content creation v fan hobby

This is a blog post I wrote on tumblr over a year ago, but a recent conversation brought it back up to my mind and I thought I should repost it here. It was written in response to episode 133 of the podcast Fansplaining The Productive Fan and a post poppyseedheart wrote here on Dreamwidth titled the enoughness of being a fic writer.

I drifted out of fandom for a few years and when I came back in 2020, one thing that seemed different was that influencer culture/hustle culture seemed to be merging in with the way some fic authors promote and talk about their writing on social media. I am mainly in Kpop RPF fandoms right now and I feel that I’m seeing a trend towards “fic writer as content creator”, especially among fic authors who are very active on twitter. Many of them seem to be building a “brand” around their writing, or at least cultivating an author persona, deeply tied to regular production of fic. Maybe people who are likely to be into idol RPF have been trained into this behavior by being online all the time, and have absorbed the messaging that producing endless content is the key to success? Maybe this was always happening in some corners of fandom and I just didn’t notice it before?

Are some fic writers seeing themselves now as content creators first, and as authors second? Or even as content creators first, fans second? Is this part of why some fic writers might beat themselves up over merely thinking about or daydreaming about stories rather than actively writing? I can see how someone whose happiness is more deeply tied to getting responses to their work then to the process of creating the work might not value daydreaming because it doesn’t directly result in a product. (Though I believe the point was made in the episode that daydreaming is a step in many people’s writing process. Honestly the line between daydreaming and writing planning is a very fuzzy line.) But when did being a fan become so closely tied to production, not just enjoyment? Is this a result of late-stage capitalism tightening its grip on all of our brains? Or is it a natural end result of the Protestant Work Ethic which Flourish brought up in the episode which defines productivity as morally superior to non-productivity and so makes us punish ourselves whenever we enjoy something non-productive.

I know I personally really struggle with linking my sense of self-worth to my level of productivity (though for me it’s more of a problem in my IRL creative job than in my fandom hobbies). I’m really glad that I still have fandom as a place were I make things for the joy of it, not for external rewards (comments, followers, kudos) because in every other part of my life I AM making things for external rewards (comments, followers, money). So far I have been able to keep a lot of that forced-productivity mindset OUT of my fandom life, but on the other hand, I do sometimes feel guilty when I spend time working on fanwork, which I choose not to monetize, instead of my original creative writing, which I am actively trying to monetize so. The struggle is real.