1. Fandom origin stories
[1.1] Yvonne Gonzales: The best place to start this conversation might be with fandom origin stories. I started writing fan fiction when I was about twelve on fanfiction.net under a pseudonym with little connection to my off-line identity. I even made a second email so it couldn't be traced back to me. I eventually made my way to social media many years later under a new username; I had friends call me "Myth," a shortened version of that username, and never posted pictures of myself or anything about my off-line life.
[1.2] Then I ran a massively successful fanzine that took over my real life. Myth became much cooler than Yvonne; Myth raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity with fandom. Through that experience, I really came to know that fandom is not something to be ashamed of. I rebranded myself on social media from Myth to Yvonne to sort of reconcile these two parts of myself and never looked back.
[1.3] When you search my full name now, a few things pop up: my page on the University of Southern California’s website as a doctoral student and then, right below that, my TikTok account where I talk about fan studies, and, occasionally, the Omegaverse fan fiction I write. My persona in fandom is inextricable from my real-life self, and even though I have a unique username, my friends and readers online just call me by my first name. I am incredibly public as a fan and, because of my TikTok presence, my full name is also a searchable tag on AO3. I understand you have a very different origin story.
[1.4] Celeste Oon: In some ways, our origins are not so different. I also began my internet presence writing fan fiction on, believe it or not, the Nickelodeon forums, of all places. It wasn't until I was twelve that I moved to Twitter, which was my first real social media experience. Over the years, I've jumped between Tumblr, TikTok, and various other sites to express my fandom. But one thing has never changed, and that's the fact that I've always used my real name. My first name, that is. I didn't have many thoughts on internet safety back then, so I wasn't too concerned about representing myself with my name.
[1.5] But as I've grown up, as much as I've had some wonderful experiences as a fan, I think I've also been exposed to many…nasty parts of the internet. Due to my various fan experiences, I've gained a lot of attention from other fans in every space I've entered, so I've always considered myself a public figure of sorts. The combination of some inevitable negative encounters I've had with other fans and the increasing frequency of doxing in toxic fan spaces has largely driven me away from sharing personal details about myself online. So while I still do use my first name online, I've been very careful to keep my personal and fan personas separate.
[1.6] I additionally use a different nickname (offshoots of my first name) for every account that I use. This hasn't quite been for security reasons—though it certainly helps because my accounts aren't linked together—but I suppose this has been more of an effort to compartmentalize different aspects of myself. In that way, you could say that I've gone in the opposite direction than you: instead of merging my identities into one, I've not only divorced my online fan and personal identities but have fragmented my fan identities as well. While I'm happy with my decision, I'll admit it does have its drawbacks. What do you feel are the significant pros and cons of your approach?
2. Public versus private fan experiences
[2.1] YG: This is such a great question. Being a public fan is incredibly important to me as a fan-studies scholar, because I feel it is essential to show I am truly part of the community that I'm writing about to the fans that I research. It's a fear of mine, as a researcher; I don't want to seem like that white man anthropologist who walks into cultures that aren't his own and pretends to understand them better than the people who are actually from that culture. I'm not researching them, I'm researching us. That goes both ways, though. When I write about Omegaverse as an important genre of speculative literature, the scholars reading my work need to know that I write Omegaverse, too, and I am definitely defending something that is personal to me (Gonzales 2023). They can go read that Omegaverse fan fiction and see how I use it; I'll even link it for easy access.
[2.2] Being a public fan gives me, in some spaces, more credibility. I know this community in and out because it is my community. It also gives me less credibility in academic spaces that value distance, because I will never be able to be objective. My fan practices become my positionality statement.
[2.3] It is also important for me to show that I value my work as a fan, too. I'm not ashamed to write fan fiction anymore, even if I used to be. Sometimes, when I tell people what I study, their eyes get all big and they excitedly show me the things they've written and have never gotten to share with anyone in real life for fear of ridicule. It's exciting to show people that we finally get to be proud of those novels we've written in the middle of the night. To add to the value of fan works, I have a larger audience for fan fiction than I might ever have for academic writing. If I want to share ideas with the community I'm a part of, maybe the best way to do it is through fic.
