Fanfiction, Youtubers, and the Self as a Commodity: Writing for the Internet Age
In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, an expose on labor and sanitary conditions in the food industry of the time. At the time it was considered a “muckraking” novel, a derogatory term for scandal oriented journalism — despite its widespread popularity and financial success. Perhaps surprising to us now, this is was one of the low arts of the time. It was the sort of writing that drew eyes because of the appalling topic, the seedy details of the exploitation of the working class and contamination of American food. Those sort of juicy secrets sold.
Fast forward to around 2015, and Erika Leonard (aka E.L. James, her professional pen name… aka Snowdragon Icequeen, her unprofessional pen name) is making bank off of Fifty Shades of Grey, which is selling millions of copies and about to be released as a film in theaters. Even today it is still considered a laughingstock — despite also being wildly financially successful. It was the sort of writing that drew eyes because of the taboo topic, the cringey details of what attempts to be a sexy BDSM thriller but instead comes off as a creepy tale of Stockholm syndrome in an abusive relationship. That sort of train-wreck is selling. Oh how we’ve fallen. So how did we go from our pulpy “low-brow” blockbusters being journalistic masterpieces about the underclasses to a lone mother’s spicy fantasies grafted onto Twilight fanfiction?
I argue a huge boon to fanfiction writers is an internet space increasingly focused on commodifying the self — a pillar of neoliberalism: people are capitalizing on their internet followings gained from publishing fanfiction in individual communities where they bond with others based on a common interest. Through these connections they accrue a social and cultural capital. This is not necessarily because their writing is good, but because they interact with their followers and fans in a way that the professional author (holed up in their home office only taking notes from their publisher) can’t.
The fanfiction author is much less elusive. He or she reads the reviews of their readers, responds to them directly in their Tumblr blogs, takes requests, and can market themselves not as the god-like figure that created the canon the fandom fawns over, but rather another relatable fan. They are not held to the same standards as a professional writer and therefore are more able to give the people the guilty pleasures they truly want to see. “You want to see your ship succeed? I can write that. You wish the protagonist had a different sexual orientation? Here’s the link to the slashfic I published last week.” It’s commodification of one’s interest in an existing work, and it’s something relatable.
Another aspect of that relatability is self insertion. Many fanfics make use of this, usually in combination with the Mary Sue trope, so that one can actually imagine (an idealized version of) themselves existing and interacting with the world they enjoy reading about. It’s the act of making oneself a character, then selling your character’s fantasy, one that surely many others in the fandom hold.
Then there is the other neo-liberal advent in the publishing world: youtuber books. Why pair this with the fanfiction trend? Because they both derive success from a similar method: through being able to move one’s audience between varying mediums. Individuals no longer need to rely on talent or strength of writing or a willing publisher/editor to gain literary success. They only need build a personal brand through other means — in this case a youtube channel — and then their followers will go wherever they do — in this case catapulting them to the top of Amazon bestseller lists with positive reviews not for the book, but for the person whose brand they consume. They support the person, not the “art” they produce. (This of course applies to many fields, such as music, clothing lines, movies the youtuber puts out, but here I’m focusing in general on writing).
For common examples, just look to Shane Dawson’s It Gets Worse, and I Hate Myselfie, books that caused him to become a New York Times best seller with no previous experience in writing. There’s Brittani Louise Taylor’s A Sucky Love Story, Tyler Oakley’s Binge, and as many more books as there are vloggers. Functionally, these are memoirs, but symbolically, they are proof that what matters is less quality of content and more strength of personal brand, often measured in terms of genuineness.
A case study? You can see this in practice with Zoella’s Girl Online, which from the research I had to do to write this post (yes I spent an hour at Barnes and Noble reading random chapters out of various youtuber books and fanfiction based works, don’t @ me) seems to be surprisingly well written compared to the efforts of others. Did this help her outsell them? Not when her fanbase found out it was all the work of a ghost writer. This in fact hurt not only the book sales, but her subscriber count and general online clout as well due to the lack of authenticity — people saw it as their “friend” lying to them. Although there is no doubt the other youtubers had editors and co-writers to help them as well, the amateurish quality of their writing almost serves to make those books more endearing, and thus more successful because they are then closer to that person’s brand. Perhaps more importantly, if someone was helping them along they didn’t let their fans know it.
Art and commodity I personally believe are not always mutually exclusive. One might say Beyonce’s Lemonade is art, this is not altered by the fact that it is also popular across a broad audience. Not everything artistic must be obscure and require mental work to enjoy, and not everything appealing to the masses is automatically pandering trash. However, it seems more and more that the neo-liberalist tendency to self commodify is seeping into all artistic expression, from photography (selfies on Instagram), to fashion (influencer merchandise — clothes, makeup, etc.). But this overt focus on the self, while definitely commercially viable and often times highly enjoyable, prevents people from reaching further. There’s little to say about the human condition in a youtuber’s anecdote about online dating, or much to be analyzed from an amateur’s unedited online journal. We learn a lot about the individual and their mindset, but there is a retreat from society as a whole. We are no longer aiming for excellence, and there is an inability to connect ourselves and that person back to society and a cultural canon. It borders on gross commodification, and more concerning, it just seems like a lonely space to be.
