Fandom meta

This was an interesting article that passed my way:

What It Feels Like for a Fangirl in the Age of Late Capitalism

I’ve been in fandom long enough to remember the days of fourth wall enforcement (“don’t talk about fandom in public”) and battles between fan creators and media company legal departments, so the fact that we now live in a world of corporate embraced fandom activity, where companies like Viacom, (yes Viacom, owner of Paramount, that sent C&D letters to Star Trek fansites in the 90s) has an award show that gives awards online to fandom and features fandom-specific categories like “ship of the year,” blows my mind. 

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All of this convergence doesn’t feel completely positive to me. It comes at a point in digital media where metrics about our conversations, content, and consumption are tracked, monitored, and monetized like never before. It does make me uncomfortable that fan communities are encouraged by companies to embrace our online fannish activity publicly—discuss! create! share! vote! —at a point where our activity and content are easier to observe and use by the companies that create the pop culture we love. Because all too often, the content and support of marginalized fan communities, we who wrap ourselves in fannish love, who come to fandom for community, validation, a creative outlet, are used for free labor by many companies that would never hire us for actual paying work.

And, actually, speaking of, I also saw a reblog of this article from 1997(?) speaking about Viacom and Star trek specifically: The War Against Fandom.