Questions and Snarkitude Raised by an MIT Convergence Culture Consortium Piece

[hector_rashbaum]

I mentioned, a few posts ago, that I'd be dissecting an essay titled Fans, Producers, and when Real Person Fic actually becomes about Real People, posted at MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium. But I was rereading it to get an idea of how to approach it, and realized there were really only two paragraphs I wanted to attack.

Quick note: I use "fandom" here to mean "fanworks-producing fandom", just to avoid confusion. And because I'm a ficcer exclusively, and the essay was discussing fic, that should maybe say "fanfic-producing fandom".

Not by the sex, which I never actually got to, but by the simple fact that someone I know had walked into a room and said something innocuous in a fan story on the internet. And not just any story posted by an enthusiastic 14-year-old on Quizilla, but fanfic that was very much a part of the social economy of fandom, written by people whose fannish identities were based much more heavily on their role as a fan writer than as a fan of this particular band. In short, my friends didn't just have a fan fantasy written and posted online -- they had been brought into the social culture of fanfiction as a product, in the way a new spinoff of the Stargate franchise might be.

OMG so much wrong with that.

"...And not just any story posted by an enthusiastic 14-year-old on Quizilla, but fanfic that was very much a part of the social economy of fandom..."

I'm guessing "enthusiastic 14-year-old on Quizilla" is shorthand (extremely dismissive and patronizing shorthand) for "people from the less sophisticated parts of fandom" (which, apparently, aren't part of fandom - or at least part of its social economy, which I'll go into below).

How fucking superior. Dismissive, patronizing, and superior. You're excitable, young, you post on the wrong website. You don't matter to fandom. "Feral fandom", anyone?

And regarding "the social economy of fandom", if you're going to define fandom as one group, with one social economy, the enthusiastic 14-year-olds on Quizilla are part of that group, their work is part of that social economy. Yeah, even if you don't like it. Yeah, even if you think that's what people are talking about when they say omg fanfic is crappity crap.

Of course, while I do think of fandom as one overarching group, the cultures from place to place (and even specific-fandom to specific-fandom within individual places) are so different I doubt one could accurately say there's a "the social economy" (or a "the set of social norms", or even a "the culture" without going hopelessly broad). There are lots and lots of "a social economy"s; excitable 14-year-olds on Quizilla are part of one. Yes, even if it's not immediately visible. Yes, even if it'd not particularly sophisticated. Yeah, even if it annoys you or it's not the way you operate or you never interact with it at all.

"...written by people whose fannish identities were based much more heavily on their role as a fan writer than as a fan of this particular band. In short, my friends didn't just have a fan fantasy written and posted online -- they had been brought into the social culture of fanfiction as a product, in the way a new spinoff of the Stargate franchise might be."

Wait, what? I mean...what?

I'm reading this wrong, I have to be, because there's no way this person can be saying if you're a BNF, your work is no longer fanwork but a product on level with a spinoff of a popular sci-fi series?

Neat.

I'm curious how this rule applies, though. I mean, I'd consider myself a BNF of sorts at RockFic - so when I post my work there is it Stargate spin-off, and then when I post the same fic at classicrockcock or wherever, is it back to being a fanwork?

SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME. I need to know when I'm writing the next Stargate so I know how much pressure to apply to myself.

I'm just not sure how to win. If I subtract a few years and fuck off to Quizilla, then my work gets to be fanwork again...but I don't get to be part of THE social economy of fandom *sad face*. And if I get attention, I'm not writing fanfic, I'm bringing bands into the social culture of fanfic as products, like tv shows.

OKAY MOVING ON. This is a quickie, and really it's just a question.

While one of the central premises of RPF has always been that these public personas that celebrities construct are no more "real" than a fictional television character, it becomes difficult to maintain this conceit when the "characters" in question begin acknowledging and commenting on the fics in interviews and even in fan communities.

Okay. So. My question is: How does any given celebrity's knowledge of fanfic make their public persona any less a construct?

I think I know what she's getting at here - that the fourth wall in bandom is a little sketchier because of celeb knowledge of just what's going down.

