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britcomcom2020-05-25 12:43 pm
crispfencer) wrote in britcomcom2020-05-25 12:43 pm
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RPS and Social Media Fandom- A Discusion
Hello friends! Today I come to you with a two-pronged discussion post concerning RPS and the boundaries between fandom and celebrities.
If you're here, there's a good chance you've found us because of fic on the- shall we say- other comm. Even if you don't participate in the RPS side of britcom, all of us are here because our interest in comedians is above average, and we felt the need to discuss their programmes, shows and lives at length with like-minded people. From my point of view (as both a co-admin and a fan) the concept of RPS should never be brought to the attention of non-fandom people. It goes without saying that finding out strangers have been imagining you and a colleague in a sexual relationship would be a uncomfortable experience and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, especially these people we're such big fans of. Speaking from my experiences in previous RPS fandoms, breaking these etiquette rules and making the subject/s aware they're being shipped is a terrible idea, and we as fans have an obligation to protect ourselves, our community and the people we ship by keeping this stuff hard to find and preferably locked. So imagine my reaction when I found a subset of fandom who weren't...
For a younger generation of fans, fandom has moved to Twitter and Instagram. Fans set up social media accounts with usernames, icons and bios relating to the celebrity/comedian they like most. If these accounts were locked it wouldn't be an issue, but they're not. We all know that comedians love to search their own names, and yet people still tweet stuff publicly that crosses the line, without censoring the names l/ik/e /th//i/s. Many of them are actively and repeatedly attempting to engage with these comedians, tagging them in memes they've made, or replying to their posts with in-jokes and comments that are very 'matey banter' in tone. What I'm desperate to know is this: why are they engaging with the celebrity instead of keeping it to themselves and their fellow fans? Do they want them to react? To say something? Then what? What does having their attention achieve? I'm genuinely fascinated with this, and would love some of these fans to come on here and argue their case.
After tweeting about this on my own private fandom account, I got a positive response from many people agreeing that this newer style of fandom expression makes them uncomfortable, and that it's not how the majority of us act. There's definitely a (generational?) divide between people who want to keep their fandom on sites like Tumblr and Dreamwidth, locked away from public view, and those who feel comfortable sharing a platform with the subject of their fandom, and actively seek their attention. This brand of fandom interaction was first brought to my attention from mess that is the Michael Sheen fandom, where fans '@' him in lusty tweets and openly pry about his private life all while their icons are pictures of his face. Admittedly Michael Sheen has in my opinion 'signed up for it', in that being a hollywood celebrity one should expect a higher level of attention, but a lot of these mid-tier UK standups haven't. My theory is that the sudden and intense increase of social media fandom that came about after the worldwide release of James Acaster's Repertoire was a factor in his decision to nuke his social media presence. But that's just a theory! Please tell me your thoughts on this, if you have any.
Now, onto the second prong of discussion...
Please watch this video from 58:30.
I'll comment with my own, more personal opinions later, but throwing us under the bus with tween gaming youtuber shippers wasn't at all warranted, now was it? The Mitchellbrooker fandom was far, far smaller than these fandoms are, and the age range was skewed a lot older. I can't comment on the Hockey RPS fandom (so if you consider yourself part of that group, please chip in!) but again, I'd assume that their approach to RPS is far more mature and knowing than the Gaming Youtubers RPS fandom. When David Mitchell commented about people's interest in his personal life, it wasn't directed at the RPS fandom, but the tabloid press who pap him outside his house, at his wedding etc, writing headlines like "David Mitchell and wife Victoria Coren enjoy stroll with baby daughter" and generally acting invasive. That's not us! We're not the ones camping outside Charlie and David's houses for hours with long lenses, or writing 500 words about the fact he's grown a beard. There's no self-insert fic in britcom, and none of us are deluded that we'll become friends with the people we ship or believe they'll 'get together' (beyond harmless tin-hatting).
With Youtuber RPS, it's almost always baby's first fandom and yes, some of those 14 year olds do honestly believe that Pewdiepie will be their best friend if they camp outside his house for long enough, as do a select few members of other real person fandoms like K-pop. But what astounds me is that Struccimovies would even connect our fandom and Youtuber RPS, essentially equating the two!? It felt very "eww RPS is weird" and left it at that, without any room for a more nuanced discussion. I don't want to be having the Real Person Shipping 101 conversation here, jesus. While I will agree that the emergence of a small number of social media fanaccounts in Britcom is something that concerns me, Mitchellbrooker was/is a small 'old guard' fandom that played out over Livejournal and the stick it got in that video felt wildly disproportionate.
