quite a little escapologist

I was talking about this with a friend but a really interesting cultural shift over the last ohhhhhh ten years maybe is that many people in fandoms view themselves as stakeholders and not audience members. Because of that, they think that the fandom should be running things, or at least have an acknowledged say in how something is run. And every reminder that they are not in control, no matter how small, bothers them.

This has always existed to an extent but it used to be very siloed and only noticeably prevalent in certain fandoms and everyone else in fandom spaces generally agreed that it wasn’t healthy to act like that. Now it’s seemingly every fandom with an online presence and it’s all happening much more publicly than ye olde Trekkie forum.

I do think that the increase in access to creatives through social media, extended promotional cycles where you do a thousand interviews and all of them get clipped for instagram and tiktok, and an increase in entertainment and fandom aggregate social media accounts which keep people updated on all of those clips and every second of the creative process has had a big hand in creating this sense of ownership that audience members feel. It makes us feel like we’re on the team because we think we know so much. But we are not and we don’t.

Like we have commodified human connection to a degree where if you go beyond smalltalk you're oversharing and if you talk too deeply about your life you're traumadumping and if you get visibly upset you're manipulative and if you care too much you're codependent and if you want to talk about anything heavy you're expected to go hire a therapist because your friends shouldn't have to deal with that stuff and yet we're all sitting around wondering why so many people are lonely...

so embarrassing to watch yourself become obsessed with a character that feels tailor made for you specifically to become obsessed with. feels like i fell into a trap made just for me. like damn they got me. those are all the things i like and go crazy for

i dont even have to be friends with a girl to want her to dump her boyfriend

Reblogging with a link to the artist, Emily K., who's based in Philly and is firmly anti-AI! You can print this piece (and some others) for free for use at protests and such!