But she didn't go there. She went from "your fourth wall is questionable" (which I addressed in an earlier meta piece) to "YOU'RE LYING ABOUT HOW YOU CREATE CHARACTERS". And I don't get it. Anyone?

Comments

[madandy.livejournal.com]

Er...er....

I'll leave this to the clever people, and just carry on regardless. Best way, I think.

(So, wait - by being friends with a band and knowing the difference between them as mates, friends, at home, and them on the road/on stage/as A Band that makes my work as much a product as the albums they produce?

...

Weird.)

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

whose fannish identities were based much more heavily on their role as a fan writer than as a fan of this particular band

When I read this in the original post and again reading it here, my immediate reaction has been "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG." I guess it illustrates the difference between bandoms with large media-based-fan followings and my own bandom experience? (Not that I've never written a band I'm not a fan of--I have, almost exclusively in XO situations with bands I luf.)

if you're going to define fandom as one group, with one social economy, the enthusiastic 14-year-olds on Quizilla are part of that group

Not only are those 14-year-olds on Quizilla part of that group, but so are the rest of us 'feral fen'¹--the 20-year-olds and 36-year-olds and 52-year-olds on Rockfic, mailing lists and various and sundry official and unofficial band message boards that, you know, haven't actually gone the way of the dinosaurs just because LJ showed up. (Of course, you know this. :) Preachin' to the choir, I am.)

But she didn't go there. She went from "your fourth wall is questionable"...to "YOU'RE LYING ABOUT HOW YOU CREATE CHARACTERS". And I don't get it. Anyone?

I read it more as "you're being disingenuous" (I know: semantics--and I would have preferred the author to have asked "are you/we/they being disingenuous?"), but even so, yeah, the logic doesn't follow. "OMG Aaron North found those stories I wrote about him and said they sucked ass. NOW I CAN NO LONGER PASS THEM--OR ANY OTHER STORIES I WRITE ABOUT HIM--OFF AS FICTIONAL CONSTRUCTS OF HIS PUBLIC PERSONA." Wut?




¹ I actually love being "feral," but I hate "fen." Probably because I'm, you know, feral and "fen" is a term used by all them civilized 'fen.'

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

oh god I have SO MUCH SHIT TO DO RIGHT NOW and you're distracting me with delicious brainz talk

I guess it illustrates the difference between bandoms with large media-based-fan followings and my own bandom experience?

Not even bandoms, though - this isn't a bandom person at all, as far as I can tell. She actually seems to be from more of that set of media fen who seem to think RPF is after their acceptance, like we're waiting from the final word from traditional media fandom on whether or not we're okay (related to, but disconnected from, the group who need to make sure at every turn everyone knows RPF IS SO NOT COOL EW SQUICKY). It almost read to me like "well, I thought you guys were cool, but now I'm not so sure anymore, so I might be revoking your fandom pass."

(Not that I've never written a band I'm not a fan of--I have, almost exclusively in XO situations with bands I luf.)

If I thought that was what she meant I probably wouldn't have been so "what the fuck are you on and how do I avoid it", because I think especially in a culture like RockFic where there's so much crosspollinating of bandoms probably EVERYONE has written a band they wouldn't consider themselves a fan of (I hate Dirk. I have written Dirk. Oh Lawdy).

I think what she's getting at is...someone with a lot of fannish influence writing a band that hasn't been in the bandom spotlight before turns that spotlight on them - like I write Bon Jovi, more people write them, and they've become more a fandon thing than they were.

But that way oversimplifies WHY people bandwagon-jump (and it's WAY WAY oversimplifying to call it bandwagon-jumping in bandom), and even if it weren't, I still don't get how that makes the original work any less fannish than our Quizilla buddy over there squeeing herself into a coma while she writes (I, for the record, have made odd little excited-girl noises over my writing before. And OHMYGODYESTHAT'SITs.).

Not only are those 14-year-olds on Quizilla part of that group, but so are the rest of us 'feral fen'¹--the 20-year-olds and 36-year-olds and 52-year-olds on Rockfic, mailing lists and various and sundry official and unofficial band message boards that, you know, haven't actually gone the way of the dinosaurs just because LJ showed up. (Of course, you know this. :) Preachin' to the choir, I am.)

