuff and would prevent drama from boiling over.” I'd argue that this is overblown. Way back in the '90s, most organized online fandom was on Usenet. Usenet had no formal rules. Sure, there was a ton of cultural norms, but there was no enforcement. If you were really tired of somebody, you could put their name into something called a "killfile" which would hide their posts from you (killfiles were entirely client-side). And ultimately despite the "Eternal September", Usenet worked well enough. Trolls came and went. Every once in a while a group would be dragged into the Meow Wars. But it was still less toxic than LiveJournal. I mostly remember the LiveJournal age (and the UBB/vBulletin/phpBB age that existed alongside it) as something that was dominated by moderators who cared more about bikeshedding and wielding power than actually keeping awful people out. Rules enforcement was more like "You didn't format your post exactly the way I want it, this is your only warning, next time you're banned!". And in the meantime toxic people would just run rampant with concern trolling and/or attacking other fans for every little thing and the mods would just sit there and do nothing. On UBB/vBulletin/phpBB boards, it wouldn't be uncommon for half the threads on the front page to be locked often with the threads ending with snarky moderator comments like "Use the search function next time dumbass". Or for all discussion on a particular subject to be shoved into a "megathread" with no threaded comments (god, I hated those forums; I miss WWWBoard). Fandom has always been toxic. Edit: Though I'll say that Tumblr's software and organization is godawful. The fact that until very recently the only way to comment on someone else's post was to reblog their post and add your comment at the bottom is just bizarre, nonsensical, and not conducive to any kind of productive discussion. And how reblogs and likes all got shoved under the "notes" category. You see a post gets 700 notes: you have no idea if it's a good post that got 700 likes or a shitty post that got 700 reblog-comments calling it out. And straight reblogs are treated the same way as reblog-comments too, so "soandso reblogged this post" is worthless. Are they sharing your post or replying to it? Gah.