When I'm not writing at my day job or any one of a thousand other places to which I provide my signature brand of wit and candour, I'm writing for and performing in my two-piece alt-nerd-folk-rock-comedy duo Nerds With Guitars. We're sort of a known quantity in the Toronto fandom scene, mostly because there aren't too many acts around here who do what we do, but it leads us to be asked to do some pretty cool things every so often. For example, this past March we were invited to be guests at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, where we got to play on stage with some rather remarkable musical acts. As part of the weekend I was asked to sit on a panel about nerd music (which is way more of a thing in the 'States than it is here), an honour for which I wasn't 100% prepared. But thankfully I'm a talker so I managed to stumble through.
The most interesting question by far that I was asked to respond to that afternoon came from a young man who took part in the Q&A section of the panel. He took the mic to ask the assembled performers how to go about getting his music out to the world-at-large, with an eye toward being famous (or at least as famous as you can get in a niche genre). My fellow panelists had some very prescient things to say about the subject, including advice on how to leverage social media, how to add value to your work, and how to engage with fans. But the one thing they didn't mention, and something I feel very strongly about not only as a member of fandom but as a professional performer, ties neatly into the thing that's pissing me off today.
In essence, I said to the young padawan on the mic, the fan community as a whole (and indeed any artistic community) is built on creative people doing creative things. These things are rarely done in pursuit of money, because anyone with half a brain doesn't get into the arts with an eye toward retiring to a tropical island full of nude women and alcohol served in novelty fruit. That means that we're all doing it, on some level, for the sheer love of creating. Unfortunately, as I've been wont to say when venue owners offer to pay me in "exposure", you can't feed your kids with positive vibes, which means money has to come from somewhere. Typically, I said, within the fan community that money comes from - well, from the fans. It's a widely-held truism that people who like comic books and Star Wars and whatever else will spend obscene amounts of money on things they feel have value, even if that thing is a shitty piece of plastic painted to resemble a pre-car accident Mark Hamill but succeeding only in resembling Mark Hamill after an even more catastrophic accident (maybe something to do with acid and sticky buns). But ultimately, the fans will ascribe the value they feel your work is worth and, given certain conditions, will hand over money comparable to that value.
I've seen it in action. Right before my son was born, Nerds With Guitars launched a Kickstarter campaign to try to crowdsource our first full-length album. This was before Kickstarter was the ubiquitous thorn in my side it is today, so we didn't really know what we were doing and we were awfully pressed for time to boot, thanks to my band partner's impending marriage and my aforementioned fatherhood. So we launched a campaign to raise $4500 in December (the worst month ever to ask people for money), and by midnight on New Years Eve, we had managed to drum up almost $3000 worth of support. Those who know how Kickstarter works know that we didn't see a red cent because we didn't reach our goal, but we were heartened and humbled and blown the hell away by the level of support we did receive at such an imperfect time of year to ask for it. (Incidentally we wound up producing a 3-song EP courtesy of our incredible producer who agreed to do it for peanuts as a holdover for the full record. Not to be too shameless or anything.)
When the whole thing was said and done I polled friends and fans about what prompted them to put up hard-earned money towards our project even though we're in the midst of a recession and it was the holiday season and whatever else. What I got told opened my eyes a whole lot to what makes fandom tick. The overwhelming response I got was that Sean (my band partner/hetero life mate) and I, in addition to producing material that certain people really like, were viewed in the community as Good Guys - people who came out and supported other people's projects, pimped out good ideas through our social channels, and were all-around cool to work with and associate with. While I question how much of this is actually true (since we're not particularly talented and we kind of smell), it did highlight to me the importance of reciprocity within the creative community.
Which is exactly what I told the young padawan at ECCC: you cannot, under any circumstances, go into a room and demand that people pay attention to / fund / purchase your material if you aren't willing to do at least as much to support them. Even if you're name is Jonathan Coulton and everything you touch turns to nerd-gold, you can't expect people to pony up for it just because you wrote "Still Alive". That's why when Jonathan does a crowdsourcing campaign, he does it right - the more money that comes in, the more rewards people who contribute are entitled to. Coulton knows what hands are feeding him, and what's more, he respects the people those hands are attached to (even if those hands are sweaty and suggestively calloused). Ultimately, reciprocity is the key. Jonathan Coulton expresses that reciprocity by offering all kinds of super-rad content to his fans all the time for no cost (or almost no cost). If you can't do that, you can offer reciprocity by way of showing up to other people's shows, contributing to their crowdsourcing efforts, spreading the word about their new book or comic, or whatever else you can think of to help them get where they're going. They are a million times more likely to help you along the way if you've already offered them your sweaty, calloused hand.
So before you decide to open up an IndieGogo or Kickstarter or whatever to artificially fill your grassroots project with sweet, sweet crowdsourced cash, consider what value you're bringing to the table and what value you're ascribing to what's sitting on everyone else's placemat. Because if you aren't willing to go the extra mile for your fellow nerd, I'm here to tell you we will not quit playing CoD and get off the couch long enough to brush the cheeto dust from our neck beards and come support you either.
Here's Jon LaJoie illustrating my point in his perfect, beautiful, subversive way.
Oh, and for those of you who don't know what "irony" is, you can head on over to the sidebar for Queen Bathurst's crowd sourcing plea. All I'm saying is now I've put my foot in my mouth and it's possible I'm going to rue this post if Fox doesn't get his shit together and live up to this.
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