February Tangent Topic Poll

naur camille paglia loses again!! one day camille paglia tangent voters will claim victory 😢

I feel like this poses some really solid discussion for a slightly related alternate topic Natalie has added to the vote a few times in anti-shippers! The culture of fandom has grown into...something, and many fic writers and artists have that distinctly uncomfortable experience when someone drops a comment that says something along the lines of "omg I NEED MORE" or "please update soon!" I have friends who have received anonymous messages where people tell them they clearly don't prioritize their writing or their fans because they need a minute to live life instead of catering to an online audience they have never and most likely will never meet in the real world. And what once was an outlet for online creators to make something and feel seen and have their unique interests related with becomes the entitlement of strangers to our bandwidth, our time, our effort. Create great things, you get interaction and expectation. Create things that others don't appreciate, you get ignored and forgotten. Where do we find balance?

Parasocial relationships, intentionally or not, directly to indirectly, have the potential to put a lot of pressure onto content creators through the feeling that people constantly have expectations of you. 
Maybe it’s just my perverse brain but, "She does a wonderful job" can start to sound like "she always does a wonderful job" therefore, "the level of work we have come to expect from her is that it must be wonderful" & to a perfectionist that could sometimes feel like, "I must do a job that is wonderful in quality because that is the level of what people expect of me now"
 Like a creator may even blame herself for feeling implied or more indirect pressure that, at least in my head sounds like: why does every compliment feel like a disguised expectation? Why do I make every “I can't wait to see what you do next” feel like a veiled threat of potential disappointment if I don't meet the expectations? & Why am I twisting sweet words to feel to me like ways I could be letting people down? Like I think part of the pressure of parasocial dynamics is feeling what creators do & make has to be up to par for their fans. Plus, when parasocial attachments are in the mix, disappointment can often be conflated to feel like betrayal; & not everybody is self-aware enough to differentiate the difference -especially when people are more focused on how they feel than on examining why they might be feeling that way & if that’s even an appropriate response. That is probably at least part of why the pressure to do well, or at least to not slip up, escalates as creators become more parasocailly esteemed. (insert my semi-self-aware apology here for being such a nerd & commenting so much)

highclass_lady