Right, what are your thoughts? Feel free to ramble (I certainly didn't expect to write nearly 1000 words today lol) and I've left anon comments open, so don't be shy!
(P.S. We've set up a twitter feed, @britcomcom, so you can be easily notified of new posts to the comm. I know I often forget to check DW but I'm always on twitter, so thought this might be useful.)
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Just leaving this comment here as a reminder to ramble at you tomorrow and so I can properly watch that video, so. <3 bc I have Thoughts about youtuber RPF as well but they'll be more coherent when it's not 12:15am. XD
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I'd personally be uncomfortable with directly interacting with pretty much any famous person, in person or online, except perhaps to give an unequivocally complementary view on their work, but I would presume that behaviour otherwise is encouraged by a) others doing the same b) the desire to receive personal attention from the celebrity (good or bad), and the need to 'stand out from the crowd' to do so (this is exacerbated when the fandom is larger). The acceptability of this has also been eased by the mainstreaming of the accessiblity of fandom and fanfiction in general (although there's still an RPF taboo). It's often when those seeking attention (without an RPF element) also engage in RPF fic/speculation on the same accounts when there's a further blurring and the dividing walls are not kept up as they should be.
I'm not particularly comfortable about the video; for one, I think I was surprised to see this pairing mentioned here, just because it's rare that it gets much attention from any quarter - it's small, historical and sensible. Hockey RPF is much, much larger and this does at least lend a greater anonymity to its creators, I suppose. At least Brooker or Mitchell are pretty unlikely to see this video.
The creater of the video obviously feels RPF is wrong, and if you believe this that goes for whatever RPF fandom without differentiation between them, however big or small (although I'm always intrigued whether people with this view think of historical RPF i.e. of people who are long dead any differently, as speculation about lives of e.g. Shakespeare is common across various art forms). I personally feel the long clip of Mitchell's autobiography has no relevence to RPF as it covers direct interaction with fans he has found uncomfortable. Although of course I'd rather Brooker had no idea about any of it, that NME article in which he mentions RPF is actually one of the more chill responses from an RPF subject I've seen to RPF, all things considering. His full response is not included in the video.
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IDK, I definitely agree that there is a generational divide in this sort of thing but it's more about technology than anything else. Celebrities on social media seem more approachable. And also... young people are lonely? They don't know how to make human connections in person. Which is, IMO, pretty much like teen life throughout modern history (certainly my own). It's just that now there is an easy way to try forcing those connections online, with someone they already 'know' they have things in common with. So more people are doing it. In a weird way it feels natural to me. Not something that I would have done (my innate divide between reality and fantasy is very strong) but something I can certainly understand.
And yeah, I definitely think it's unfair to lump us in with that group because there is a very different intent with what we do vs. what those other fans do. But I don't think there's any point, at the moment, in trying to do anything about it. These things have come up before and they will come up again, all life is cyclical and so is culture and especially so is fan culture. Is anyone going to be persuaded by a discussion at this point? The maker of that video certainly isn't.
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I do wish Ao3 would set an example on fandom staying hidden and make it so you can see that RPF fandoms exist, but you can't view the fics or even their summaries without logging in to the website. I've never felt greater fear than the day I listened to that one Horne Section episode and realised they were going to read out RPF off Ao3 (although that episode contains possibly the only actual (seemingly) pleased reaction I've seen to anyone realising they were in RPF, Alex Horne what)
All non-fandom people engaging with fandom is deeply cringy. I hate the idea that our weird hideaway is getting peered in on by people who won't engage with it sincerely. Of course they'd miss the point and lump all these random groups together, ugh.
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Not true, there are certainly some Acaster ones for a start, though they only appeared recently.
Personally, I start from the assumption that surely everybody these days knows that fanfic is a thing that exists. I'm of a generation with the current UK stand-up crowd, or a few years younger, which I think makes me of a generation with lots of you folks too, especially the ones who were active in Mitchellbrooker (all hail). But I don't feel very fandom-native - I was never on LJ, I only discovered fanfic was a thing about a decade ago, and I only moved on from being squicked by it (bad first experience) to being Super Into It (and writing it) a few years later. I feel like if I somehow managed to stumble across it, then what with all of the increased visibility and press that it's had since then, the current crop of stand-ups must also be aware of it by now - and aware that if they go namesearching, they might find some of it. It is, to an extent, their lookout.
