🌱 Fandoms
Objective
Examine how fan communities form around artists, what sustains them, and why the current model of artist-fan engagement fails to build genuine ongoing relationships. Explore the structural problems of platform dependency and lack of continuity, and what a better model of fan connection could look like.
Why this topic
Being a fan and part of fandoms is a big part of who I am and what I enjoy. I think there's more opportunity to build continuity into the fan experience (for example, at concerts) and explore how artists can build trust, community and connection.
Working thesis
Platforms are structurally the wrong venue for genuine artist-fan relationships. Built for broadcast and engagement metrics, they produce performative content rather than real connection. The deeper problem is continuity — the fan carries the full history of the relationship, but the artist and the platform reset it constantly. Every post starts from zero. Genuine fandom is a longitudinal relationship; current platforms are episodic by design.
Key tensions
Artists who engage too authentically risk losing mystique — there is a productive distance in the fan relationship that over-familiarity can collapse. Also: building fan relationships off-platform gives artists more control but loses reach. And fan communities on third-party platforms (subreddits, Discord servers) are owned by neither the artist nor the fans — they exist at the platform's discretion and disappear when the platform does.
Open questions
- What happens to fan communities when the platforms that host them shut down or change their rules?
- How can artists build meaningful engagement between shows and releases rather than relying on performative social posts?
- What does genuine continuity in an artist-fan relationship look like, and what tools or models would support it?
- How can artists make the most of their fandoms without over-extracting from them?