The (Super)fan Economy

Affect and attention mining has resulted in a superfan economy and a paratext culture.

I recently watched We Live In Time, and as I watched, I realized I knew very little about the film. I was made aware of its existence through the paratexts surrounding it, primarily the promotional circuit that Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh were on. One of the most persistent touchpoints was Garfield’s allegedly sizzling Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg. I didn’t watch it myself, but I saw all the discourse around it. The appearance spurred on intense public analysis, recounting their previous encounters on the red carpet and speculation about their potential as romantic partners.

That the film wasn’t front and centre isn’t an indictment of it or its ability to stand alone as a cultural product. It’s just an illustration of the way current promotional cycles serve more as entry points for the audience to get invested in the storytellers. The resulting appearances and products are by default paratexts, surrounding the core product. But they also become their own texts in this climate, spinning off and pulling in audiences. Sometimes, they overshadow the product they are meant to support.

For existing superfans, these paratextual events are punctuations in the story that they follow. The investment into a romantic relationship blossoming on screen is a jackpot when it comes to engaging audiences and galvanizing existing superfans.¹ This is why so-called PRomances are such a longstanding tradition, and romantic leads often are rumoured to be dating. Funnily enough, during filming, Garfield’s chemistry with Pugh was also being used to amp up publicity for the project.

These potential storylines come with a buy-in to the personalities—or rather, the human brands—involved. Their unspooling fosters an attachment to a potential outcome, and feeds a desire to see more of the story. Because it’s all about stories, about narratives, about following along someone’s life as if it were a cross-platform soap.

While culture is being decried as being dead or in decline, it really has simply been displaced by this new pattern of attachment and consumption.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about since reading

Katherine Dee

’s piece on culture not being stuck. The space that used to belong to culture is occupied by different actors. Dee says of social media personalities’ roles in this new space,

“[They] are themselves continuous works of expression — not quite performance art, but something like it. They may also be influencers, or they may not be, but the innovative aspect isn’t that they're promoting a brand or making money from their venture.  It’s not about their single tweet, self-published book, or video. The entire avatar, built across various platforms over a period of time, constitutes the art. Their persona must be enjoyed in the moment, as it reveals itself on the platforms; the audience response is part of the piece.”

My argument is simply that this goes beyond the digital plain and avatars and into the general entertainment space, and this is why so much of culture has essentially been reduced to gossip coverage. It’s paratexts all the way down.

We care more about the people behind the art than the art itself, we want to know who it’s about, whose side we should be on. It’s how creative arts have been flattened into content belonging to a specific narrative. It doesn’t stand on its own because it isn’t the focus of attention. The people that normally would shoulder the responsibility and privilege of participating in culture as creators have become their own avatars, crowding out the impact of their work. Transmedia storytelling has become individualized.

It’s easy to decry the attachment audiences build with a TikTok influencer, Big Name Fan or Twitter poster, but it’s uncomfortable to realize that these are the same attachments fans have with their fan objects. The affective response is the same, and can be parlayed beyond a single niche. To do only one thing isn’t to be specialized, it’s to out-of-touch.

The presentation of an individual across cultural and digital landscapes allows for audiences to tap into a narrative and become invested in it, creating a real life serial unfolding in real time. It’s parasociality in action. The networks of attachment that crisscross the entire public sphere emotionally tie individuals to a fan object or community. These are the atoms that stan culture ultimately is made of.

The more other avatars, or supporting characters are roped in, the more immersed in the narrative and transmedia storytelling the audience can be. Fan objects are triangulated against one another, in the charts, in the box office, on the court, on socials. Online activity and social interactions can be tracked and mined for meaning, from unfollows to comments; everything means something, because the entire space is a stage.

These are epic transmedia sagas that last as long as the fan object engages. And if they stop, the past can still be revisited, like an old TV show being rewatched for comfort.

As a result, followers can get their main character fix by proxy. They don't have to be the centre of attention, they can simply come along for the ride. Cheering from the sidelines can also be euphoric. I have covered the how of this before, and I still have a lot to say about it, but the noticeable change in culture this has brought on deserves its own spotlight.

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Enough years have been spent excavating the entertainment industry’s mechanisms that the general public is aware of publicity stunts and the promotion of genuine relationships to maximize joint publicity. If we’re going with the show analogy, it might help to picture publicity stunts as the real life version of sweeps stunts. Those were about attracting eyeballs, and the same can be said here. This publicity is an end in itself, but this public presentation of relationships also serves as entry points for fans to join the narrative.