I certainly don't hold with people waving it in their faces, and I do lock the heavier stuff, because I make a distinction between "well, if you didn't want to see this, you shouldn't have namesearched" and "well, if you didn't want to see this, you shouldn't have actively deliberately made an account and looked for it". But I feel like there's only so far one can go to protect them.
Maybe my starting assumption is wrong, in which case I'm willing to be corrected. I'm also a bit weird in that I don't really "do" shipping (although that's another discussion for another time) - it means I feel (rightly or wrongly) like more of my output is "harmless" and wouldn't scar anyone if left unlocked. As to my other generational-divide credentials: I feel Tumblr-native more than anything, having joined it in my early/mid twenties (and mostly hung out with slightly older fans who were LJ-native and struggling to understand it). Twitter (I joined last year) is just weird and tbh I don't like it. I'm so used to having that space where you can go off about performers without having to fear them finding it.
Honestly, I guess I think of Twitter vs Tumblr the same way I think of unlocked vs locked AO3: Tumblr is our space, and if they come into it, that's on them! (Even though it's just a publicly searchable website on the open internet...) Whereas Twitter is just... set up for direct fan interaction, it seems. Which... I won't say "if you can't handle it, get off the platform" because how else are you supposed to promote yourself? "Mute your notifications and don't namesearch", I guess. But that's easier said than done. The setup of the platform is just awful and I feel so sorry for the performers that have to use it. But, like... what's someone thirst-tweeting in amongst all the other trite or abusive crud they get in their mentions/replies? Drop in the ocean, surely...
Well, that felt supremely incoherent while I was writing it and I'm probably wrong about everything because I haven't considered my positions well enough, so I'm just gonna pause there rather than get into the parasocial stuff right now, or I really won't get any work done today XD
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(Tangential second side-note: I'm long-time friends with some indie creative types, a year or so younger than me, who have become Very Famous in cult i.e. Tumblr type circles, and yes there is RPF of them, SO much RPF, and yes they know about it, and... as far as I'm aware, they don't read it, but they're OK with it? They're very fandom-native themselves, and are well on board with people remixing/reinterpreting their work, and for the most part I don't think the fic is direct shipping of their actual private selves... but it would be interesting if a more fandom-native generation of stand-ups started to emerge, and what they would think about all this. Or, y'know, whether all the fandom-natives will just keep the fuck away from careers in public performance because they know what will happen :P)
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oh, this! i'm more than aware how So Many stand-ups are from my generation and are internet/fandom savvy... off the top of my head alone, 1. Mae Martin got into comedy after she ran an LJ fanblog about her local improv group, 2. Sofie Hagen did an entire fringe show about the Westlife RPF she wrote in her teens, 3. Sophie Duker used to write Harry Potter fic lol
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as someone whose first forays into fandom participation was through forums/geocities/and fucking.. msn/yahoo groups, it's been fascinating to witness how it's progressively become more mainstream and connected; with ~celebs seemingly more accessible through their social media presence, the 4th wall has definitely been eroded to some extent. and i think.. yeah, there has to be some form of generational divide - between those that treat fandom as a closed off 'Us' space, and on the other hand, the ~younger (again, generalising here) fans who never knew a time when their Faves couldn't be approached online with a simple @ mention
(just because you can doesn't mean you should amirite). so as the britcom fandom became slightly more mainstream, some of the fandom activity skewed that way as well..imo... it's basic etiquette isn't it? i don't mind direct interactions with comedians if it's to show my appreciation for their work - the same kind of interaction that i'd have if i met them irl anyway (albeit with more.. social awkwardness.) i kinda like to think that people who send thirst tweets to actors would eventually grow out of it asdfsd;
re: RPS - there's a lot of disdain of it going around in recent years, i think born out of the same vein of people policing fandom/'antis'/call out culture. the few fandom-esque spaces i lurk in (namely fandomsecrets and ohnotheydidnt lolol) there's always the inevitable 'RPF is so gross' comment whenever the subject gets brought up and idk, i miss the days where people would shrug it off with a Your Mileage May Vary instead of being so judgmental. i don't see the problem as long as it's not shoved into the subjects' faces - like c_peach says, they're not the intended audience.
