Episode 184: Justin Bolger
In Episode 184, Flourish and Elizabeth talk to Justin Bolger, who previously ran Star Wars’ social media and is currently the senior brand manager for “Star Trek Fleet Command.” Topics discussed include using pop culture as social capital while moving around a lot as a child, parlaying fannish interests into a career in the entertainment industry, how the gap between knowledge and wisdom shapes fandom discussions, and what exactly it was like to helm Star Wars social during the release of The Last Jedi.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:00] Justin on Twitter and Instagram, and on our San Diego Comic-Con panels in 2019 and 2022.
[00:03:53] Our interstitial music throughout is “Max Flashback” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:05:27] The Star Wars Storybook, published in 1978.
[00:07:50] The ForceCast and Modern Myth Media
[00:14:08]
[00:17:31]
[00:27:00] The Roger Ebert quote going around Twitter was the opening two paragraphs of his review of the 2009 film Fanboys:
A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It's all about them. They have mastered the “Star Wars” or “Star Trek” universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.
Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad-lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That's why it’s excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They’re always asking you questions they know the answer to.
[00:33:06]
[00:39:39] “Luke Skywalker red X” is actually a conspiracy theory about JUSTIN’S DESK!! And he would like us to state for the record that he actually is familiar with the Bigger Luke conspiracy theory, he just knew it by a different name.
[00:49:37]
[01:01:44] Apparently 6′1″, which might be a bit taller than “medium.”
[01:03:06] Flourish tries to play down their Knives Out fandom but would a person who wasn’t obsessed with Knives Out TAG CHRIS EVANS HERE?!?!?! Case closed.
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #184, “Justin Bolger.”
FK: And you may or may not remember, Justin has been on our Comic-Con panels and now is here on our podcast!
ELM: He was such a good panelist. I mean, all our panelists were incredible. [FK laughs] I know they’re all listening right now. But I’m so pleased that we could have him on. So, OK, Justin, I know that he used to do social media work for Star Wars.
FK: He did.
ELM: At Lucasfilm.
FK: Yup. And then he’s moved on into doing social media work now for “Star Trek Fleet Command,” the game.
ELM: Oh, wow. The stars, the stars.
FK: [laughs] Yeah. And before that, he actually—he didn’t have an original history in the film industry or anything like that. So I’m really excited, because he’s definitely, like, you know, a fan who figured out how to get into the industry and is doing something that I think he loves right now. [both laugh]
ELM: OK, great. All right, so, we’re going to talk to him. But first, we have a little bit of business to do. So it’s almost the year anniversary since we first talked about this. [FK laughs] For a variety of reasons, it’s taken us a while, not least because these episodes are a lot of work to put together, but around this time last year, we first started putting out a word for disabled fans to contribute to a fandom and disability episode—much like our race and fandom episodes, we’re hoping to do maybe even a double episode if we have enough participants.
FK: Right, exactly. So we called for participants a year ago, [laughs] and we’ve been getting back into contact with them. But we also wanted to put out another call for participants right now, especially anybody—so, the call is for disabled fans who are excited and willing to talk about disability in fandom, and we’d especially love to hear from people if they are people of color or, you know, if they don’t live in the U.S. or U.K., because, you know, we have heard from a bunch of folks who have wonderful perspectives, but we want to make sure that we get lots of perspectives.
ELM: Right. OK, also, to clarify, because there was some question on this initially: physical disabilities, mental illness, neurodivergence, all that stuff, I think falls under the broad umbrella of disability. And, you know, like our other episodes about different facets of identity, absolutely fine if you want to be super critical, or if you want to be more celebratory. Like, the full spectrum—or both—the full spectrum is open. We want to hear a lot of perspectives.
So we are mostly looking for folks to contribute kind of shortish thoughts like we’ve done in the race episodes and also the “Writing Trans Characters” episode. So maybe a voicemail of a couple of minutes, or a few paragraphs of thoughts. So you can email us at fansplaining@gmail.com to get in touch if you’re interested in being a participant.
