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rynlingBetween one thing and another, I've come into possession of a small pile of evidence that one's success in fandom is disproportionately dependent on the amount of time and energy spent on social media. I'm an introvert with a more-than-full-time job, and I have neither the time nor the energy to spend multiple hours every day on Twitter and Discord. If you want your work to be recognized, however, that's what you need to do. The quality of what you create matters, but only if you know the right people. In other words, fandom is essentially a high school popularity contest. I had always suspected this, but finding multiple sources of concrete evidence was disheartening.
I should probably clarify that I'm not personally butthurt about any one thing in particular. All of my social media accounts are carefully curated walled gardens, and I'm surrounded by good people. And it's not as if professional spaces for creative people are perfect, obviously. I've just been feeling like fandom is a bit silly recently; and, if I'm going to be doing "work" on social media, then I want it to be useful and productive.
Now that I've begun my foray into professional publishing, I've been amazed at how tangibly rewarding it is. It's not easy, of course, but it's also not a situation where having thousands of followers and millions of notes on Tumblr benefits my life in exactly zero ways. It's also nice to know that, if a social media platform disappeared overnight, then my work would still be out there. As much as I appreciate magical screens that glow in the dark, I fucking love print media.
I've therefore decided to try to wrap up my ongoing fandom projects by the end of 2019. I'm going to work on and post one currently-unfinished story every week until all my draft folders are cleaned out. I want all of the fan art and fan comics I have lying around colored and posted, and I want all of my art commissions to be squared away. It's been a lot of fun, but it's time to move on.
I should probably clarify that I'm not personally butthurt about any one thing in particular. All of my social media accounts are carefully curated walled gardens, and I'm surrounded by good people. And it's not as if professional spaces for creative people are perfect, obviously. I've just been feeling like fandom is a bit silly recently; and, if I'm going to be doing "work" on social media, then I want it to be useful and productive.
Now that I've begun my foray into professional publishing, I've been amazed at how tangibly rewarding it is. It's not easy, of course, but it's also not a situation where having thousands of followers and millions of notes on Tumblr benefits my life in exactly zero ways. It's also nice to know that, if a social media platform disappeared overnight, then my work would still be out there. As much as I appreciate magical screens that glow in the dark, I fucking love print media.
I've therefore decided to try to wrap up my ongoing fandom projects by the end of 2019. I'm going to work on and post one currently-unfinished story every week until all my draft folders are cleaned out. I want all of the fan art and fan comics I have lying around colored and posted, and I want all of my art commissions to be squared away. It's been a lot of fun, but it's time to move on.