this got long and v rambly sorry XD
I do remember absorbing the fact that RPF should be kept locked away, and I did lock my RPF away for a while. But a locked fic comm is only as secure as your members, and if someone wants to tell others about your fic, there's not much you can do about it. Also we were very conscious in our little fandom corner of not being like *those other AusCom fans* who really were like the stans you get now. There were stories about how obsessive and stalkery they were, even sending underwear to them in the post. Like, *dude*. No. So even back then we knew how *not* to behave when doing RPF stuff. And yeah, they wrote god-awful fic too. DX
I think this might be why I don't get obsessive about Doing Research for my RPF fics, bc like, it feels too muck like stalking, and prying into their lives, and I don't do that, so. I am very consistent with my characterisation, of course, but like I don't need to know All The Tiny Details about them to write fic, and it would feel weird if I did. Gives me enough rope to claim that it's def more fictional than real if it came to that, though it never has.
I've always been careful of keeping the fic stuff away from other fannish stuff, but once your fic's been found, and also discussed on national radio bc Australian Comedy is a Tiny Tiny Pool, it sort of becomes pointless trying to lock it down after that. It's like Schrodinger's Cat. Once it's been found, you can't UNfind it, so you might as well just continue to post publicly anyway and if they find it after that, so be it. It's their own fault for going looking. Didn't stop Wil Anderson reading out one of my Adam Hills/Wil Anderson fics at a Fanfiction Comedy night at MICF in 2014 though. He's still my fave comedian, and I have been going to his shows since 2007.
I don't know if I really Do Fandom in the way I used to anymore. I don't like tumblr, and on twitter, I'm more generalist if only bc my mother follows my account. Hence I now have a private twitter for fandom stuff I don't want her to know about. XD
I'm def not on board with the stan culture way of doing things, like obsessively tweeting at their faves and begging for interactions or yeah, posting them weird stuff like fic. I find it very distasteful, but like others said, fanfic is a lot more mainstream than it used to be, so it might just be me being a Crotchety Old Fandom Person. I have noticed the resurgence of anti-RPF though, and while some of it I think is sort of fair in a 'you really shouldn't be shoving your porn fics at your faves' sort of way, the rest of it feels very much like the anti-RPF arguments used to sound way back when, just with added Purity Culture.
As for youtuber rpf, well, that is its own weird thing. I get it, absolutely, bc it's a big influence on teens these days and they only know this kind of way to do fandom now. I only know of it obliquely through Pokétubers, bc there was for a while some banter about shipping a couple of them (and I get it, bc I had those feelings after seeing a couple of pics at cons, though I never took it srsly, just observing cute boys together being cute), though I think that pretty much died out when there was A Scandal in Pokétuberland where another big creator got outed for being gay, and also for hitting on other underage Pokétubers at cons and such. (though one of the guys who came forward about him constantly stressed it was the underage stuff that was the problem, not his sexuality, which I appreciated.) So no one jokes about shipping them anymore. And the community is very much not the same as it once was bc of it. Like it tore some friendships between creators apart forever. So having that in my head is why I don't really get invested in youtubers in a shippy way.
Still found it weird to see MitchellBrooker invoked in that video about youtuber rpf though, like wtf. But I was never my fandom and I always assumed it, like all BritCom (and AusCom) was small as fuck and nowhere near the size of youtuber communities. I don't really do self-insert RPF either, bc it feels very much like reading someone's fantasies (and they're almost always female-coded, which as someone who is nonbinary, absolutely ruins it for me), so I tend to just not read them and leave them for others who like that sort of thing. Got scarred from my very early AusCom experiences when I did stumble across the fic and noped the fuck out of that place. XD
Then again, can I just say that Taskmaster Fandom is Weird AF, and the nature of the show makes it very hard to figure out How To Do Fandom. I never really got how to do fandom on twitter either, bc I grew up doing fandom on LJ, and it just doesn't translate to twitter. And the Taskmaster fanbase is very much split between twitter, tumblr, and reddit, and also into fannish/non-fannish, I def seen the kink and ship it/wtf it is just a funny show wtf are you on about, etc. It's a weird audience, esp bc the shipping is canon, and Alex seems to just like interacting with ppl and posting in character on twitter and like rting fanart and such, so. (srsly tho he joined twitter a month before I did. XD)
Because of that, I'm actually not at all surprised that Alex found the fic, let alone decided to put it on the Horne Section podcast. I'm actually more interested in how the fuck he convinced Greg to go along with it bc I always felt he would not want to know (and I totally respect that), whereas Alex would be more into it bc Alex is a weird little man and a lot of the show is his fault anyway, so. XD idk Alex just always struck me as the sort of man who would go looking for it bc ofc he would, the silly boy. XD
There have been other outings of my Taskmaster fics before this though, mostly by nonfannish people posting at the Dave twitter account when they post shippy things for promos, and freaking everyone out bc they're trying to be ~edgy, I'm assuming? o.O? Like, there's a weird line with shipping in Taskmaster fandom that I just can't fathom so I generally keep out of it and keep my fic away from it. It won't make me lock it down bc I'm way past being freaked out by comedians discovering the fic I write about them, though. That's obviously my choice though and I don't blame anyone else for locking their fic down. My attitude is, well, they know about it now, so there's no point pretending it doesn't exist, so. Also I've had literally zero repercussions or trolling or abuse for it, so. What the hell. no1curr. I'm leaving it up. XD
Honestly I'm so genuinely interested to see how this knowledge of fic is going to affect the new Taskmaster series (when they're finally able to film them ofc), and whether it changes how they play up to it/use ideas from it in the shows, or if they just keep on doing their own thing, you know?
