A little extra about the fannish efforts to promote “Serenity”: sometimes the fannish efforts backfire and get exactly the opposite response. Here in Dallas, the big fan plan was for fans to buy tickets for upcoming showings and give them out to passersby: the idea was that the studio still got the money from ticket sales and the movie’s audience could expand beyond “Firefly” fanatics. Ummmm…yeah. I was one of many accosted by Cat Piss Men out in front of a local theater the week “Serenity” came out, literally following people to the ticket booth, waving tickets, whining “Don’t you owe it to yourself to see something besides Hollywood mainstream?”, and in one case shoving between the ticket stand and the patron to emphasize “these tickets are FREE.” These were pretty much the same tactics used with “Battlefield Earth” a few years earlier, with the same general results: I know people who were so turned off by the Cat Piss Men that not only did they drop the proffered tickets and see the movie they wanted to see, but they still have an aversion to seeing the movie on streaming to this day.
Love this anecdote. As many intense conversion tips were included in the Firefly podcast I was listening to for research, this did not come up! But this is another problem those who promote this type of evangelism seem to miss: it can, and often does, have the opposite effect!
I was at Ground Zero for Serenity hype by being on Livejournal back in the day, including efforts by acquaintances to start crowdsourcing events to pay for another movie. (That gibberish tied into the “Save Enterprise” campaign, where Paramount had to threaten legal action against the CPM who was trying to crowdsource an additional season of “Enterprise.” That led directly to FedCon USA in Dallas, a convention so aggressively incompetently run that the hotel manager walked into the dealer’s room on Saturday morning and told the vendors they had an hour to clear out before he called the cops, because the con organizers assumed they would pay off everything they owed on the con with first-day admission, including what had to be the most insulting radio ad for a con I have heard in 40 years, and that’s saying something.)
Omgg I hadn't heard either of those stories but I believe them. I was on some Browncoat Yahoo Groups but never did more than promote on my LJ--preaching to the converted as Monia says in the post.
The FedCon USA story was UGLY. Many of the guests paid for their own plane tickets, expecting to be reimbursed when they got to Dallas, and they were some of the many people owed money at the beginning of the con. (It showed up on my radar when I nearly slipped in the shower listening to one of the most sanctimonious and arrogant convention radio ads I’ve heard in 40 years: “Don’t you owe it to yourself to come out and see what the big deal is about?”) As it was, not only were the German owners of the FedCon name not amused, but attendees and creditors tried to go after the completely unrelated FenCon, also in Dallas, demanding their money. (At the time, I was starting up a small carnivorous plant business, and I bought a table at FenCon out of solidarity for the damage FedCon did to local fandom. If the father-and-son dorks who ran FedCon had spent less money on trying to remove any trace of the con from Google results, they might have had the money to pay people back.)
“Don’t you owe it to yourself to come out and see what the big deal is about?” sounds like the ads I heard for Woodstock 99, which also ended up being a disaster! There's something about that overconfidence that's a red flag...
Hah. I ended up seeing Serenity on opening night because I was dating a girl who was a huge Firefly fan (and her brother was an even bigger one), but I remember kind of resenting the whole thing. Neither of them smelled like cat piss, but as I recall, I felt like I'd be endangering my relationship if I opted out. Now that I think of it, I think what really made me tetchy was having to go to the theater an hour or two early to mingle with the other people in homemade Browncoat uniforms awaiting the first screening.
My sympathies. My ex was the same way: in fact, she kept informing me she was going to see the movie as if I was going to tell her “no.” I think she was hoping for a confrontation so her browncoat entourage would back her, and telling her “I have no interest, but have fun” ruined her hoped-for drama.
I occasionally engage in a little fan advertising, but I honestly can't imagine making it into something equivalent to a job. Like I was bored and did a bunch of lowkey polemical free advertising for Madame Web before its release, and the same for some underrated bands, but I wouldn't have realised anyone would coordinate that sort of thing, let alone do it for hours on end. I'd always be curious to learn about the social dynamics between superfans who do that, and their motives. Like, plenty of people enjoy the musicians whose fandoms come up here, but what makes someone become willing to be a fulltime volunteer on their behalf?
