The Fandom Menace ft. Jessica Lucas
Added 2022-05-17 13:29:52 +0000 UTCThis week we're joined by Jessica Lucas (@jessicalucaswrites) from Input Magazine, to discuss the "Will White" fandom, something that does actually exist, and apparently consists on various Moms on TikTok going to war with each other. We talk about contemporary fandom, how to understand what it is, and fandom as a form of expression and social relations, rather than one of veneration and support. Plus, we discuss Pick Up Artists on Twitter, and their new strategy of Twitter Roleplay to market their products.
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Read Jessica's article here: https://www.inputmag.com/culture/will-white-tiktok-fandom-gen-x-middle-age-women-drama
Comments
It's odd, but the longer I listened to the discussion on fandom, the more I just found myself thinking of chariot racing factions in the Byzantine empire and the way in which association with this one thing (chariot races) becomes an entire way of life to the point that it becomes a cornerstone of politics and a fairly credible attempt to overthrow the Emperor himself ultimately happens due to a unification of the blue and green factions. In the end, half of Byzantium burns because of the Nika Riots, and tens of thousands of people are killed. All because of chariot races. One of the historiographical explanations I've seen on the reason for the factions' expansion into these competing social bodies is that they became an outlet for social and political tensions that people had no power over by that point. Given that the neoliberal project itself has included both the atomization of individuals in a way that separates them from more traditional sources of community and the disassembly of any meaningful form of democratic control, it seems quite reasonable to view the emergence of fandoms decreasingly detached from the subject of their fandom as a product of a similar lack of other means of resolving political and social tensions. Of course, I tend to view the general party politics of most liberal democracies through a rather similar lens, at this point, but that might just be a product of living in the US, where our political parties have always been relatively undemocratic institutions. This conveniently also fits in next to my grand theory of social media as a form of outlet for things beyond social control, but that's a rabbit-hole I'll leave unexplored. Unfortunately, this means I have to warn you of the inevitability of the Ten Thousand Posts faction's coming street warfare with the Joe Rogan faction. Sorry, I don't make the rules, I just scream pointlessly into the void about them.
Violet
2022-05-17 17:27:55 +0000 UTCSo is there a difference between fan fiction and *stan* fiction?
Allen
2022-05-17 16:39:59 +0000 UTCI believe the object of fandoms are called "sociometric stars"
Aaron Pozos
2022-05-17 16:11:40 +0000 UTC
