Fail-Fandomanon

Fail-Fandomanon is an anonmeme started to discuss the VividCon warnings wank of 2010."It was the VividCon wank, and I got tired of having a conversation in email about it. I wanted other people expanded into it. And I remembered checking out the SPN anon meme. And how I used to dearly love fandom wank, back in the day.
So I set up the meme. [...] I wasn't expecting the meme to last a week. Mostly, I was pissed about slingbabies and irrational warning demands. And here it is a year and a half later. Who knew?" from comment in "How did you get here?" thread, 6 Dec 2011. (Accessed 8 Dec 2011). In 2012, the community moderator went into greater details: "In the summer of 2010, a massive wank developed about VividCon, a small con devoted to fanvids. This wank had to do with the issue of what warnings, if any should be required for the vids. At a convention where there had been an implicit 'choose not to warn' policy. 98% of the people involved in the wank had never, and would never attend the convention. As a side to the wank, it was deemed terrible and discriminatory against women that anyone under 18 was banned from the con. The ban is for legal reasons. This fell into a discussion about slingbabies. Small children, attached to the parent, and worn in a sling. I grew tired of sending an email chain, and created an anon meme- something with which I was only vaguely familiar, having spent about 5 minutes at SPNPermanaon. And much to my surprise, it took off. That is it. The whole, boring, and entire story. And for the record, I still believe that there are times and places where banning anyone under 18, even in a sling is the appropriate choice." Why FFA Was Started by sunnycamehome2u dated April 12, 2012.
It quickly grew to become a panfandom anonmeme where any fannish subject as well as fails of most kinds are on topic. Post-metafandom, it may be the main source of general fannish meta discussion on journal platforms. 
==Meme Profile and Basics==
:"Fail_fandomanon started out about one thing - a place to complain about convention policies, warnings and special snowflakes. It has evolved into being an anon meme about almost everything fandom related. 
:F_FA has been described as suffering from "Death by Earnestness". We know this, and we own it."Fail-Fandomanon's user profile, accessed 16 Nov 2011.
In November 2011, more than 365 namespace accounts responded to a headcount poll Head Count post featuring mod's subheadline: "Just curious how many Gentle Failers wander by in a post" (Accessed 16 November 2011), implying that at least that many memers visit the meme at least once per post to lurk or comment. 
An informal survey thread, also from November 2011, revealed that the anons on the meme include humans ranging from age 17 to >62 as well as vampires, elves, trees, dragons, undead cats, rocks, ponies, and several elderly dinosaurs.post your age and gender? in this thread, accessed 16 Nov 2011.
In case of LiveJournal outage, there was a backup Dreamwidth meme.fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org, the Dreamwidth Fail-FandomAnon backup meme 
On July 5, 2014, the meme officially moved to Dreamwidth because Livejournal had become too unreliable.Fail Fandom Anon Official Move Announcement, May 4 2014, sunnymodffa On December 19, 2018, the meme reached one thousand posts on dreamwidth (not including side posts for special topics): DW Post # 1000 - Just to be a non' who wanked a thousand posts.
The meme has an unofficial wikiOld wiki: failfandomanonwiki, front page reads: "Hello, gentlefailers! Welcome to the unofficial wiki of fail_fandomanon." accessed November 17, 2011.New wiki: FFA_Wiki with over 300 pages on topics ranging from "Fandom wanks and wankers" to "SJ" to information about FFA itself. Some of the most visited articles on the wiki are "Graceebooks," "Gracee's Minions," "Sherlock 221b Con Wank," "Springs1," "Fandom Personalities," "Mark Oshiro," "Antis," "Winterfox, Pre-Outing," and "Shakesville."
==Meme culture==
Popular recurring subjects include but are not limited to: SJ (social justice) and SJW (social justice warriors and wanking), fungus!poetry, countrywank, neo-prodigy, ponies, the ugliness of Nathan Fillion, discussions on fandoms too small to have their own anonmeme, recs of all kinds.More recurring topics as well as links to relevant threads can be found at the unofficial wiki of fail_fandomanon.
Memers are sometimes referred to as gentlefailers.A thread started on 3 December 2010 in "Final Poll of 2010: Nonnie Naming Time" has been identified as the first use of the term gentlefailer. As of 2018, gentlefailer and to some extent memer have fallen out of use.2017-09-16 comment, 2018-05-31 thread FFA participants are often called anons or nonnies.
ur-Sunny (FFA's founding moderator, sunnycamehome2u) may, at her discretion, award first responders to a new post user icons known as "Seal of Firstness," "Seal of Secondses", "Seal of Thirdses", and the Double Seals; a few later responders may get a visit from the consolation pony (Consolation the Pony) or Consolation's pony friends. The Sealses and ponies may RP with memers for a few comments. 
Although a subset of memers complain about anons' ridiculous eagerness to be awarded a Seal or Pony, first commenters to a new post are rarely responded to with "tool" or ridiculed (as much) as at some other memes or communities."... why do I care so deeply about virtual ponies?", accessed 17 Nov 2011 When ur-Sunny is especially busy, critters may go on hiatus.
Several auxiliary posts exist for tangential topics, such as ReligionReligion post, AgingAging post, Personal issuesPersonal issues post, Fic postFic post, and a Friending MemeFail-Fandomanon Friending Meme. Every so often gentlefailers debate about additional topics that should potentially get their own auxiliary posts, the deadness of the existing auxiliary posts, and why most auxiliary post topics should be merged back into the main posts.
As of LiveJournal release 88 (the one that broke comments for anon memes and subject-line dependent comms of all kinds such as RP and kink memes), there is also a Subject Line Coding postSubject Line Coding post, which combines css modifications made by various people, including one of FFA's moderators and an Inception anon meme mod, into copy & pastable code that lets any meme moderators who wish to use the code give their meme the appearance and most of the functionality of pre-release 88 comments (i.e., comment subject lines, less whitespace, no paperbagged default icon for anonymous commenters, etc.).
Multiple threads on the meme have posited that FFA now fulfills the functions that the defunct LiveJournal community metafandom and Journalfen community Fandom Wank did in their heyday.
Nonnies sometimes discuss meme itself. A 2018 thread on how meme culture has changed: Your meme experience (2018-06-08)
==Meme Rules==
The short version: no embeds, don't out people's real names, don't be that much of an asshole, body fluids are off topic, mods reserve the right to delete the fuck out of stuff. Meme away.Main Post Info, accessed 16 Nov 2011.
The long version:
==A Community of Acronyms==
Some of the acronyms and conversational identifiers; from the FFA wiki (see the original source for the many hyperlinks):
* FFA (also f-fa and variants): Fail Fandom Anon, the anonmeme you've been looking at.
 