This is a great question-- there's a variety of things that pull people into doing this type of work, but I really believe that the extreme version we see today is deeply rooted in what I call paratext culture which results from second-order observation. In this type of cultural milieu, what matters most isn't how you feel about a piece of art but how others perceive it and how that reflects on you. The people who want to "celebrate" Taylor Swift's milestones genuinely feel that high by proxy--just like sports fans feel euphoric when their team wins. So making sure your fan object is "correctly" perceived (observed) by others reflects onto themselves. They care about industry metrics because industry metrics are part of public discourse and are easy data points to use to win over others. It ties into the 'outsold' approach.
Meaty, thanks. This Bloomberg article (look for an archived version) is explicit about the perceived value of the superfan -- "The ability to optimally attract and monetize superfans will be the key driver and differentiator of both growth and profitability in this industry,” the lead source says -- but it's just about how much they're willing to spend, it's not about labour. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-04/superfans-to-be-pivotal-for-entertainment-stocks-says-bernstein
Yes, they don't mince words about that in the trades! It's horrifying to me because there's no understanding of what drives that sort of investment/attachment. For some corners I think the free labour is a cherry on top/something that strengthens the investment and as a result, the monetary spend.
Oh, that whole Amanda Palmer thing, there's something I haven't thought about in a while. I felt like it was less about money, and more about a successful artist romanticising the 'scrappy DIY indie' lifestyle. You can exploit people for things other than money, power, sex— in this case validation, countercultural cachet.
(Somehow the '10s seem far more remote than the '90s, it's like another world...)
With Palmer it's mostly the framing of the defense that got to me. Rushkoff has such great insights in general and the book was fantastic, but that segment threw me for a real loop.
I'm not a huge Rushkoff fan and I forget why now. I remember being fascinated with Cool Hunters and used to read his blog. I should go back and see where it was exactly he lost me.
I've enjoyed all your pieces about the exploitation of fan labor. The whole rotten phenomenon calls to mind enshittification/the rot economy (the underlying idea of which maintains there is no limit to how much a horse can be beaten to get the wagon to move faster, and that you might as well apply the whip & rod to the wheels and the passengers too) and a perversion of the perversion of fandom and art as substitute religions—the kind of cult faiths that require members not only to proselytize, but to sell products to enrich their church. Twelve Tribes comes to mind.
Also:
>But this isn’t true, and something that seems tied to the focus on engagement metrics. Fans can drum up a large amount of engagement because they are preaching to the converted and actively talking amongst themselves.
...Is it too soon to point out the apparent similarities between the Harris presidential campaign and the marketing of Serenity? It was *very* effective at rallying the troops—but if people weren't already going wild for Charlie XCX's declaring the candidate "brat" or liking & sharing coconut tree memes, the "running for president of online" strategy was either going to leave them indifferent or completely turned off.
Thank you! I hadn't heard of the rot economy, but that definitely sounds applicable to what we're seeing.
Re: Harris -- I was making comparisons to the fandom approach when she was campaigning, already. In general, it felt like they were using the entertainment industry publicity approach of engagement and 'awareness' as winning strategies, but they missed that they needed to actually win an election. It reminded me of a few launch/promo rollouts I've seen elsewhere, but they were always able to spin things, ultimately.
This is reminding me how in the early days of American Idol there was a Nikki McKibbin fan on the internet who would mail out auto-dialers so as many people as possible could call in and vote for Nikki multiple times (and he proclaimed "NIKKI FANS ONLY!", though had no way of enforcing that.)
Amazing, thank you for sharing that! My AI research mostly centred around the Kris Allen/Adam Lambert season but of course fans were rallying long before then!
Great post! I have stories from the trenches of K-Pop fandom. Women taking time off of work to stream a music video all day; adults encouraging young teens to skirt age-limited credit card restrictions by using gift cards to purchase songs on iTunes. Days lost to redeeming mp3s that will promptly be deleted. It goes on and on. This is the unsung work behind "hit" songs nobody has ever heard and nobody ever will.
And the donation accounts!! Thousands and thousands of dollars from "donations" that are then farmed out to fans to buy albums and mp3s. I've long suspected these are seeded by the companies but have never received confirmation on that. I know the translation accounts can be associated with the companies but like the update accounts are free fan labor.