And this has turned into like MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE EVER starting back in the Scalzi blog OTW discussion with all the people going NO NO NO ONE'S TRYING TO MAKE MONEY NO ONE'S GOING TO TRY. Because you are COMPLETELY IGNORING - blatantly ignoring, I POSTED A FREAKING LINK RIGHT THERE - parts of fandom that aren't your own and don't function the way you do. Fandom is a big culture with a BAJILLION (ooh, sciency numbers) subcultures; you CAN'T CAN'T CAN'T just look at your subculture and be like OH YEAH THAT'S EVERYONE. LULZ.

(And then to take it a step farther by ACKNOWLEDGING the other cultures but TELLING THEM THEY AREN'T PART OF IT? What. You dick.)

"OMG Aaron North found those stories I wrote about him and said they sucked ass. NOW I CAN NO LONGER PASS THEM--OR ANY OTHER STORIES I WRITE ABOUT HIM--OFF AS FICTIONAL CONSTRUCTS OF HIS PUBLIC PERSONA." Wut?

People JUST DON'T FUCKING GET IT. When they are IN PUBLIC. WHAT THEY DO. IS PART OF. THEIR PUBLIC PERSONA. PERIOD. So even those acknowledgements ARE PART OF THE PERSONA. THEY ARE ACTING. EVEN IF IT'S JUST A LITTLE ACTING. OMG WTF. FOR SERIOUS.

BUT THEY SAID THEY FOUND FANFIC IN THIS MAGAZINE I READ SO SUDDENLY IT'S NOT A PUBLIC PERSONA ANYMORE.

I just. I don't even. What.

Maybe I need sparkle text.

PEOPLE WHOSE CAREERS REQUIRE TIME IN THE PUBLIC EYE ADOPT PUBLIC PERSONAS. THERE IS A SEPARATION BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PERSON. THE FOURTH WALL IS A DIFFERENT ISSUE. THANK YOU, GOODNIGHT.

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

She actually seems to be from more of that set of media fen who seem to think RPF

Yeah, I had that thought, too, when I was folding laundry and thinking about the author's "It wasn't tongue-in-cheek meta-RPS like the infamous Henry Jenkins/Chris Williams, but unironic fan work" statement--is only tongue-in-cheek meta-RPS acceptable?! Everything else is just uncomfortable and we should be ashamed of ourselves?

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

If you're not making a statement, you might as well be a fourteen-year-old on Quizilla.

(omg I'm done with the sparklies. Really)

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Do I get my 14-year-old body back?

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

wouldn't that weird Mark out a little?

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

He'd get over it. (Maybe?)

[(Anonymous)]

I've added to the discussion to a lot of this stuff in comments below, but I'm a little confused here. I feel like at no point did I say that "meta" RPF was the only "acceptable" form, only that the fics in question that I was discussing weren't meta, which is where I've usually seen people I know in RPF. Sorry if that wasn't clear, but I was just making a distinction, not suggesting that one form was somehow preferable to another. In fact, my point there was that one is actually more legitimate as fanfic, where as the tongue-in-cheek parody is more meta and commentary.

Also, I can't remember if I actually use the term bandom in my post, but I wanted to add that my post wasn't about bandom, as I'm not familiar enough with it. My post was about fic about bands that I saw through media fandom, and I don't presume that it's at all representative of bandom. I was just trying to use a specific instance of something to open up questions about how the barrier between fans and the things they are fans of break down in the context of new communication technologies.

Xiaochang

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

And now I'm all thinking about "stories about people you know," which, since I don't know any celebs means, to me, "stories about regular people who don't have 'public personas'."

I don't usually write down stories I've made up in my head about "regular people," but I do have them--or have had them in the past, at least. Given two ingredients, I will always make up stories in my head about regular people. The first is opportunity. I work from home these days and don't hang out in places where I see a lot of the same people regularly, but I have in the past: high school, the Air Force, the pool halls I used to practically (and for a while literally) live at, the gym, when I went through that period of going to the gym. The second ingredient is boredom: everything in high school was boring, the Air Force left me with a lot of empty time in my head to fill, the job I had while I was going to pool halls (including, at one point, working at a pool hall) didn't require much brain power, and the gym--ugh, nothing but intellectual boredom. So I had the time and resources for working up stories in my head.