* Nonny, nonnie, anon = the people posting comments on meme
* AYRT = anon you replied to
* AIRT = anon I'm replying to
* A AIRT RT = anon [whom] the anon I'm replying to [earlier] replied to (usually the anon two comments up instead of one)
* AVRT = anon velociraptor replied to
* NAYRT = not the anon you replied to
* SA = same anon (when you're adding to or correcting something in a comment you just submitted)
* NA = new anon (not previously part of the discussion)
* DA = different anon (possibly new to the subthread, may already be contributing to the discussion in a different subthread)
* OP = original poster (person who started the thread)
* ATG = Any Two Guys, more rarely Any Two Girls. In reference to fic with generic characterization; the pairing could be "any two guys." Used in "Guess the ATG" game threads (beloved by nonnies for the creative name-swapping possibilities).
* CBT = on FFA, equally likely to be earnestly used in discussions about therapy options (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) or in discussions about kink (Cock and Ball Torture).
* CTSC = comment(ing) to see comments. No longer a thing since the move to Dreamwidth.In a 2019 thread, sunnyseaside noted that they got the acronym from sfd_anon. , 2019-06-08.
* DD = "Details, details!" A call for evasive/coy nonnies to spill the beans about whatever.
* DFRW = Dog Fuck Rape World
* EFW = existential flame war, based on the LJ comm of the same name, which originated in the Usenet group alt.callahans. Enjoyed by some, reviled by others.
* GSN = Grumpy Sutcliff Nonnies
 
* ITT = in this thread
* TSN = On FFA, usually refers to The Social Network (2010 slashbait film), more rarely to The Sentinel (1990s slashbait TV series)
* TYWAU = Things You Wouldn't Admit Unanon. One of the common threads on the meme, usually on the first page.
* WS = He who shall not be named, for he is a notorious self-googler and will show up to act out on meme. , accessed May 5, 2016 
==Fanworks==
FFA has an RPF fandom tag on the Archive of Our Own with 29 works as of 30 December 2015. The most kudosed story is Fuck You and Your Can Opener Privilege by Kaesa, written for Yuletide 2014. 
FFA may also be the inspiration for any AO3 work tagged Nonnies Made Me Do It.
In 2014, during a conversation about stick figure big bang fanart, an FFA anon opened an AO3 collection for The First Ever Bad Bang!, "Deliberate badfic illustrated by people who can't draw."
==External Links==
* old unofficial wiki on pbworks (taken down in August 2016, reportedly by graceebooksFail_Fandomanon Backup Wiki, posted to dreamwidth 16 August 2016Aside from the timing, evidence for it being taken down by or because of graceebooks includes the email sent to the nonny who maintained the wiki naming Grace's page as the content that needed to be removed before the wiki could be made public again., following another round of TJLC wank in which the wiki was used as evidence of graceebooks's behavior. see Wikigeddon)
* backup of wiki on dreamwidth
* new unofficial wiki on wikia
* unofficial search function aka dememe
* unofficial search info
* Fail Fandomanon RPF tag on AO3
==References==
Category:Meme Journal Communities
Category:2010s