[2.4] On the other hand, being a public fan is dangerous. I spent many of my college years in the Voltron: Legendary Defenders fandom, which is mostly legendary for its toxic shipping wars and doxing practices (Drouin 2021). I have received death threats due to my shipping preferences, and I'm sure I've been canceled somewhere for something. I have some safety, though, in the fact that my job is fan fiction. I'm in a department where someone could email my adviser and tell them about all the nasty things I write on the internet, and my adviser would say, "I already know." I'll never be able to have a job in politics, though! (Unless my constituents are really into BTS!)
[2.5] I definitely have some fear when it comes to getting a job after my doctorate, but for me, that worry is outweighed by my ethical concerns noted above. I need fans—the people I write about and the people I write for—to know I am here authentically and out of love. Being transparent with my fan activities is important to that mission, and, honestly, I don't think I could separate my fandom self from my physical self if I tried.
[2.6] What do you think drives you to be private and segmented in your fan platforms?
[2.7] CO: The segmentation of my identities largely stemmed from feeling as if other fans only wanted to see one side of me, whether that was true in reality or not. As I began to gain a platform as a fan, I felt like I was mostly recognized by my acts of service to the fandom rather than as a multifaceted person. I was known for writing fan fiction, for creating PR and marketing projects, for working in fan unions, for translating, for a number of things. My entire online identity revolved around my role as a so-called good and productive fan but not necessarily as a person who happened to be a fan. When I would post about my personal life or miscellaneous fannish interests, my engagement would dip, which signaled to me that my audience was expecting a particular type of content from me. Apart from privacy reasons, this was a big catalyst in fragmenting my identities. I wanted to seek friends and audiences who would be interested in my specific interests but felt like I couldn't have it all, so to speak. So I instead created multiple accounts dedicated to one niche each and have since not let them overlap. What is private to me is now off-line, and what I share online goes through a specific account of my choosing.
[2.8] In retrospect, much of this was driven by an internal pressure to professionalize myself as a fan. I was gaining recognition for acts that I was very proud of, and that motivated me to continue producing that type of content so that I could feel as if I was doing my part in fandom.
[2.9] On that note, the idea of professionalization brings me to ethics, because I do want to address what you said. I love your stance on fan practices as your positionality statement, because as a researcher, most of what I cover are objects that I'm a fan of and communities that I'm a part of. Ethics are paramount in my work and are something I'm constantly grappling with. I'm always transparent in my work about my identity as a fan, which is what makes me privy to much of this information in the first place.
[2.10] I also do some freelance work in the industry within the creator economy, which is sometimes related to my scholarly work but is oftentimes its own domain altogether. All of the creators I work with are aware that I'm an internet researcher, and I share my work with them periodically. Anecdotally, one of them recently told me that he tends to be more cognizant of his actions when I'm around because he knows I do research in this area. We were able to engage in a productive discussion about researcher ethics and positionality afterward, but admittedly, his statement initially took me aback. This is especially because I never consider my time within internet communities to be research; I simply enjoy my time as a supporter, a viewer, and a fan. And frankly, much of the time I spend around the internet is solely for recreation and not for work. I'm simply a fan who happens to be a researcher, but it's perhaps impossible to separate the two in our line of work.
[2.11] I'm curious: apart from obvious doxing issues, has the meshing of public and private, of love and labor, ever been problematic for you in ways you didn't anticipate?
3. Fan consumption and research ethics
[3.1] YG: It's so interesting—I feel like I came to that same point you did in my fan activities: I was known for my fan labor, mainly in fanzine management and charity organization, but at the time was failing out of community college in my real life. Putting Myth and Yvonne together allowed me to claim those successes in fan spaces as my own; I always joke that Voltron got me into college, since my work on fanzines was one of the most impressive things on my résumé at that point in my life. The productivity of my fan persona allowed me to become productive in real life, so I feel I owe it to myself to embrace that in all spaces.
