Fandom Corporate-ization
Nov. 5th, 2022 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jajalalaI was writing a comment on pendulumscale's post on the subject of zines culture nowadays (thanks vriddy for sharing!) but the response got p long and specific to my experiences so I thought I ought to share here on my own journal lol.
I'm relatively new to fandom compared to some of the fandom elders hopping around DW, but I've been actively writing fic for several years and got into doing fandom events last year. I remember sort of stumbling onto an event focused on a niche of mine that's very hard to search for on AO3 (Boku No Hero Academia femslash), and being super excited like "!!! Wait!! These ppl all like the niche thing I do :D :D :D omg I wanna join!"
And so I did and it was fun and I still talk to some of the fellow creators I met there today, but it catapulted me into the world of bangs and events in the My Hero Academia fandom... but with each event and ending up on the twitter-sphere, even if mostly just to keep an eye on them and observe others, I've been seeing that sort of corporate-ization of fandom thatpendulumscale describes.
Whenever I joined in event, there would be like, mod introductions with all their socials, and they'd always have these carrds full of like their "experience" with event. Which in itself is not a bad thing, I imagine especially in the zine scene u want to see evidence of like, reliability/ability etc before working with someone but also... I think it drives a culture of like, people who go nuts for events and zines without any dedication or practical consideration, bc they just want to add a line to their resume saying "I did X thing!"
Like I dove into femslash and femslash-adjacent events but the mods of some of them... Of course they had all their socials etc linked so I went there to see what kind of femslash stuff they had made before and there was... almost nothing? I think one mod had written one oneshot with F/F??? And I don't mean to gatekeep, but it does seem WEIRD to me that someone would start an event on a theme that they never independently had an interest in. And those mods were super inactive in the server and would not remind ppl about deadlines and just like, miss their OWN deadlines and not publicize the event at all... It felt like they just wanted to be like "We did this thing!" but didn't actually like the thing beyond how it would look on their carrd afterwards. Especially bc there were like, multiple mods for some of these events that didn't do anything if whoever was like 'head' mod was MIA.
Again, I hate to say it, but it very much feels like a case of people just jumping to start events so they can make all the cool-looking twitters and be like "I made this thing happen!" without an actual like... investment in the thing itself?? Even with contributors sometimes it's really disheartening to be in a discord all about a certain theme, and talk about the theme in a channel, and there's dead silence... which tbh I would credit burn-out from doing too many events contributing, bc that certainly happened to me where I was in so many discords and so busy that I couldn't muster the energy to like, have full conversations with people, even though (ostensibly) the point of an event is to bring ppl together.
And I have mostly not been involved in zines, but there is a wealth of them in BNHA and hmm.... I wholly believe there are some really wonderful ones, but there are so many that feel very money and clout-focused in a very strange way. As someone who doesn't like to spend money on fandom stuff and is trying not to make fandom a job, it's something I feel somewhat disconnected to.
It's not like there aren't passionate events/zines out there though. Like I helped with the BNHA Valkyries week (a bnha event thatthisbinks set up), and it felt really great for the both of us to get to put a lot of our love and energy into rousing up our fellow fans--I was definitely burned out around the time the event came around, but it felt very good to be able to contribute the energy for a niche I really cared about in a way that other organizers had not seemed to in the past.
And recently a group released a BNHA femslash zine that I really enjoyed, and I think a big part of that is that the zine was a free pdf and a majority of the names on it were people I recognized from my various trawls through the bnha F/F corners. That made the zine feel like a love of labor by fellow fans all passionate about the theme, rather than some sort of like... somebody doing a market check and deciding how much they can sell things for and contracting bigname artists to make an artpiece in theme and-
Not to say that all zines should be free, especially when getting physical copies or merch things it makes sense to have to spend money, but I think some great and amazing zines have spawned a new culture of people kind of yearning for the 'prestige' or clout that comes from pulling off an amazing pan-creator project... without the requisite skills or even in some cases not even being fully passionate about the project.
