Feral (glossary term)

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Feral is a fandom term originating in the early 1990s, which was used to describe a fan who discovered fandom (usually media fandom) independently, without being introduced by a “gatekeeper” (a more experienced fan).
The term is representative of a shift in fandom behaviour between the 1960s and 1970s, during which discovering fandom on one’s own was traditional, and the 1980s and 1990s, in which newcomers to fandom needed to be initiated by a member of the community.
The use of the term “feral” to describe fans has been controversial, with fans objecting to the term’s implications and the “us vs them” attitude that it fosters. (See Controversy). However, other fans considered it an important distinction to make, between fans who understood the accepted social codes of fannish communities, and those who didn’t. Still others have reclaimed the term, and are proud of their feral origins.
Some variations on the term have evolved, such as feral vidder (used to describe a vidder who came to vidding without a mentor) and feral fandom (used to describe fandoms which developed in isolation from wider media fandom).
==Definition==
In the early 1990s, this term was applied to fans who came into media fandom independent of the traditional gatekeeper path documented by Camille Bacon-Smith in Enterprising Women.
In the 1960s and 1970s, people generally discovered media fandom independently. Fan letters to the show would get you directed to an official fan club, which often had contact information for pen pal lists, unofficial clubs and fanzines. One could simply contact and join these clubs, buy the zines or start writing to people without introduction. Fan activity was extremely diverse, as were ideas about fan fiction and relationships between characters. Many of the established standards and practices fans take for granted today did not exist, or existed only in rudimentary form.
By the early 1980s, newcomers had to "know somebody" in order to be accepted. This initiation process often took place at conventions, where one would be introduced to one or more experienced people. Rather like an apprenticeship in trade or a postulant in religious life, the newbie fan would be vetted for membership and taught what they would need to know about how to interact with the larger fan community.
By the mid to late 1990s, more and more fans were "discovering" fandom on their own via the Internet. Some fans were very proud of their feral fan history, as it meant that they were independent and outside of the 'media fandom' box.
===Variations on the Term "Feral"===
A Feral Fan was a term for someone who would stumble onto fandom the old fashioned way, or discover fanzines, perhaps at a used book store, scifi con or an ad at the back of a scifi magazine, and then get into fandom simply though directly purchasing zines, without having to know someone first.
A Feral Vidder was specifically related to people who read an intro on how to create fan videos in a zine, and who then went out and bought two VCRs—perhaps an linear editing VCR, if they were lucky (and rich) -- and created their own works, without ever having anyone mentor them personally (as had been the custom back in the late 80s/early 90s). There were even people who independently hit on the idea of creating homemade music videos without knowing anything about the culture of "vidding" or that anyone else was doing it. In the anime and game fan community it was referred to as AMV (Animated Music Videos). It had been common practice for years—existing long before Youtube.
Feral fandom is the newest term, really only coming into its own post-internet, and the breakdown of the gatekeeper system. It is applied to any fandom around a form of popular modern Western media that is not seen as having branched off from media fandom. The term is sometimes also applied to any fandom outside media fandom, even those connected to other large fannish communities with a long history, such as anime fandom.
Members of "feral" fandoms often find the term overly subjective and insulting, seeing the "media fans" as the clueless outsiders.One anon on fail_fandomanon remarked that the term was "just a snotty, egocentric way of saying one small group of fans is the true fandom, and the rest of us were supposed to be orbiting around them." 2 August 2013 thread. (Accessed 4 August 2013.) (See Bandom Terminology Debate for an example of this type of culture clash.) These days most new fandoms develop their own culture, practices and vocabulary independent of media fandom.
A fan in 2009 explained: 
==Controversy==
Feral means "reverted to wild." Applied to humans, the term refers to children "raised by wolves" or in an isolated environment without interaction with other humans. Most true feral children exhibit atypical speech, personal habits described as strange, and severely impaired social functioning. Some fans object to being called feral, not the least of which was the "us vs. them" attitude that it helps foster.
From the view of existing media fandom at the time the term was invented, the metaphor was an accurate representation of the process of how people found media fandom. Feral fans didn't come in through the existing gatekeeper system ("fellow human stimulus"), and they did create their own terms ("atypical speech", such as applying the term slash to a depiction of heterosexual relationships that weren't canon). They didn't necessarily know or care about the values of the current media fandom culture, such as any activity involving zines—the original basis of media fandoms' social structure.