[3.2] That brings me to one of the major downsides of merging my work identity as a fan scholar with my identity as a fan: I don't know how to separate my modes of consumption. It's actually become much harder to just enjoy myself in these spaces; even when I am enjoying fandom recreationally, I am obsessed with finding meaning in everything I consume. The fan fictions I read before bed are suddenly annotated with notes about how they might relate to gender, identity, race, or political theory. I cite academic books in casual Twitter (now known as X) direct messages. My bookmarks and favorites on social media websites are a mix of posts I might want to cite in research and fan fics I want to read later. I've actually had to find some additional hobbies because while I still love and enjoy fandom, it is no longer pure recreation for me.
[3.3] I think this is productive, though; consumption should be critical. It's important that I, a white person, can look critically at the K-pop fan fiction I'm reading and realize it's engaging in racist stereotypes. I don't think I had the same awareness before studying fandom, and it's the kind of critical awareness that I feel is my duty to bring to the attention of other fans like me. To borrow Wanzo's (2015) term, I've become my own race theory killjoy, but that's an important role to fill. I shouldn't be able to enjoy works that cause harm, and while the uncritical libidinal enjoyment of fan works—both as a creator and a consumer—is impossible for me now, maybe that's a good thing.
[3.4] I want to come back to your note on the creator you work with who said they interact with you differently because they know you are a researcher. While I'm loudly and proudly a researcher of fandom in all spaces, I find a bit more excitement from the people I interact with because they know I am truly one of them. That said, being a researcher in a space always changes the space inherently; that's just part of ethnography. Part of conducting research on humans is always informed consent, and even if I'm not actively using direct quotations, my experience as a fan interacting with people informs my research. It's important for people who interact with me to know that.
[3.5] This is a complicated realm to enter, but there's also the issue of surveillance across platforms. My worry about finding a job if I ever have to leave fan studies is real; I've never broken a law, but my fan writings will follow me forever, even the porn I've written. I'm proud of my work, and people enjoy it, but it will always be connected to my digital signature. Again, I have some safety in my position, and everyone I know in real life knows what I write, but I will never be able to escape it.
[3.6] It's something we forget as fans; we think of our spaces as closed, because no one outside of the community it's intended for will likely read it. I write for one audience: fans, specifically the type of fans who write slash fiction. The work I do is incomprehensible outside of the space, and I worry about how the distant audience, who could find my fan works after reading one of my essays without understanding the gift economy of fandom, might look at the explicit fan fiction I wrote for a friend's birthday.
[3.7] I often think about Baym and boyd's (2012) discussion of layered publics and the limits of our control over our public identities. I can truly never know how far my fan fiction and fan platform will go outside of its intended space, be it to potential future employers or anyone with malicious intentions, and that is scary.
[3.8] CO: This is something that I also consider quite often. Though I don't personally have anything explicit out there, there's something quite vulnerable about having your digital footprint, as they say, out in the open. The concerns I have for myself extend enormously when I consider my research subjects; after all, the fans and users I study are just as much entitled to their privacy as I am. It leaves me in a sticky situation—on the one hand, I want to ensure I have the consent of all users involved in my research, but on the other hand, I'm often operating in contexts where that isn't possible. Whether it's because I'm working on contentious subject matter or the community itself is rather sealed off, sometimes I'm unable to ask for consent without compromising my research.
[3.9] I think particularly about my work with relatively closed communities, such as on Discord or other platforms that require a membership to access. Your mention of layered publics is especially pertinent here; certainly, we all have expectations of who our content is going to reach, and these expectations are exponentially stricter if the architecture of the community and platform itself generates a sense of intimacy. The publics that we normally negotiate on comparatively open platforms like Twitter become privates: private circles, private channels, private tabs.