Anyway, the point I'm coming around to, actually, is that even regular people--even your best friend or that hunky guy on the treadmill--can totally be turned into fictional characters. Even though you know them. Even though they may not have consciously developed a public persona. And it does not become difficult to "maintain this conceit," even when the people in question read and comment on stories you've written about them. I know, because while I don't usually write down stories about "regular people," I have done, and the people involved have read them and have commented on them. And all involved still totally understood that the characters were fictional representations of people.

/babble

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

IAWTC.

[nighthawkms.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom

So I'm not the only crazy person who's written RPF about people she knows? And put herself into the story a horrible Mary Sue who saves the day?

..that last one might not apply to you, but still OMFG I'M NOT ALONE THANK GOD.

Basically, I love your post and agree wholeheartedly. I clicked on the link to the meta before reading your post, and went "wtf?" at the same paragraph you commented on in the beginning. So apparently the only people who are allowed to write legitimate RPF are high school freshmen? Damn, guess all that pundit slash I used to write means jack squat.

This is why I feel like the "fourth wall" between the celebrities and their fans should be FREAKIN HUGE, like, Great Wall of China big. Because not everyone can handle finding out that people write fiction about them. Even gen stories; god forbid het or slash comes into play. Some don't seem mind and even find it amusing, but I'm just waiting for the day that one of them gets their panties in a twist about it and rains hellfire on the fan community. So when we get random meta like the CCC one, it makes me uneasy, because the OP seems to take the attitude of, "I'm ambivalent until somebody writes about somebody I PERSONALLY KNOW." And that's a selfish attitude to take, really.

[elf]

So I'm not the only crazy person who's...

It's the internet. You're not the only one who's Whatevered. Try not to think about it too much; it's freaky to discover your idiosyncracies might have whole support groups out there somewhere.

I'm just waiting for the day that one of them gets their panties in a twist about it and rains hellfire on the fan community.

Don't worry about it. Really. That part's covered. Larry Flynt wrote incest!fanfic about Jerry Falwell; it went to the Supreme Court, which decided that you can say anything you want about celebrities, as long as you're clearly indicating it's not real and you're not attempting to convince anyone it actually happened.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I write RPF in my head about people I know. I assume nobody wants to read underage incest about random people I go to church with, and so I don't write it down or post it.

[fizzyblogic.livejournal.com]

SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME. I need to know when I'm writing the next Stargate so I know how much pressure to apply to myself.

Where have you BEEN all my life? *_* Or in other words, ILU AND AGREE 100%. That article baffled me. But then, I've written RPF about me and my friends and they were all fictional characters. SO. I don't get how it makes it different if you know them. I can see how it would be intensely surreal to stumble across it accidentally, but there was ... surely a header, and the poster is in fandom and therefore knows how to read a header. Therefore, I remain baffled.

[elf]

...one of the central premises of RPF has always been...

RPF has central premises? Did I miss a memo? I mean, my RPF-writing experience is incredibly limited (errm, one story, and playing a bit fast-and-loose at that), but I have looked at a bit of it, and I failed to discover any collection of Official Guidelines To The Correct Attitude Towards RPF.

Come to think of it, I'm missing the memos on the Central Premises on movie fanfic, book fanfic, and tv fanworks in general. And sci-fi conventions. And the memos about the Central Premises of online fandom.

My secretary is so fired.

speaking of missing memos

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

I'm obvs. way too shallow to play in this game, because my central premise is "I'm here for the fun factor", so...