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In terms of interacting with people on Twitter, I do sometimes tweet people that I like and support, but it's always A) Something supportive or neutral, nothing OTT and B) with ZERO expectations that I'm going to get a response. If I do ever get a response from someone famous that I've tweeted I do tend to lose my mind a bit, and I think that's important too, not to become entitled to people's time. They are real people at the end of the day, and they do not have to give you a moment of their time if they don't want to. I think some of the more extreme ends of fandom can forget that. Just because someone is important to you, for whatever reason, does not mean you are, or should be, important to them.
All of my fics are locked down on Ao3 because I would probably spontaneously combust if anyone even friendly with the people in question read them (Sashataakheru I don't know how you didn't care about Alex reading out your work on the Horne Section!) I do have to own up to some of the self-insert Reader fic that's come along recently, although it is at least 98% me trying to work through and exorcise my bolt-from-the-blue crush that snuck up on me out of nowhere and once I'd written them, I was quite happy with the writing and wanted to post it somewhere XD
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Basically how about 90% of my AO3 output has come about, so I endorse this XD
(In case it needed to be said, I have nothing against self-insert fic! After all, almost every fic I've ever written has been self-insert, it's just more disguised :P)
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a reply to rilannon's comment but it's going to get very tangential very quickly so not nesting
Moving into stand-up RPF, it all got more confusing, because... their job IS to wave their own personalities about. Or rather, to pretend they're doing that, when actually it's an exaggerated persona-version of their own personality. Once I'd clocked that (and I can be very late to the party sometimes): okay, cool! We write about that persona! That's easy! Except... certain people (*cough*) have a stand-up persona that's VERY clearly delineated from their genuine personality. And... sometimes they make appearances as NOT that persona, e.g. on low-key podcasts with trusted friends. So... is that their actual personality, or is that a secondary layer of persona? That all sounds pretty difficult to keep up! Surely they slip sometimes? Are we allowed to write about that person[a] or not?[*] And then there've been times on the comm when it felt like we were grabbing at those glimpses of not-stage-persona and gleefully trying to piece together an Actual Deep-Down Person from it, and, well... that's felt weird, tbh.
In conclusion, I don't understand what the heck I'm doing half the time, and so I guess it's not really fair of me to blame the 14-year-olds if they don't either. *shrug*
[*]obviously I know that the point is that by definition whatever we end up writing is a fictional version of the person/a, whether we "think" we're writing their True Self or not, but, y'know
Re: a reply to rilannon's comment but it's going to get very tangential very quickly so not nesting
Either way, people who think RPF is Bad won't listen to our very reasonable arguments, they just know that it's All Bad and Weird.
RPF thoughts
So, people hang out with their fans all the time.
My pet theory is that on some level, most people who have fans realize that they can’t be friends with their fans, and that most fans know this as well - maybe not consciously, but they know it - and when fans and the objects of their fannish attention interact they already know, on some level, that it is and will always be a broadly one-sided thing. Fans go to conventions and give celebrities art they’ve made, catcall actors when they appear onstage, etc, and they know those celebrities/actors aren’t going to turn around and give them art back.