A little extra about the fannish efforts to promote “Serenity”: sometimes the fannish efforts backfire and get exactly the opposite response. Here in Dallas, the big fan plan was for fans to buy tickets for upcoming showings and give them out to passersby: the idea was that the studio still got the money from ticket sales and the movie’s audience could expand beyond “Firefly” fanatics. Ummmm…yeah. I was one of many accosted by Cat Piss Men out in front of a local theater the week “Serenity” came out, literally following people to the ticket booth, waving tickets, whining “Don’t you owe it to yourself to see something besides Hollywood mainstream?”, and in one case shoving between the ticket stand and the patron to emphasize “these tickets are FREE.” These were pretty much the same tactics used with “Battlefield Earth” a few years earlier, with the same general results: I know people who were so turned off by the Cat Piss Men that not only did they drop the proffered tickets and see the movie they wanted to see, but they still have an aversion to seeing the movie on streaming to this day.
Love this anecdote. As many intense conversion tips were included in the Firefly podcast I was listening to for research, this did not come up! But this is another problem those who promote this type of evangelism seem to miss: it can, and often does, have the opposite effect!
I was at Ground Zero for Serenity hype by being on Livejournal back in the day, including efforts by acquaintances to start crowdsourcing events to pay for another movie. (That gibberish tied into the “Save Enterprise” campaign, where Paramount had to threaten legal action against the CPM who was trying to crowdsource an additional season of “Enterprise.” That led directly to FedCon USA in Dallas, a convention so aggressively incompetently run that the hotel manager walked into the dealer’s room on Saturday morning and told the vendors they had an hour to clear out before he called the cops, because the con organizers assumed they would pay off everything they owed on the con with first-day admission, including what had to be the most insulting radio ad for a con I have heard in 40 years, and that’s saying something.)
Omgg I hadn't heard either of those stories but I believe them. I was on some Browncoat Yahoo Groups but never did more than promote on my LJ--preaching to the converted as Monia says in the post.
The FedCon USA story was UGLY. Many of the guests paid for their own plane tickets, expecting to be reimbursed when they got to Dallas, and they were some of the many people owed money at the beginning of the con. (It showed up on my radar when I nearly slipped in the shower listening to one of the most sanctimonious and arrogant convention radio ads I’ve heard in 40 years: “Don’t you owe it to yourself to come out and see what the big deal is about?”) As it was, not only were the German owners of the FedCon name not amused, but attendees and creditors tried to go after the completely unrelated FenCon, also in Dallas, demanding their money. (At the time, I was starting up a small carnivorous plant business, and I bought a table at FenCon out of solidarity for the damage FedCon did to local fandom. If the father-and-son dorks who ran FedCon had spent less money on trying to remove any trace of the con from Google results, they might have had the money to pay people back.)
“Don’t you owe it to yourself to come out and see what the big deal is about?” sounds like the ads I heard for Woodstock 99, which also ended up being a disaster! There's something about that overconfidence that's a red flag...
Hah. I ended up seeing Serenity on opening night because I was dating a girl who was a huge Firefly fan (and her brother was an even bigger one), but I remember kind of resenting the whole thing. Neither of them smelled like cat piss, but as I recall, I felt like I'd be endangering my relationship if I opted out. Now that I think of it, I think what really made me tetchy was having to go to the theater an hour or two early to mingle with the other people in homemade Browncoat uniforms awaiting the first screening.
My sympathies. My ex was the same way: in fact, she kept informing me she was going to see the movie as if I was going to tell her “no.” I think she was hoping for a confrontation so her browncoat entourage would back her, and telling her “I have no interest, but have fun” ruined her hoped-for drama.
I occasionally engage in a little fan advertising, but I honestly can't imagine making it into something equivalent to a job. Like I was bored and did a bunch of lowkey polemical free advertising for Madame Web before its release, and the same for some underrated bands, but I wouldn't have realised anyone would coordinate that sort of thing, let alone do it for hours on end. I'd always be curious to learn about the social dynamics between superfans who do that, and their motives. Like, plenty of people enjoy the musicians whose fandoms come up here, but what makes someone become willing to be a fulltime volunteer on their behalf?
