Fuck Fans
I want to live in a post-fan world. Not that fans won’t exist, but that they won’t matter. Some of us already live there—the most powerful of us, and those who they choose to grant temporary bursts of power to. How many followers does Klaus Schwab have? Or, to use an example of someone good, and artistic, how many followers does Jim Jarmusch have? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? And if they did have a specific, pinpointable number of them, would it even mean anything, or even matter? And is a ‘follower’ even a fan? Are retweets endorsements? What does anything mean?
For those of us who are not famous, followers and subscribers and likes and whatever else means something in our lives. Having a high amount of those is the best we can hope for as far as attaining some degree of success in doing whatever it is that we do. And not just those internet-based stats, but even just the bona fide concept of an amount of fans. Let’s say 500 people in this world fucking love your stuff. Or 5,000. Or 50,000. Then you have to corral them together in some capacity, such that they can act in unison, or some semblance of such, in order to purchase something so that you can not starve to death. But good luck getting all of them to buy your new album, your new movie, your new whatever. And these people love you! But, good luck getting 100% of any group to do anything. If they are doing that, or even if some sizable percentage of them are (even a 5% turnover is impressive) then they are probably the dumbest motherfuckers you have ever met in your life. They are followers, pure and simple, in the traditional sense of the word ‘follower’. So, whatever it is that you are making, or doing, or selling to them, is probably fucking dog shit—it has to be, so that those dumb dogs will eat it.
The best future for artists is a world where some guaranteed amount of people support you no matter what—and by ‘no matter what’ I mean that they may not even like you, or your work. This may sound like some narcissistic artist pipe dream horseshit, but how else would you explain Netflix, or any other subscription service people pay for despite not liking the vast majority of the shit on there? These are some of the most powerful entities in existence—and people give them money monthly, and they never ask for their money back. And Netflix can play pretty much whatever they want, because Netflix is simply associated with being a thing to watch. If you want to watch something, you watch Netflix. If you don’t have Netflix, who even are you? That sort of thing.
If only we as lowly unknowns could access that level of balling. I’ve fucking tried, man. I’ve tried to get people to understand that supporting truly independent film in this way, just blanket fucking supporting it, no care in the world for if you even like the movies, would change the world. Literally 50,000 people each giving me $2.50 per month would give me over a million dollars to make movie with per year. That’s a not-greedy-at-all amount of people helping me—other groups of 50,000 people could support other truly independent film studios. A million people would give us 20 different truly independent film studios, each studio with over a million dollars to make movies with per year. That’s a whole new category, that’s a whole new (non) industry. That’s world-changing shit. That’s me as Klaus Schwab, or George Soros, but for good.
This is all shit you’ve heard me say before, but maybe there’s some people who are new to me and haven’t heard it yet. You never know when people, or a person, will finally click to me as being a fucking visionary and actually start supporting me. Right now, I’m not even 1% of the way towards 50,000 people supporting me. I’m not even 0.1% of the way there. Because my audience is smart. Say what you want about dumb people, but at least they throw their money around. Gotta love them for it. They change the world every day.
If you enjoyed this Substack piece, consider contributing $2.50 per month to my truly independent film studio, Kill The Lion Films.