Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

I think there's two very different things being conflated in the entire conversation on fandom and money: 1) asking your friends for financial help and 2) creating an actuall commercial, capitalistic artistic space out of fannish works.

I-- and I suspect everyone-- am 100% OK with the former. That's what most of ko-fi and gofundme is-- it's not commercialization fo fandom, it's people asking friends for help, and those friends happen to be fandom friends. People have always asked for help and people have always offered it, and the fact that there are not sites that make it easier to do doesn't change anything.

I think the real criticisms of the commercialization of fandom are to #2, and personally, I oppose it for the exact reason that you sum up this post with-- "Fandom's history says it's not supposed to be a privileged-only space. " As far as I can tell, the reason that fandom currently is not a privileged-only space is because it is a gift economy. When I think about commercial artistic spaces-- the original fiction industry in particular, but also music and visual art-- their defining trait is that, solely because of the nature of capitalism and art, the privileged have a better chance at success. People who can afford good-quality instruction and access to spaces with mentorship are more likely to have the skills necessary to succeed. People who have families or spouses who are able and willing to support them making art full-time, and not worrying about the financial result, are more likely to be able to create products that do make money. Commercial artistic spaces are unfair by their very nature.

It seems like a lot of people are hearing "we don't want fandom to become a commercial space" and hearing "we don't want people who are struggling to be able to make money." In reality, I think it's exactly the opposite. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I know that the reason I don't want to see fandom as a commercial space is because I don't want it to be yet another place where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the art gets more cowardly.

Is ensuring that nobody can get any richer or poorer the best way out of this? I honestly don't know. But I can't think of another way, at the moment.