Organized fandom is, perhaps and foremost, an institution of theory and criticism, a semistructured space where competing interpretations and evaluations of common texts are proposed, debated, and negotiated and where readers speculate about the nature of the mass media and their own relationship to it… Within the realm of popular culture, fans are the true experts; they constitute a competing educational elite, albeit one without official recognition or social power.
Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins, 1992 (via meiringens)
An important point! As someone else on my dash pointed out, the question of what is considered “valuable” information is a power structure. That the societies around us don’t value what we know and do is not an objective value judgement. It’s a very, very subjective one.