Group Dynamic

Back in 2013 or so, Sherlock had exploded in popularity among teen girls, fed through the conduit of Tumblr (and soon further fueled by the advent of SuperWhoLock.) This was a funny (affectionate) turn of events to me, because I had watched Sherlock when it first came out and enjoyed it enough to recommend to my father and then moved on. Now, a few years later, the show was suddenly everywhere on Tumblr driven by an interest in JohnLock. I believe this was around the time season 2 came out which might have caused renewed attention.

Sidebar: fandom was historically a very contained thing in the early days of the internet where adult women (from careered professionals to stay-at-home moms) hosted domains and zines with very specific rules and moderators who oversaw a set of agreed upon expectations. Fics and art were not hosted in common spaces until sites like wattpad, tumblr, and fanfiction.net. If you liked The Magnificent Seven or The West Wing you had to go find the fandom websites that were paid for and run by individuals / small groups who hosted people's fics and ran the shared au's, etc.

Now (stay with me) I had become a kpop fan in 2011, and experienced enormous culture shock when I saw how open and public fandom was in Korea. Fans brought signs promoting their favorite ships to concerts, hosts asked about them on talk shows, fans publicly shared their art, professionals read fanfic about themselves, etc. I distinctly remember how uncomfortable I was with the idea. I remember feeling that the relationship between fan and artist was weirdly inappropriate, especially when I saw how artists were expected to behave at fan meetings (this was before we were gifted the word parasocial) but I adjusted to the idea that even if it FELT wrong, there was clearly a different social contract with fans and celebrities when it came to kpop. While I still didn't think it was publicly okay it felt alright in fandom spaces. I was very relieved at the time, though, that this same open concept of fandom was not present in America.

Then, a few years later, I have this clear memory of watching a late night host expose Martin Freeman or Benedict Cumberbatch to explict fanart about JohnLock. (I know this happened with Graham Norton, but my memory is very much of an American host like Stephen Colbert doing the same thing.) I tried to find the video and the only thing I could find was from 2017 or so which feels too recent. (Maybe it was re-uploaded? I guess 2017 was almost a decade ago).

Regardless, I distinctly remember that feeling of oh god no because I did not want kpop-style fandoms becoming a thing in the U.S. and this was the first time anything like this had ever happened in America in my memory: a completely taboo moment that violated the unspoken rules and norms. What was worse is that someone respected on late night television was the one to open the pandora's box, thus legitimizing the idea that you could broadcast fandom. That video is, in my memory, the watershed moment when fandom become outed to the public and to corporations as anything more than Star Trek Conventions. (It would be many more years before fanfiction was considered something you could mention in mixed company without ridicule, though we had mostly fallen out of the habit of seeing or writing disclaimers on fics due to the success of AO3.)

What followed was a massive breach of the social distance between creators and artists and fans, happening right around the time that celebrities were more accessible online through Twitter. We soon saw a huge rise in intentional queer baiting by television show-runners and media executives who sought to profit from this untapped, intensely loyal fan base (this was also a staple of the kpop industry which, simultaneously, oppressed the open expression of queer artists). We also saw the gross overstepping of boundaries between fans and actors, with fans treating creatives and artists like property ("You're only popular because of us so you don't get to complain about how we treat you.") Later on, we saw the forced outing of queer actors in a misguided and cruel bid to lessen queer baiting which caused its own irreversible damage. Finally, while I get the feeling that the end of Stranger Things is the end of this particular era previously described, we are still experiencing the interview hell-scape where amatanormatity is reinforced through professionals badgering actors about ships and comparing every dynamic to Heated Rivalry.