Yeah, it feels like the gig culture grindset "make your hobbies into a side hustle" thing has now fully infiltrated completely unmonetisable hobbies where people are trying to optimise posting times and write to "market" and it's like... maybe I should try not to do that, because it's not the point and it's making things less fun. Obviously people have always wanted clout and social capital in fan spaces that, assuming you weren't grifting, didn't translate into real-world prestige or income,* but I think it's gotten really noticeably worse in the last 10 or so years.
And, again, I am not built for making fanworks that I do not on any level care about, so why try to compete with stuff that is just inevitably going to be more read/commented on/kudosed/praised because it's for a big fandom or a bigger ship or has the right constellation of tropes or got recced by the right people? It doesn't matter! I'm doing all of this for fun in my spare time! If other people like it then that's nice, but I don't want the lack of a nice optional extra to be, itself, a painful experience that diminishes the fun of writing stuff I like.
*Or at least didn't do so in a direct or obvious way. Some people did and do incidentally gain skills and connections in fandom that they then used to get career opportunities and improve their circumstances in a more concrete way than the rosy glow of people liking their fan fiction, but I think that it wasn't usually what people who were clout chasing were trying to do and they more likely just wanted the admiration and praise.
no subject
Yeah, it feels like the gig culture grindset "make your hobbies into a side hustle" thing has now fully infiltrated completely unmonetisable hobbies where people are trying to optimise posting times and write to "market" and it's like... maybe I should try not to do that, because it's not the point and it's making things less fun. Obviously people have always wanted clout and social capital in fan spaces that, assuming you weren't grifting, didn't translate into real-world prestige or income,* but I think it's gotten really noticeably worse in the last 10 or so years.
And, again, I am not built for making fanworks that I do not on any level care about, so why try to compete with stuff that is just inevitably going to be more read/commented on/kudosed/praised because it's for a big fandom or a bigger ship or has the right constellation of tropes or got recced by the right people? It doesn't matter! I'm doing all of this for fun in my spare time! If other people like it then that's nice, but I don't want the lack of a nice optional extra to be, itself, a painful experience that diminishes the fun of writing stuff I like.
*Or at least didn't do so in a direct or obvious way. Some people did and do incidentally gain skills and connections in fandom that they then used to get career opportunities and improve their circumstances in a more concrete way than the rosy glow of people liking their fan fiction, but I think that it wasn't usually what people who were clout chasing were trying to do and they more likely just wanted the admiration and praise.