There was a DW post I read a while back where someone mentioned a friend had like, printed a bunch of their works and put them in a little zine for them?? Like as a gift? And I love that, the idea of just like... making a little thing for yourself and/or your friend that you can hold in ur hand. From what I understand the early days of fandom may have been like that, but as a newbie I've pretty much only seen those big elaborate pieces posted all over twitter for $35 (+$10 if you want the nsfw bundle, and $5 for the sticker bundle, and-)
Of course it's easy to say "Just do things with your close fandom friends!" but at the same time, how do you meet those friends without those bigger events? How do u get to know them? What happens if u drift into different fandoms, and how do u meet new ones in ur new fandoms? etc etc... I guess that's the point of general social media, but that comes with its own wildness with 'the algorithm' and all that jazz.
As I get more entrenched it's clear fandoms are communities, but it's hard to control what a community is or will be, especially a huge one like BNHA, but it surprises how a big fandom can feel so lonesome/corporate sometimes.
pendulumscale's post on the subject of zines culture nowadays (thanks vriddy for sharing!) but the response got p long and specific to my experiences so I thought I ought to share here on my own journal lol.I'm relatively new to fandom compared to some of the fandom elders hopping around DW, but I've been actively writing fic for several years and got into doing fandom events last year. I remember sort of stumbling onto an event focused on a niche of mine that's very hard to search for on AO3 (Boku No Hero Academia femslash), and being super excited like "!!! Wait!! These ppl all like the niche thing I do :D :D :D omg I wanna join!"
And so I did and it was fun and I still talk to some of the fellow creators I met there today, but it catapulted me into the world of bangs and events in the My Hero Academia fandom... but with each event and ending up on the twitter-sphere, even if mostly just to keep an eye on them and observe others, I've been seeing that sort of corporate-ization of fandom that
pendulumscale describes.Whenever I joined in event, there would be like, mod introductions with all their socials, and they'd always have these carrds full of like their "experience" with event. Which in itself is not a bad thing, I imagine especially in the zine scene u want to see evidence of like, reliability/ability etc before working with someone but also... I think it drives a culture of like, people who go nuts for events and zines without any dedication or practical consideration, bc they just want to add a line to their resume saying "I did X thing!"
Like I dove into femslash and femslash-adjacent events but the mods of some of them... Of course they had all their socials etc linked so I went there to see what kind of femslash stuff they had made before and there was... almost nothing? I think one mod had written one oneshot with F/F??? And I don't mean to gatekeep, but it does seem WEIRD to me that someone would start an event on a theme that they never independently had an interest in. And those mods were super inactive in the server and would not remind ppl about deadlines and just like, miss their OWN deadlines and not publicize the event at all... It felt like they just wanted to be like "We did this thing!" but didn't actually like the thing beyond how it would look on their carrd afterwards. Especially bc there were like, multiple mods for some of these events that didn't do anything if whoever was like 'head' mod was MIA.
Again, I hate to say it, but it very much feels like a case of people just jumping to start events so they can make all the cool-looking twitters and be like "I made this thing happen!" without an actual like... investment in the thing itself?? Even with contributors sometimes it's really disheartening to be in a discord all about a certain theme, and talk about the theme in a channel, and there's dead silence... which tbh I would credit burn-out from doing too many events contributing, bc that certainly happened to me where I was in so many discords and so busy that I couldn't muster the energy to like, have full conversations with people, even though (ostensibly) the point of an event is to bring ppl together.
And I have mostly not been involved in zines, but there is a wealth of them in BNHA and hmm.... I wholly believe there are some really wonderful ones, but there are so many that feel very money and clout-focused in a very strange way. As someone who doesn't like to spend money on fandom stuff and is trying not to make fandom a job, it's something I feel somewhat disconnected to.
It's not like there aren't passionate events/zines out there though. Like I helped with the BNHA Valkyries week (a bnha event that
thisbinks set up), and it felt really great for the both of us to get to put a lot of our love and energy into rousing up our fellow fans--I was definitely burned out around the time the event came around, but it felt very good to be able to contribute the energy for a niche I really cared about in a way that other organizers had not seemed to in the past.And recently a group released a BNHA femslash zine that I really enjoyed, and I think a big part of that is that the zine was a free pdf and a majority of the names on it were people I recognized from my various trawls through the bnha F/F corners. That made the zine feel like a love of labor by fellow fans all passionate about the theme, rather than some sort of like... somebody doing a market check and deciding how much they can sell things for and contracting bigname artists to make an artpiece in theme and-
Not to say that all zines should be free, especially when getting physical copies or merch things it makes sense to have to spend money, but I think some great and amazing zines have spawned a new culture of people kind of yearning for the 'prestige' or clout that comes from pulling off an amazing pan-creator project... without the requisite skills or even in some cases not even being fully passionate about the project.
