Let's Get Meta - Fan Creators and Responsibility

*Special thanks to Shipper’s Guide to the Galaxy*

There is a lot of discussion in think pieces and among pop-culture analysts about the relationship between creators of a work and their fans. But within fandom there are also fan-creators, who for simplicity’s sake I will be calling metafans. These are people who create things within and about the fandom, whether it is theories, artwork, fanfiction, or analyses.

But with the increasing acceptance of fandom as a thing along with the internet, these metafans have a greater and greater ability to disseminate their views and gain a following of their own. So rather than the straightforward line between creator and fan, there are really creators, metafans, and fans. (The part of me that went to liberal arts college has to comment that it’s really more of a spectrum). 

I talked to metafan Sasha from Shipper’s Guide to the Galaxy, about this phenomenon. According to her, there have always been metafans. It’s with the rise of information technology that casual fans can easily run access the more hardcore side of whatever they are interested in, and those metafans can reach far more people than they could before.

This certainly is true for me. I’ve mostly run into metafans via Youtube. I stumbled on Super Carlin Brothers – metafans who do tons of video analyses and theories related to Pixar, Disney, Harry Potter, and Marvel – while watching random stuff on YouTube. It didn’t take me long before I became a fan of their work. It was the first time I was a fan of fellow fans and their creations.

Even though metafandom comes off as weird and esoteric, it’s actually really common. Sports commentators or bloggers, and podcasters who talk about TV shows are also metafans. They create something as fans, and then garner fans of their own. Personally, I like Gilmore Guys, the podcast about Gilmore Girls. They are definitely metafans.

So, if metafans are common and have always been here, why does any of this matter. Two reasons – responsiveness and responsibility.

With the internet, for good and for bad, everyone is, or at least expected to be, more responsive. There has always been a space – sometimes large and sometimes small – between The Powers That Be and fans of a certain work. As much as I love a given series, it’s not like I’m going to become penpals with my favorite authors.

Metafans collapse that distance. Partially because they are member of a fan community and thus feel more accessible. They are down in the fandom trenches with you rather than wafting above it all like The Powers That Be.

The financial model of metafandom also encourages responsiveness. Patreon has created a method of fans literally funding the work of metafans, in return for some level of influence of content. While I can’t tell JK Rowling to rewrite everything so that Hermione ends up with Neville – a hill I’m 100 percent willing to die on – I can potentially influence videos made by metafans, or suggest prompts to fan fiction writers. Metafans are expected to respond to, and in some ways cater to, the demands of fans.

Which brings us to responsibility. To go all cliched Spiderman on you, “with great power comes great responsibility.” And metafans can have great responsibility. If tens of thousands of people watch your videos or read your work, you have a great deal of influence. And it’s important for metafans to acknowledge and remember that.

The internet is a public space, not a private one. What you say drunk while arguing about Star Wars movies with your friends takes on a different meaning and life when you release/display that for public consumption. You might be in the fandom trenches with everyone else, but you’re a proverbial officer, leading a charge in a certain direction. Promoting X over Y. Some people might not want that power, or wish that they could do their thing without being responsible, but that’s not how the world works. It’s not that metafans should completely censor themselves, but they do have to acknowledge and accept the responsibility they have as a result of their influence. Ignoring it will only lead to toxicity, bullying, and the death of Uncle Ben.

The concept and impact of metafandom could be the subject of a dissertation, rather than a short blog piece. I’ve only scratched the surface of the concept and the implications of its growing importance in our current culture, which is one where commentary on a thing is almost as important as the thing itself. But at the end of the day, where there are fans, there will also be metafans. Driving discussions in a certain way, promoting different things, and creating awesome products of their own. As the internet continues to connect us all in awesome and terrifying ways, metafandom will only become more visible and influential. With any luck it will be positive, rather than toxic.