Audience Catering and You: Sacrificing Content for Fame
2 replies, posted
So I was reading some archives of a forum I used to go across, and I found a link to this video.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4[/media]
It got me thinking. What do we consider a "successful" person on youtube? Somebody with a heap of subscribers and a huge fanbase? That would be the obvious answer. But like the video states, by catering specifically to this audience instead of to themselves their message is lost, and broken. This is a situation and pattern we can see with a lot of famous and popular media, such as comics or web novels. To demonstrate this, I'm going to discuss the fan catering between an extremely popular webcomic, and a rather obscure community.
The first, the webcomic, is Homestuck. I have no doubt a lot of you know about this comic. But in recent months, I can't help but think this is one of the biggest examples of fan catering, since Hussie keeps on adding and adding new characters to appeal to new audiences - even going as far to adding bronies just to attract that crowd. But when I look back even from the very beginning, I can't help but feel this fan catering and service was its whole point. He added user interaction to keep people coming back to this comic, and at the same time he destroyed most of the message he could have possibly tried to deliver with the homestuck universe. Except, was there one to begin with?
Next, look at the fanbase, and more specifically, the inspired comics. Usually these have little to no innovation on the format of Homestuck, almost seeming to be lifeless shadows of a more successful thing. Instead of creating something geniunely unique and interesting with their ideas, they go all in with the hopes of being as successful as Hussie was. But the thing is, Homestuck's fan interaction was it's point. It started off as an experiment, to give an audience near control over the comic. Instead, this inspirations are just on-rails comics with their own plots, being shoved along certain routes by their owners, yet still making sure to throw in those hilarious jokes everybody's been taught to laugh at. Why not just make their own unique comic, and be satisfied with making a good comic with a small audience? Is that the problem with fame? Does it force people to become shadows of themselves in the hopes of being what they consider successful?
Next, the web community I would like to talk about is the Pokemon Nuzlocke Challenge Forums, which I admittedly used to be part of. They had a load of comics on there and it was hard to get noticed, so naturally the only noticeable popular ones are those that cater for their audience by copying other famous runs and referencing them, who in turn are probably referencing someone else. It was one of the reasons I couldn't stand the place: There was next to no original content. There was a 'golden era' of Nuzlocke where everything wasn't shit, the comics were witty, memes would get you yelled at for, people listened to criticisms, and nobody did fan service or did stuff just for the fans. Everybody had a story to tell and everybody listened to it. Nowadays, it's all about who can make their title as obnoxious as possible and cram as many fan-pleasing memes as possible into their comics or screen shot runs. But that's not to say there is nothing to be found on there. There are some absolutely beautiful comics, with fantastic art and story, hidden amongst the dirt. But that dirt is, as perverse as it sounds, a huge circlejerk of memes and fan catering. I believe it suffered the same problem the Homestuck inspirations did: Fame got to people's heads, views and goals, and it became the sole thing they focused on. Instead of creating some truly unique and brilliant, they submitted to the fans and at the same time lost their message.
So what's the point of this? To some of you I probably sound like a raving lunatic waffling on about insignificant matters. But this is a rather depressing topic from my point of you, where not just the internet, but much of society as a whole has evolved to the point of which there is, as the video I have linked said, too much media, too little message. In my opinion, drawing back to my introduction, "successful" is not the same as "famous", but rather, somebody who achieves in delivering their message, even if it is to a crowd dwarfed by the mainstream catering media.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you agree with what I said, if not, why not? Do you know any better examples?
I was originally going to post this in Mass Debate, but I feel this is less of an argument and more of a discussion, and perhaps the message I am trying to put across would be lost there, too. I feel the best audience to discuss this topic with would be those who expose themselves to it rather frequently.
Thanks for taking your time to read. Oh, and sorry for the wall of text.
[B]TL;DR: Are we in a society where we rely too much on the concept of fame, and lose what we want to say for ourselves in the progress?[/B]
Remember that mainstream doesn't necessarily mean it'll be famous. It's easily possible to be famous while still remaining original. I also don't think that tailoring your content to be popular with audiences is a bad thing, as at the end of the day you're almost certainly making a video that you want to be viewed, so it only makes sense that you tailor that content to attract more viewers or to be more positively recieved by existing ones.
It might be a little cynical to think so but at the end of the day everyone tailors their content somewhat in order to be popular with a certain group. "Mainstream" stuff just tends to be stuff with mass appeal while other stuff tends to go towards more niche audiences. A niche audience can be just about anything, including the type of person that wants to feel like they're being cutting edge and sticking it to the mainstream (In short, deliberately tries to be famous by appealing to the hipster demographic.)
I don't think fame is the motivation behind homestuck fan comics. I mean, maybe for some, but I think most people do it just because they like homestuck. That's not even taking into account the really original fan adventures like prequel, where the only similarity is format.
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