If you’re already familiar with a relationship dynamic, it can be exploited for attention. A bank commercial featuring Dan and Eugene Levy. A tourism spot with Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky. The Kelce brothers growing their brand. Even something like the Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid photoshoot for Vogue peddles in what the relationship represents to the audience. Putting intimacy on display, albeit choreographed, is a safe bet.

It doesn't have to be romantic or familial, though. A current example is Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo's press tour for Wicked, which seems entirely contingent on capitalizing on the bond that formed between them while working together. They are even sporting complimentary tattoos, a step up from the matching tattoos touted by many film crews and band members. The promo tour has been such a force that there are parodies of their behaviour, and jokes about it being disingenous, which in turn galvanizes defenders and opponents into more rigid structures. You’re not just a fan, you’re defending their right to be vulnerable and share their bond so transparently with the world.

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Whether their fawning over one another is genuine or not, it is being performed and packaged for a reason. These dynamics are easy to get invested in without consciously intending to be. I am not absolving myself: while I was a big fan of My Chemical Romance’s music, I was also invested in their intraband dynamics — as presented via their documentary, the slew of video interviews, on-stage behaviour and behind the scenes content—and when their second drummer left the band I was disenchanted and lost interest in keeping up with them. I became a casual fan who still loves a few of the albums, will see them live if convenient, but not interested in buying the comics, the side projects, or keeping up with their socials, with even less interest in following their wives’ public careers.

While I use the term “affect economy” to describe the way audiences are encouraged to attach, it’s not a new term. Usually, it’s used to refer to workers’ affect being used by their employers. But in this context, affect is farmed from the audience, the customer, the fan, and it’s framed as a worthwhile value exchange.

Billboard

Billboard talks about building fan armies and stan bases. Last year, Music Business Worldwide discussed findings indicating that, “15% of the general population in the US are ‘superfans’,” and that they spend 80% more than average fans. They are identified as having 5+ touch points with the artist they are superfans of. Concerts, following and interacting on socials, streaming, merch purchases, these are all parts of the equation as to whether you classify as a superfan. I’ve covered the Fave app which sets out to quantify and verify fandom based on similar metrics. Weverse would need an entire series to cover.

Universal Music Group’s Michael Nash estimates UMG has cornered 30% of the streamers as superfans. Spotify wants to create “superfan clubs,” Soundcloud has nearly five years under its belt working with “fan-powered royalties.” Goldman Sachs has gotten involved, estimating that there is an untapped annual revenue of $4.2 billion, if existing superfans could be extracted properly, and hopefully this will happen by 2030.

And this pattern is international. Yuli Liang wrote on the Chinese fan economy and spoke directly with fans and industry. Among them was Zhang Zhe, manager of a Chinese pop-rock band, who explained the way the fan economy presented itself,

“the Chinese music industry doesn’t just value an artist according to his/her artworks, but we also value an artist according to the their ARPU (Average Revenue Per Unit), which requires an artist to not only secure a certain quantity of fans, but also requires [an artist] to secure fans of quality”

Liang went on to define these quality fans as “the most loyal” and that, “they may even seen [sic] themselves as a part of an artist’s extended family, and believe that they have the right to protect and support their idols as if they were supporting their own family members.”

Liang’s polling also found that 4.5% of fans spent 100 times more than the majority of respondents. This is the extractable value of the superfan.

These fans buy products to support their fan object, even if their consumption exceeds their personal need. They will keep streaming and voting and petitioning and perform stan duties online because at the time, they really want to. They derive intense satisfaction at supporting their fave.

These emotional highs classify as experiences in the experience economy. The second-hand high that fans can experience can be easily understood by looking at sports fans’ euphoria at a win. Even casual observers can join in on that high. It’s the same emotion that will present itself in stans.

But this is a deliberate commodification of affect. No one wants to acknowledge that the flip side of this devotion is backlashes. Disappointments that should be shrugged off cut deeply and set off mutiny in the army that was fostered. Denouncements, harassment campaigns, intrafandom abuse. Intense attachment and investment is not always a positive.

This is also why I call it the (super)fan economy: because just being a fan isn’t enough in this system. What would have passed for the product should be supplanted by the human brand that produced it. If you follow a director only for his films, if you’ve attended dozens of concerts of one band but doesn’t know all of their names. That doesn’t cut it. After all, the most profitable affect comes from the superfan, and it’s the best way to extract long term value. At least if you are to believe the industry’s own words.

Life serials across modalities are absolutely rife with content, with consummable second-hand experiences. There’s even something to be said about the proliferating “era” framework and how it allows for more contained entry points for the public to invest in, and it invites the serialization and compartmentalization of life events into story arcs, but that’s a whole other essay.

1. Funnily enough, and illustrating my point further: the press is now running stories about fans being driven wild by Dimoldenberg’s chemistry with James Norton.