Many fans also use the term to refer to their own past selves, or how they felt they were before they found their home or tribe in media fandom. A lot of personal stories talk about the sense of community and welcome they receive once they start interacting with other fans. So for some, when they say they used to be a 'feral fan', it meant 'I felt isolated and alone'.
Other fans have commented on alternative linguistic usage of feral, and the classist and racist overtones of its etymology.Stultiloquentia. Cleaning up after myself. 22 September 2009 (accessed 30 September 2009).
In addition to the potentially offensive connotations of the term itself, the concept of a feral fan can also be offensive because of the unspoken assumptions that underlie it: that there is a single, default, mainstream "fandom" community (traditional Media Fandom) and that joining it is a normal part of any fan's introduction to fandom. In addition to many insular fandoms with an unusual fandom-specific culture, there are also entire large sectors of "fandom" (anime fandom, for example) that have their own distinct history of gatekeepers and defaults. Fans from these communities may join more traditional media fandoms after years of being "in fandom", often leading them to be especially offended at terminology like 'feral'.
Some comments by fans:
* "I'm very happy to see people reclaiming the term! I've nothing against that. What I don't like is when people use it to mean that the vidder in question comes from no community at all, just because s/he doesn't come from the traditional one. That implies that there *is* only one vidding community, and if you aren't in it you were raised by wolves. It makes me cranky. (: But I'm all for people using it to describe themselves from a place of pride." , , comments by Laura Shapiro, August 22, 2009
* "I don't think of feral as dismissive either...it takes a lot of energy and imagination to get anywhere without mentorship or support...so yes...pride and power :) but as with all these terms, reappropriation's different than use by others!" , , comments by cathexys, August 22, 2009
* "My vid-mentor jmtorres considers herself to be a feral vidder, with pride. I think there's a place for the label, at least in a self-applied fashion." , , comments by grey bard, August 22, 2009
* "Heh, well. I do come from no community at all. I didn't know the wheel existed; I reinvented it. Ergo my use of the term feral for myself." , , comments by jmtorres, August 22, 2009
== Examples of Feral Fandoms ==
The classic feral fandom is Xena: Warrior Princess; it independently reinvented many fannish traditions in isolation from other fandoms. (See the "Parallel Evolution" section of that fandom's page for more information.)
The X-Files was a very large fandom at its peak (being a mainstream crossover hit), so large that the number of newbies overwhelmed the existing members with fannish experience. So although in some ways XF was a classic media fandom -- fanfiction, extensive analysis, picspams (before those had a name) -- in other ways its self-concept was strongly isolated. XF is noted for developing a complex system of category-ratings in its fanfic, an artifact unknown in most other media fandoms. A great many mediafen got their start in XF; it is also fair to say that a great many X-Philes have been fans of that show and that show only, and have shunned the multifandom experience.
Harry Potter had a lot of early activity on fanfiction.net, and as such, had a more peripheral connection with the main thread of media fandom, which at the time was centered on mailing lists. As a threshold fandom, Harry Potter brought in a lot of new fans, and those fans tended to be younger and centered (at least initially) on Fanfiction.net; some fans participated in both media fandom mailing list communities and communities based around activity on ff.net.
The fandom became a hybrid of sorts, picking up terms and concepts from media fandom, but also developing their own terms, their own practices, and their own spins on how fandom worked. The Cassandra Claire plagiarism scandal is an example of the type of complex situation that the hybrid fandom experienced, with various factions and groups clashing over terms and ideas, and what the appropriate reaction to the situation should be.
Twilight has been described as a feral fandom, where some of the mores and practices—such as those around deleting fanworks and sharing copies thereof—developed independently (and in different directions from) previous, interconnected media fandoms.
==Alternatives to "Feral"==
Some fans have tried to come up with alternate terminology to describe the concepts of feral fans and fandoms that lacks the negative implications of the word 'feral' itself. However, there are enough offensive assumptions embodied in the term that nothing has stuck. Alternate schema for describing the relationships between types of fandoms have also been proposed. One such idea blends the wave theory of slash with the idea of feral and threshold fandoms to produce a wave theory of fandom:
==Fan Comments==
From a fan in 1997: 
==Meta/Further Reading==
* Seven Reasons Why Selling Fanzines Isn't Bad, Wrong, or Hazardous to Your Fannish Health by bluecove (September 2006)
* On Being A Village Elder: An Essay On Community Responsibility by oliviacirce (June 2009)
== References ==
Category:Glossary
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