This is a great question-- there's a variety of things that pull people into doing this type of work, but I really believe that the extreme version we see today is deeply rooted in what I call paratext culture which results from second-order observation. In this type of cultural milieu, what matters most isn't how you feel about a piece of art but how others perceive it and how that reflects on you. The people who want to "celebrate" Taylor Swift's milestones genuinely feel that high by proxy--just like sports fans feel euphoric when their team wins. So making sure your fan object is "correctly" perceived (observed) by others reflects onto themselves. They care about industry metrics because industry metrics are part of public discourse and are easy data points to use to win over others. It ties into the 'outsold' approach.
Fascinating and informative, thanks!
Meaty, thanks. This Bloomberg article (look for an archived version) is explicit about the perceived value of the superfan -- "The ability to optimally attract and monetize superfans will be the key driver and differentiator of both growth and profitability in this industry,” the lead source says -- but it's just about how much they're willing to spend, it's not about labour. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-04/superfans-to-be-pivotal-for-entertainment-stocks-says-bernstein
Yes, they don't mince words about that in the trades! It's horrifying to me because there's no understanding of what drives that sort of investment/attachment. For some corners I think the free labour is a cherry on top/something that strengthens the investment and as a result, the monetary spend.
Oh, that whole Amanda Palmer thing, there's something I haven't thought about in a while. I felt like it was less about money, and more about a successful artist romanticising the 'scrappy DIY indie' lifestyle. You can exploit people for things other than money, power, sex— in this case validation, countercultural cachet.
(Somehow the '10s seem far more remote than the '90s, it's like another world...)
With Palmer it's mostly the framing of the defense that got to me. Rushkoff has such great insights in general and the book was fantastic, but that segment threw me for a real loop.
I'm not a huge Rushkoff fan and I forget why now. I remember being fascinated with Cool Hunters and used to read his blog. I should go back and see where it was exactly he lost me.
I've enjoyed all your pieces about the exploitation of fan labor. The whole rotten phenomenon calls to mind enshittification/the rot economy (the underlying idea of which maintains there is no limit to how much a horse can be beaten to get the wagon to move faster, and that you might as well apply the whip & rod to the wheels and the passengers too) and a perversion of the perversion of fandom and art as substitute religions—the kind of cult faiths that require members not only to proselytize, but to sell products to enrich their church. Twelve Tribes comes to mind.
Also:
>But this isn’t true, and something that seems tied to the focus on engagement metrics. Fans can drum up a large amount of engagement because they are preaching to the converted and actively talking amongst themselves.
...Is it too soon to point out the apparent similarities between the Harris presidential campaign and the marketing of Serenity? It was *very* effective at rallying the troops—but if people weren't already going wild for Charlie XCX's declaring the candidate "brat" or liking & sharing coconut tree memes, the "running for president of online" strategy was either going to leave them indifferent or completely turned off.
Thank you! I hadn't heard of the rot economy, but that definitely sounds applicable to what we're seeing.
Re: Harris -- I was making comparisons to the fandom approach when she was campaigning, already. In general, it felt like they were using the entertainment industry publicity approach of engagement and 'awareness' as winning strategies, but they missed that they needed to actually win an election. It reminded me of a few launch/promo rollouts I've seen elsewhere, but they were always able to spin things, ultimately.
This is reminding me how in the early days of American Idol there was a Nikki McKibbin fan on the internet who would mail out auto-dialers so as many people as possible could call in and vote for Nikki multiple times (and he proclaimed "NIKKI FANS ONLY!", though had no way of enforcing that.)
Amazing, thank you for sharing that! My AI research mostly centred around the Kris Allen/Adam Lambert season but of course fans were rallying long before then!
Great post! I have stories from the trenches of K-Pop fandom. Women taking time off of work to stream a music video all day; adults encouraging young teens to skirt age-limited credit card restrictions by using gift cards to purchase songs on iTunes. Days lost to redeeming mp3s that will promptly be deleted. It goes on and on. This is the unsung work behind "hit" songs nobody has ever heard and nobody ever will.
And the donation accounts!! Thousands and thousands of dollars from "donations" that are then farmed out to fans to buy albums and mp3s. I've long suspected these are seeded by the companies but have never received confirmation on that. I know the translation accounts can be associated with the companies but like the update accounts are free fan labor.
Thank you!! The donation angle is another perfect example. Being seeded by industry woulnd't be surprising in the slightest.
https://time.com/5912998/bts-army/ here's a sanitized look