I'm having a lot thoughts emerging from koyoba's Twitter thread about how social media has made the experience of fiction a compulsory public practice, and how it's been leveraged as "organic advertising"—but specifically on the subject of fanart.
I used to force out fanart for exposure. I was, for years, playing to the algorithm: I'd see that a work of fiction I liked was popular in the current zeitgeist, and think, "an opportunity to earn Social Media Points and get more visible!" Around 2014-2016, I made it a personal rule to post at least 2 pieces of fanart a week.
And like, it worked. I got thousands of followers out of it. I was a half-competent artist, had ideas, and did sincerely love those stories—and also very much felt a need to capitalise on that love. So a lot (not all, but a lot) of the fanart I made began as a fleeting thought, inflated into a full project solely by the prospect of likes and shares.
This tendency is made quite clear when I think about what stories I chose to make fanart for. Steven Universe and Homestuck? I loved them both, and both had very active fandoms, so I spent years of my life making fanwork—there was an ecosystem, a captive audience. But my actual favourite works of fiction—typically standalone films (Inception, WALL-E) and books (Lord of the Rings)? I quietly read, watched, revisited them for years without drawing a single thing for them. Fanwork production was not my default mode of engagement with stories I liked—it was one I was slowly absorbed into as I observed these active networks of shared imagination and the resultant high levels of engagement. The first few pieces of fanart were always sincere, and then it gradually lapsed into the territory of obligation.
It was such a dishonest reflection of the pattern of my interests, though. I've rarely stayed at the "actively conceptualise and make fanwork" phase of fiction investment for more than a year. It's just not how I work. I skate from one story to another, and eventually end up back at my own narrative projects, which are infinitely more rewarding to me.
But other people do find an equal fulfillment in fanwork. In the past, I'd come back to someone's profile years later and be surprised that they were still actively producing fanwork for it. Now I understand that this is because the niche filled by original work (for me) is where fanwork sits in many other people's creative repertoires, and I respect that completely—this post isn't about those people or a criticism of their work.
But also, and here is where I would broaden the scope a little: fanart is heavily incentivised over other kinds of art. (Specifically fanart, I don't think fanfiction has quite the same sort of ecosystem.) It's free advertising for franchise fiction—consider how Overwatch's publicity managers released character sheets, hired cosplayers to dress as their characters, and generally supported fan work—it's a seemingly benevolent gesture, but it is also very much an advertising strategy that works. Organic, word-of-mouth publicity. Publishers, social media platforms, and even we ourselves, have a vested interest in keeping franchise fiction in the minds of artists and rewarding the production of fanart: it's "content" that'll get clicks, impressions, followers and ultimately money for everyone along the food chain of creation and dissemination.
And when the algorithm is designed to amplify click-attracting content, art that people can consume and forget quickly become orders of magnitude more visible than art that means something to just a handful of people (sans any additional effort to research and bond with it). With fanart, there's no barrier to entry, since you already know the characters and relationship—no need to find out more and form a connection with the work they're from—and you can simply hit "like" and "share" and get the full experience out of the art within a minute. And it becomes so, so much more popular.
And this wouldn't all be so insidious if we (or at least I) haven't been trained by these platforms—by unread badges, push notifications, follower counts—to crave engagement. I've felt the pull of that compulsion, to make more fanart I don't really care for, every time I wake up to hundreds of interactions on fanart I posted months ago and none on original art I posted the day before. Or every time I post original art and lose a follower. The numbers get translated in my mind into relative indicators of like/dislike. So just like people repost comedic or outrageous takes because they get popular, I (and surely people like myself) make more fanart than I would if it weren't incentivised by revenue-motivated social media algorithms.
I know in some cases, attracting engagement is a necessary evil, such as when you're hoping to make your living off of art. If this is your publicity strategy, I'd say go for your life, we need to put food on the table and we deserve to do so with a job we like. I also can't deny the pleasure of having someone engage with one's work fully invested in it. But l think there's nothing trivial about even one person being genuinely invested in your original work, particularly without the boost of publicity channels, and numbers belie that. One person taking the time to think about your original characters is so much more valuable than one fanart reblog.
How does my thinking outlined here affect how I'll approach fanwork, and what do I think would be a good response to algorithmic bullshit? I don't think the point is to guilt trip people into reblogging original art if they don't otherwise feel a desire to. Like, it would be really cool to make it a social norm to reblog any art you like—but we kind of have to accept that by the force of platform algorithms amplifying the statistical tendencies of users, fanart is always going to attract more visibility.
I just hope that anyone who's read this far is willing to look into any original work that crosses their feed, if the person who made it is someone they like. Also, those ad hoc grassroots efforts to make original work more visible—"share your OC art"/publicity threads and events—have actually been great for discovering others. And as much as Toyhouse sucks sometimes, it has the highest concentration of people who will go to the extra effort to learn about the original projects behind the art, out of anywhere on the internet that I've been.
I'm a person with shifting interests. Im the sort who will draw a handful of pieces for one fandom, and then quietly enjoy the rest of the fanwork while moving on creatively. The fact that I feel a need to ossify and continually perform my interest in franchise fiction to "hold" followers is frankly depressing. Realising that it's all part of hostile platform design has helped me wean myself of the need to do things for the algorithm, but I still have some way to go.
And well, you're gonna keep seeing my OC art, because that's where my love lies, and the joy I feel when others engage with those is rarely motivated by numerical success. I would like to commit to interacting more actively with others' works too, and maybe emphasise how cool I think it is that we're materialising entire lifetimes from our minds. If people wanna unfollow me for that, then I guess they can be my guest.