Politics for a Tuesday

[pauraque_bk]

The best evidence suggests that LJ is much more liberal than the general population. My own election poll, primarily answered by fandom people, went even more overwhelmingly for Kerry. (I also asked only US citizens to participate; if I'd opened it up to everyone, I'm sure we'd've seen even more Kerry votes.)

Based on these polls, LJ fandom resembles a strongly Democratic-voting city, like Philadelphia or Washington, DC. That gels with my subjective experience of what the political views of online fans are like -- we're a big bunch of liberals. It feels much like my real life, and I live in Berkeley.

There are conservatives in fandom, of course, and they seem to be well aware they're in the minority, as the success of therightfangirl should attest.

So, my question of the day is: Why is online fandom so liberal? When this comes up, I usually hear variations on two different answers:


1. The internet as a whole is liberal.
We've already seen that LJ is liberal, and it seems to make sense that the internet would be, because so many internet users are sub/urban (or at least were in 1998). Then again, many users are also financially successful, which could indicate greater conservatism.

And there are online services that more accurately reflect the politics of the general population than LJ. AOL polls, for example, usually seem close(r) to national polls. I'm also reminded of that online newspaper poll on gay marriage some months back that we all encouraged each other to go vote in. It was a pretty even split. (But are conservatives better at organizing? Well, that's another topic.)

If there are any fandom oldbies listening, what were politics like before fandom got online?


2. It's the slash, baby.
Can this possibly be a major factor? Do conservatives really go looking for fanfic online, notice slash, and take their business elsewhere? Surely there are enough het and gen fandom outlets to make this a non-issue, except for the most savagely anti-gay individuals. (Ooh, has anyone polled the politics at the Sugar Quill?)

Or maybe it's the other way around. Are liberals attracted to fandom in greater numbers because of the gay-friendly atmosphere?


Responses from conservatives would be especially welcome.

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Great question.

My impression is that we're self-selected to some extent. A bunch of lj liberals know a bunch of other lj liberals who know a bunch of *other* lj liberals, and we clump together because we know we'll have the political interests in common as well as our various fandoms. Slash fans also often seem to have RL GBLT interests, so that also skews to the more liberal side.

I don't think sf fandom itself is necessarily all that liberal. When I was an obsessive lurker on rec.arts.sf-written back in the early to mid-nineties, the predominant political voices from the US tended to be agressively libertarian, often clashing with the more Social Democrat British posters. Quite a lot of the "You'll pry my ray gun from my cold, dry tentacle" mindset. That group also tended to be straight and presumably white males who were not fond of slash, or of fanfiction in general. ("Leave it to the *real* writers and stop stealing their ideas!")

LJ has its ups and downs, but I feel I have a lot more in common with the personas that I have encountered here than with the personas I encountered on Usenet back in the Old Days.

[pauraque]

My impression is that we're self-selected to some extent. A bunch of lj liberals know a bunch of other lj liberals who know a bunch of *other* lj liberals, and we clump together because we know we'll have the political interests in common as well as our various fandoms.

This was even more true when an invite code was required to get a free LJ.

[marm.livejournal.com]

This is probably the best explanation I've read so far. In non-lj fandom, I know the balance between liberals and conservatives is much more like it is IRL.