Punk & cosplay

This morning I wrote a toot about cosplay. I knew it would be unpopular, but it spawned a lot of discussion based on a number of unintended readings.

What I said was:

If you didn’t make your cosplay costume, you’re cheating.

What I meant was not that only expert tailors should cosplay. Instead, I was trying to criticize the encroachment of commerce into fandom spaces.

I don’t mean to say commerce in fandom spaces is new. It’s not. It presents a unique kind of toxicity to fandom spaces, however — one I’d like to unpack here.

Costly signalling

I consider the function of cosplay to be costly signalling. That is to say, the feeling of belonging and comunity that cosplay can create is caused by the shared perception that the cosplayer has sacrificed something for the group.

Costly signalling can take all kinds of forms. Sometimes, the cost is in money. Other times, the cost is in lost opportunities, social status, damage to the physical body, or the accumulation of blackmail material. The power of hazing comes from costly signalling, as does the power of fashion movements, internal gang solidarity, and music subcultures.

Cosplaying, in the sense that it would be considered embarassing by a normie, constitutes a form of costly signalling by itself: by dressing up in public, you have sacrificed social status with the outgroup in exchange for social status with the ingroup. There’s a second cost…