[3.10] Surveillance feels amplified in these spaces, though I myself am a community member just like everyone else. Like you said, it's hard for me to draw the line of when I've got my researcher hat on and when I've got my fan hat on, because it's never quite one or the other. And as I mentioned in my anecdote, people on social media tend to change their behavior when they feel they're being surveilled (Duffy and Chan 2019), so I try my best to not create shock waves everywhere I go.
[3.11] In an attempt to reach middle ground and protect my subjects and research simultaneously, I spend a lot of time revising the information I include in my research. I edit screenshots to omit identifying information, implement pseudonyms, anonymize users, and the like. I look for guidance from different fields, and the Association of Internet Researchers' (franzke et al. 2020) Ethical Guidelines 3.0 have been pretty helpful in this regard. Ethics in fan studies is, of course, discussed abundantly, and I distinctly remember hearing the phrase "an ethics of care" at the Fan Studies Network conference (Stitch et al. 2021). It's stuck with me ever since, and I have always moved forward with a premise of care. I also think deeply on who my audience is and the reach I anticipate my work to have, because that also affects the information I divulge. My methods certainly aren't perfect, but I'm constantly having to renegotiate what I feel is best practice.
[3.12] All this to say that the ways in which I navigate my own privacy on the internet is tied into how I view others' privacy. Inevitably, I've turned the conversation back around to ethics, but I feel it's almost impossible to consider my own apprehensions about platform visibility and privacy without considering the entire ecosystem that I research.
4. Conclusion
[4.1] YG: I want to step back for just a second and frame the conversation again, with some of the things we've been doing our best to work through.
[4.2] We have examined the different benefits and drawbacks of private versus public platforms as fans and as internet researchers, and I think the place we've come to is: both sides have personal and ethical dilemmas. Publicity makes me feel like a more ethical and accessible researcher, even if I'm not as safe as an individual and fan. Privacy helps you stay under the radar in both your personal and professional explorations of the internet. Both approaches have to confront the truth that the communities we study don't intend to be studied outside of their spheres.
[4.3] It's impossible to draw a hard line between harmful and helpful, too. I don't think I could be private if I tried—I'm too excited about both my work and my fandom to keep those two things separated. When I tried to keep them apart, my mental health suffered; I only know how to be loud about it all. Examining our contrasting experiences in fandom might not be useful, because a lot of the time, we can't control the echoes of our footprints as researchers.
[4.4] I hope we can take away from this a deepening respect for the different approaches to this kind of research, where personal and professional identities rub up against each other in uncomfortable ways. There is always tension between public and private, but that tension can be productive, especially when the people we study are ourselves.
[4.5] CO: I like the word you brought up: tension. Ultimately, I think we find ourselves oscillating between public and private, between what we perceive as helpful and harmful visibility. And as much as we try to exert control over it, whether it's through presenting a deliberately public profile, or protecting particular aspects of ourselves, there are so many external factors that can break the carefully preserved images we've created. It's much more accurate to think of ourselves as existing in an in-between space, in the tension between these poles. And the way in which we navigate this tension produces specific practices that shape our researcher and fan identities.
[4.6] Thinking again about platforms, I'm interested to see how these processes may continue or evolve as social media continues to fragment. While fan migration between platforms has always been a regular occurrence, recent incidents—such as with the legislation against TikTok and the academic exodus from Twitter to Mastodon—destabilize our ability to express online identity and drive us toward further networked fragmentation. Of course, in-depth considerations of platform surveillance and security are outside the scope of what we've discussed today, but the very infrastructure of our platforms is something we will have to continue to grapple with. There will never be any clean solutions to a rapidly changing technological landscape, but that's perhaps a key factor in what drives the productivity and meaning of our actions, indisputably shaping the way we navigate the world as fans.
[4.7] YG: Platform also has several meanings; you're talking about the macro-platforms that shape the internet, but platforms can be tiny, too. I am standing here proudly on my apple box shouting to the miniscule corner of my fandom that listens. That's a platform, too. It's important that we, as both fans and scholars, decide what kind of platform we want to stand on and which mask to wear when we shout.