Some clarifications and apologies

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, this is Xiaochang from C3. Someone pointed me towards this post and I thought I'd jump into the conversation (hope you don't mind). Before I begin, I just want to say that I'm really glad fans are reading the C3 blog and commenting on it (sorry our own commenting system is down due to server changes and crazy, crazy spam). And, because I'm apparently not the most careful with my wording, I want to clarify that I am in no way anti-fandom, anti-bandom, anti-RPS/RPF. Seriously, I read my share of popslash/popfic back in the day and think RPF fandoms produce some of the most interesting textual/structural work that I've seen in fanfic. The point of that particular blog post, and I realize that it may not have come across, was simply to talk about the strange experience of finding your friends in fic, and the feeling that the people in your real life were somehow wrongly invading fandom (and not the other way around), going from there to think a little on how this producer/fan dichotomy really breaks down when the product in question is a celebrity persona that is as much the creation of the fans as it is of the so-called "producers."

So again, sorry for the misunderstanding. I blog in a fairly casual manner and forget that with C3 and MIT CMS backing me, the things I say might stand to be taken more seriously than I intend them and I'm not as careful with my wording and phrasing as I probably should be.

Anyway, I'll address some of the specific things you say in another comment, because I know these LJ comments have word-limits, and I'm pretty verbose, in case you can't already tell.

Also, you got me thinking that I should maybe post a clarifying follow-up piece. If I do so, can I link this post? I'm really annoyed that our commenting system on the blog is down, and I don't want people to get the impression that we don't want people to respond and engage with us about the things we post.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm guessing "enthusiastic 14-year-old on Quizilla" is shorthand (extremely dismissive and patronizing shorthand) for "people from the less sophisticated parts of fandom" (which, apparently, aren't part of fandom - or at least part of its social economy, which I'll go into below).

Actually, I didn't mean for it to be dismissive of fic that gets posted on Quizilla, or myspace, or elsewhere. What I meant to do was to simply distinguish fanfic that gets produced within an explicit fanfiction community, from writers who wrote a story about their favorite celebrity and wanted to share it publicly and writers who write RPF as part of a fic-writing fandom, who participate in what's been called the fanfic "gift economy," who write fic as part of a social practice and a community. I don't think one of the other makes you more legit or better as a fan, and the boundaries are not always distinct, but I do think of them as slightly different practices and I wanted to be clear that I was talking about the latter.

And of course, I don't think of it as a single group, a single social economy, and it's not necessarily site-specific. You can be very much engaged in the fannish "gift economy" and also post to Quizilla, but the scaffolding for that kind of engagement is not built into Quizilla the way it is on, say, Livejournal, so in general, is it not usually the same practice. Again, I'm not saying that it's less important, or less valuable, or even that the fic is worse. But there practices, the social conventions, and perhaps even the purposes of the fic are different.

I'm actual quite angry at myself for not being more careful especially in that line, because one of my frustrations about how fandom gets written about in the popular press is that there's a tendency to privilege very specific sorts of fans and fan production as more valuable. Within the culture of CMS and C3, it's generally taken for granted that we would not be dismissive of any kind of fan engagement, and it was too easy for forget that it might not be read that way since most of what is written about fans in popular media can be so dismissive and that most fans would be going from that assumption.

I'm reading this wrong, I have to be, because there's no way this person can be saying if you're a BNF, your work is no longer fanwork but a product on level with a spinoff of a popular sci-fi series?

Actually, I think this might just be the cause of an ambiguous reference. The "they" I'm referring to here is not fic writers, or fics, but my friends. What I was trying to say was that the fan/producer dichotomy had been collapsed here much more than it might be in other circumstances, that their personas were circulating as fan property the same way canon in a media series would. In short, that the stories were circulating not because they were stories about them, but also because they were part of fanfiction culture, a part of fandom, and people were reading it because they like fanfiction whether or not they liked the band in question.

How does any given celebrity's knowledge of fanfic make their public persona any less a construct?

It doesn't. You're right - I was going for the "your fourth wall" part (though I don't think it makes the fourth way sketchy, so much as a more complex negotiation). I was actually commenting on some of the meta that had cropped up in which people said they felt really uncomfortable knowing that their fics got read by the people they were about, even though it wasn't, strictly speaking, about actual people.

All in all, my point was not OMG FANDOM SO WRONG, it was more like omg friends, stop invading fandom because you're not the audience and you're freaking fic writers out.

Sorry I was so unclear!

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

As in this sentence;
"I had the irrational urge to call up the band in question and tell them to stop butting into fandom."

Ah hahaha!