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Girls who like Boys who like Boys – Ethnography of ... - Yuuyami.com

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authors she <strong>like</strong>s, and then utilize their rec pages. She uses <strong>of</strong>ficial websites if<br />

she is still trying to understand basic points <strong>of</strong> the source text canon, but does<br />

get bored by it soon. “I figure I can pick up the canon as I go along, and also<br />

the fanon the same way.”<br />

I was discussing Eiko’s reasons for lurking, or rather for not delurking,<br />

with Barb the other day, and she found that she sometimes had that<br />

feeling <strong>of</strong> uselessness at large as well. It did not seem to be her main incentive<br />

for being a lurker, and so I asked her why she never came out to be active<br />

online, in the same way that she is active with me and all <strong>of</strong> her friends<br />

<strong>of</strong>fline. She explained that she wasn’t quite sure, which may be very well part<br />

<strong>of</strong> the problem, and that she had always been a lurker. She took some time to<br />

reflect, and then hazarded that there were probably a couple <strong>of</strong> reasons for<br />

why she was a lurker. One reason she mentioned was simple shyness, which<br />

didn’t significantly diminish for her online, and so to email some author<br />

without a reason is out <strong>of</strong> the question for her. The second reason was an<br />

external factor, which indirectly contributed as well to involve Barb in online<br />

fandom: at a certain point during high school Barb had Lyme Disease, which<br />

made it very difficult for her to talk or interact with others. She explained that<br />

there were some people in high school that she could have interacted with if<br />

she had not had Lyme Disease, and having it, in a way, changed her fannish<br />

evolution in that a lot <strong>of</strong> what she was doing was lurking online rather than<br />

interacting with <strong>of</strong>fline fans. Talking about this time, she mentioned her<br />

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