One thing that feels new-ish to me is seeing fans express explicit sexual interest in public in a way that seems performative. I.e. twitter stuff. Here is a hypothesis: do you think it might be like going to a strip club? A public expression of sexual interest, there is something homosocial about it? (Now I know what you’re thinking: “why do people go to strip clubs?” which is a good question that is beyond the scope of this essay.)
regarding RPF
In this essay I will discuss three broad groups: admirers, the admired, and fictional representations of the admired. For the sake of clarity, I’ll call them fans (the admirers), celebrities (the admired), and characters (the fictional representation of the admired), even though we don’t all like to be called fans, and calling some people “celebrities” might be stretching it sometimes. Bear with me.
regarding consent
I cannot guess what is going on in the minds of people who are on any level of fame, but I do know what it’s like to go out in the world and discover that you’re a sex object when you didn’t even know that could happen. So speaking for myself, I would say that (1) it is unpleasant no matter how you find out (be it by getting looked up and down like a piece of meat, or by being asked, face to face on the street, to reenact Little Red Riding Hood, or by being followed into a closed room by someone who leers and stands between you and the door.) (2) what makes it traumatic isn’t the desire expressed by someone else. It isn’t. You don’t become traumatized by finding out that some people want to bang the shit out of you. You become by specifically how it happens and what comes after. Did the people stop when you told them their lust made you uncomfortable? Did they not just say they wanted to touch you? Did they want to hurt you as well? Did you tell your friends and family about it? Did your friends and family tell you to take it as a compliment? If you didn’t like it and wanted it to stop, did your friends and family make you feel heard? I just - if a celebrity feels uncomfortable, distressed, traumatized, it’s not the fans I would think of first, if I’m looking for an explanation.
People cope with being sex objects all the time. People cope with the realization that at any given time there might be someone, somewhere, imagining them in sexually explicit situations. Women, in particular, cope with being sexualized just by stepping outside, and I cannot speak for everyone but I certainly cope with it _so long as_, when/if I ask them not to involve me in it, they respect my wishes, and so long as I can count on my loved ones to be there for me when it all gets to be a bit too much.
I think expressing desire happens in a lot of different ways; I think that people whose libidos are maybe not fully formed are going to try all kinds of expressions of desire, and that a number of those are going to be pretty ill-advised.
But I have relatively limited sympathy for the reproachfulness towards the expression of desire itself; it turns into shaming so easily. On top of that, to be reproachful towards a fan and claim to have a celebrity’s best interest at heart is to imply that it is possible to read their minds and know what they want, or appropriate to decide for them what they want or need, and to speak up for them. If you take time out of your day to try to embarrass someone just because they had feelings in their pants and said so, when they didn’t even tell you about it directly and those feelings weren’t even about you? I just… look at your life. Look at your choices.
regarding purpose
When I think about my creative output I think about people who are reading who are like me. That’s because (1) they’re who I picture when I’m writing (2) I can’t read people’s minds but I do know what I want, and if I want it, presumably some other people do. So I don’t lock my RPF fiction; I want the people who want it to find it. And when we decide to think about whether or not RPF is “appropriate” I think it’s important to establish what it is, specifically, what we are even trying to do. I don’t know about you but when I write RPF, no part of me is trying to establish any form of dialogue with celebrities. I am literally objectifying them - their public image anyway. When I write RPF I am trying to communicate with other people like myself.
regarding doubt
That being said. When I write RPF fiction I write about characters and I know that. They look like the people they are based on, they have speech patterns (…hopefully) like the people they are based on, basically the lives of the people they are based on are like canon in “”regular”” fanfiction, i.e. a backstory allowing me to rely on shared knowledge, existing feelings, and the expectation of feelings, to create a hopefully powerful communication experience, to maybe create dialogue with the people for whom I am writing, or — dare to dream — create dialogue between readers.
But while I feel pretty confident when I say that I know that the people I write about are characters I’m not that confident that everybody else knows it. I can’t read their minds and I can’t tell them what to think. And I suppose - I do wonder sometimes whether I’m enabling… something? I don’t know. I’m not 100% sure how to express this. If it means anything, I have the same worry about everything I write.
Another thing I would put in the “doubt” category: I’m a person whose worldview tends to skew towards “no one cares about what I do.” I’m aware that that is irrational; that’s not the point. The point is: for nearly a decade now I’ve completely brushed off the idea that anything I write would so much as become a blip on the radar for any of the television/radio personalities depicted. And I guess it continues to seem like a very ludicrous idea to me, but at the same time, I’m starting to wonder whether it’s irresponsible to just assume that nobody cares? I’m not sure what the alternative is; to be honest I’m not entirely sure what I’m trying to say about this. I guess I’m just trying to gesture towards that hazy unformed thought and say: I think this is a factor?
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