There was a DW post I read a while back where someone mentioned a friend had like, printed a bunch of their works and put them in a little zine for them?? Like as a gift? And I love that, the idea of just like... making a little thing for yourself and/or your friend that you can hold in ur hand. From what I understand the early days of fandom may have been like that, but as a newbie I've pretty much only seen those big elaborate pieces posted all over twitter for $35 (+$10 if you want the nsfw bundle, and $5 for the sticker bundle, and-)
Of course it's easy to say "Just do things with your close fandom friends!" but at the same time, how do you meet those friends without those bigger events? How do u get to know them? What happens if u drift into different fandoms, and how do u meet new ones in ur new fandoms? etc etc... I guess that's the point of general social media, but that comes with its own wildness with 'the algorithm' and all that jazz.
As I get more entrenched it's clear fandoms are communities, but it's hard to control what a community is or will be, especially a huge one like BNHA, but it surprises how a big fandom can feel so lonesome/corporate sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-05 10:25 pm (UTC)It's really cool your first event managed to be a fun one and good to actually meet fellow fans :) How to find the handful of people you'll be able to do fun projects with is the perennial question, huh. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience!! I linked back to your post as well :)
no subject
Date: 2022-11-06 10:57 pm (UTC)Yeah the "modding for clout" is something that's also scary to articulate bc it's kind of accusatory, and ultimately u don't know ppl's lives or necessarily what's going on behind the scenes, and ultimately there are def people who just jump in bc they're excited and don't realize the amount of work needed until they get there... but I've def also seen chronic event/zine-organizers who seem to be hopping from project to project and making the same mistakes or lack of effort on each one :/.
(Ahaha that first event... my fellow participants were great! I think I've complained about the mods to u before, so I won't get into it here XD)
no subject
Date: 2022-11-10 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-06 05:19 pm (UTC)"there are so many that feel very money and clout-focused in a very strange way" Agreed. Before getting into fandom, most of the zines I saw were like, queer/activist/spoken word zines someone made with their home printer or a cheap photocopier. Opposite of money and clout-focused, so while I think it's cool to see zines with loads of shiny merch, there is some whiplash and the vibe does feel off sometimes.
So far it seems like whether a space feels like a community or not depends on how active the organisers are and how they interact with people. Valkyries was a blast because you both put so much into it, no wonder you were burnt out. Any event Binks runs or is a part of running, has been a blast, immaculate vibe, and also ran very smoothly.
"That made the zine feel like a love of labor by fellow fans all passionate about the theme" this is exactly how it was, and part of its success was that the mods were absolutely feral about it, they really put their all into it and you could see how passionate they were. I'm lucky that was my first zine, considering the horror stories I've heard about other zines (and in Pendulumscale's post... truly some horror stories... sounds so rough x.x)
Some of the events are mostly silent, not that that's necessarily a bad thing since there are already so many projects and servers. But if the only point of the zine/event is to turn in the work on time and nobody talks to each other, it does start to feel like we're all there to create a product and nothing else. Especially when the only communication in the server happens when someone is promoting their *other* zine projects XD It's an interesting thing to chew over when things only seem to get more corporatised over time, in ways that can make connecting with other people more difficult.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-06 11:09 pm (UTC)I'm glad u enjoyed Valkyries! Yesss I also trust literally any event binks is involved with, she has the skills, the dedication, and the passion to back things up (and is generally a committed and reliable person). Definitely the epitome of a good organizer/mod!
Aww I'm super glad Horizons was lovely on the contributor side as well. And ahahah there's def some money-stealing horror stories in BNHA too, I can't remember exact names but I recall some kerfuffle some months ago where there was one person functioning as a finance mod for like, THREE zines at once, and then just stopped communicating with all teams and locked down the paypal of at least one of them... it makes me VERY hesitant to put down any amount of money for zines, not knowing what qualifications the mods actually have and/or if they're trustworthy (plus the whole "give real name and address"....)
