Fandom’s two cultures (and third wheel)
An expansion and refinement of On Communities.
Fandom can be broken down into two subgroups: one based on costly signalling (generally, the production of creative transformative works, but sometimes legally risky maneuvers like tape-trading or technical ones like translation) and one based on consumption (sometimes, but not always, involving participating in a critical discourse, of varying degrees of rigor).
These two groups are biased in very different directions because of the way the gatekeeping mechanisms manifest: one joins and participates in the costly signalling segment of fandom by defeating legal, technical, and cultural mechanisms of centralized media control manifesting in the form of market segmentation, artificial scarcity, and the fixation of elements into ‘canon’ based around authorial intent, and while this produces a widespread anti-IP sentiment, were these blockages fully removed, there would be no way for this group to meaningfully demonstrate their affiliation; the consumption-based segment, on the other hand, can only show its affiliation through legitimate and ‘approved’ channels, and is limited to officially-available media and tie-in merchandise, but benefits directly from network effects. While the…
