Renfield's Home from Home

oh! the space needle is a cute mascot base for seattle’s MLB team! i wonder how they managed to communicate that in a big foam costume?

oh

oh

1. Archer (does not feel bad)

2. Burnham (feels a Little Bad)

3. Janeway (we personally witnessed the devastation in them big ol I Had to Kill Somebody eyes, but she recovers quickly due to personal love of Tuvok and Neelix)

4. Sisko (spends awhile confirming every single possible alternative, does Not Feel Bad except when Tuvix directly calls him murderer)

5. Kirk (tries to Kobayashi Maru it. Dealer’s choice on if this results in a Tuvix AND Neelix and Tuvok live, or if it becomes one of those things that he carries foreverrr)

6. Picard (this could be a two parter episode with how much he would need to soliloquize on identity and the rights of the individual and the authority limits of a captain. But yeah, he’s killing Tuvix).

The thing younger fans need to understand is that 'content creator' and 'consumer' are social media marketing terms that did not exist as labels in fandom spaces until the past decade.

As a side effect of a lot of fan interaction happening on social media, you started reshaping what a fandom IS in order to fit within what a social media platform wants you to be.

See, social media platforms exist to advertise to you. That's it. That is how they make money. It's their reason for existing. You -- your attention, your time -- are the product they sell to advertisers for profit.

Social media companies divide their users into 'content creators' and 'content consumers'. That's where those terms come from. They're technical terms that originated in the Twitter corporate offices.

'Content creator' is the term for people who make things -- videos, funny posts, thoughtful comments, art, etc -- that other people want to look at. 'Consumers' are the people who use the platform because they want to look at that thing, and end up looking at a lot of ads in the process.

I loathe, loathe, LOATHE how we have taken to applying the terms 'content' and 'consumer' to ourselves outside of their business model. You do not exist to make money for a social media company. A drawing someone made is not 'content' for you to 'consume'.

A fandom is an informal social group. That's all. It's you and a bunch of other people who all like the same thing, and sometimes you enjoy the thing together. You don't have to create anything. You don't 'consume content'. You are hanging out with other people.

Stop forcing yourself into their boxes.