Aaaa it is really sad when everything goes quiet except for #self-promo.... like as I said I get burned out often don't chat as well, so perhaps I'm contributing, but it makes it feel like everyone is JUST there to share their own work with no interest in others. Back when I was in several bang servers at once, I would occasionally see the same person post the same thing in #self-promo over several different bang servers... while literally never talking in the server itself in general. Just feels like a very weird "I am in these bangs to advertise, not to be a part of a community" vibe. Probably part of that corporatizing :'(
no subject
Date: 2022-11-06 05:39 pm (UTC)Yes! I've noticed the same sort of thing the few times I've been in zine discords. People share these huge lists of zines they've been a part of and it really is just their Carrd resume. I always thought my reaction to this was a irrational hatred of Carrd, but really I think it just feels strange to have these kinds of resumes in a fandom space. Like I get it if the mods are trying to be reassuring, but more often than not, there are people that display the quantity of zines they've been in like a status symbol. And I've noticed the same sort of thing when there were passionless mods who did not seem to show any interest in whatever the topic was of their event in a similar way you noticed with some of the fanweeks in BNHA. This isn't to say that someone can have an interest in something offline or that they NEED to show proof before participating, but I think it just feels weird when there's someone in an authority position for an event/zine that they've shown no interest in previously. Just sets off alarms that something will go wrong.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-06 11:29 pm (UTC)100% yeah if there's no passion for the subject, some mods really are just treating it like a random job that they can put on their carrd, and that doesn't usually create a lovely project experience (it's fandom.... it's literally something done for fun bc u enjoy and are passionate about it!!). Thanks for ur thoughts!
no subject
Date: 2022-11-13 02:48 pm (UTC)I have to admit though that I find it very interesting how several 'insiders', as in people who have participated in fandom events, report in this whole discussion about the Discords for such projects being nearly silent and no real community-building or friendship-forging happening, because from my exclusively outsider/observer position, I have the feeling that I heard quite a few people talking about how they met all their Fandom Besties (tm) through this event and that event and then they joined that other event together... :O (Of course, I could just be selectively remembering here and didn't actually encounter that many testimonies to that effect.) It really does beg the question how one finds fandom friends the best way, or how other people manage to do that...
Thanks for your thoughts! :)
no subject
Date: 2022-11-13 08:29 pm (UTC)I think I have made some fandom friends via events before, but it was definitely early on and with smaller events. Honestly I think I forged somewhat of actual bonds in that first wlw week event discord, which was reinforced by doing some other events with some of those ppl or following them on socials etc. I feel like most theme weeks don't have a discord, but with a bang discord it kind of becomes about keeping on a schedule and only talking with ur assigned partner, whereas with a theme week discord the stakes were lower and ppl could just chat about what they were planning to create or what they liked about the theme with less pressure to focus on one fic/artpiece. IDK if it's the theme week format that made it fairly sociable compared to a bang/zine or not, or if there was just luck or other factors that made it fun and connected me to others, but it's worth considering.
I think also when I started getting more hard-core into events, like doing multiple bangs at the same time, I was much much less likely to try and chat in the discords bc I was overwhelmed. I have a feeling a LOT of ppl feel that way, so it could be a side effect of everyone trying to do everything bc they don't want to miss out on an event all these other cool ppl are doing, but then losing any energy to actually connect with others... It's hard! It's also really disheartening when a discord is super big to see so little activity... I think smaller niche things might fare better bc then it's more cozy and less disheartening when there's only a little activity.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-27 03:37 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, that is a very good point I didn't even think about! While it might still be possible to verify which zines one did take part in or not (though really, who goes to the length of that for every participant?), it's not like the zine community is that closely connected that it would help with being able to weed out all the "bad apples" that easily. And if anything, adopting such a practise of rigorous background-checking would be a field ripe for slander and all those things...
I don't think I've really seen discord servers for theme weeks either, which is honestly a shame because it does sound like it would be a good way to get people who enjoy the same type of content together but without the pressure of all the schedule-upkeep that is connected to a bang and/or zine. Of course the audience of such an event reaches is always a factor too, probably, but I agree that it would be nice to see some more theme weeks or similar events do this kind of community building around it.
And people trying to do everything in order to connect better and more with people in the fandom... when that is the very thing then keeping them from making better connections because it causes them to be overwhelmed... That's a very likely hypothesis, but at the same time, it also feels very sad and tragic. Though it is probably a side-effect to the ever faster-moving pace that comes with social media and also engulfes fandoms more and more. * sighing sadly *