But we are also open to folks who have studied this in some capacity. We have a few people that we’re potentially going to be talking to, but we’d definitely be open to a few more, especially fans of color who could talk about their experiences, both as disabled fans and studying some element of that.
FK: Yeah. And also, as we always say, you can also leave a voicemail at 1-401-526-FANS.
ELM: Yeah, you don’t have to—you know, if you just want to leave your thoughts, you don’t have to get in touch in advance, so, yeah, absolutely.
FK: Cool. Well, with that out of the way, I hope that we get lots of people responding. Shall we call Justin up?
ELM: Let’s do it.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, I think it’s time to welcome Justin to the podcast. [laughs] How you doing, Justin?
Justin Bolger: I’m doing really well, thank you. How are you? [FK & ELM laugh]
FK: Having a great time already.
ELM: [laughing] Little in medias res there. Hi, Justin, thank you so much for coming on. It’s a delight to see you again.
JB: Thank you, it is very nice to see both of you again as well.
ELM: OK, all right, serious, serious. OK, so, let’s start at the beginning. I’m going to ask the very traditional guest question about your, like, fannish origin story, and how that led to a kind of professional fandom-related career.
FK: Which may be a villain or a hero origin story. It’s up to you to determine how you frame it. [JB laughs]
ELM: Or something more complicated.
JB: [laughing] Sorry.
FK: Another third, more complicated—
ELM: Magneto! Magneto!
JB: The look on your face, Elizabeth, as Flourish began to say that. You’re like, “What are you doing? What are you doing?” [all laugh]
FK: All right, Justin.
JB: Whether it’s a hero or villain story, I leave to everyone else. It probably fluctuates in between, but I’m not going to tell you all of that. I’ve been a nerd for as long as I can remember. My first memory is genuinely The Star Wars Storybook.
FK: What!
JB: Well, yeah, when I was three or four years old, I missed out—I was born after The Empire Strikes Back, but before Return of the Jedi, so those storybooks were all over the place. [JB & ELM laugh] Um, but I have a very distinct memory of kind of that dramatis personae that they had in the beginning of that, which was like, nine or twelve, like, “Han Solo, a roguish scoundrel who X, Y, and Z.” And, like, “Darth Vader…” or whatever. And for some reason, as a kid, I thought Grand Moff Tarkin was just really cool, uh…[all laugh]
I was an army brat, so I grew up moving around, and I think something in moving from place to place and meeting new friends showed me very quickly the value of pop culture as kind of a trading commodity. Like, I wasn’t really that big into sports, and even—it didn’t really depend on—I’m sorry, it depended on where you went. Sports was different depending on what area you were in, or who liked what team. But you could always find somebody who liked Star Wars or Batman or some other pop culture institution, and that was a great kind of commonality that you could use to relate to people, and I happened to like all of this stuff anyway.
So I went through life as a nerd, jumping kind of from fandom to fandom, or I think a better way of saying it is collecting fandoms and beginning to become kind of conversant—unbeknownst to you at a young age—in how fandoms work. Like, what characters are liked, what characters aren’t liked, why, and all that stuff.
And then, being marketed to heavily, as a kid, I think [FK & ELM laugh] had a significant impact on my origin story. So I not only associate being a fan with the stories, but also the selling to me of those stories. So everything from G.I. JOE, which is a big 30-minute-long commercial anyway, when I’m a kid. Tons of other marketing companies and toy companies replicating that for success, having special features and behind-the-scenes kinds of things that broke down what you loved so much to either get you into a theater to see it, or to get you more hyped about everything around it, so you’d buy more toys and stuff.
And then fast forward to me working at Verizon for quite a while, moving from being a customer service trainer into being marketing internally and kind of moonlighting and having more fun with my fandom at that point in my life by doing podcasts. I was the host of a Star Wars podcast called The ForceCast for a little while. I had my own Star Wars podcast, Star Wars with Friends, and I’d gotten into podcasting on my friend Sean’s podcast, Modern Myth Media. And, you know, picking up actual skills along the way, because I think the secret’s out now, but it wasn’t really back then. You can really kind of train yourself in PR and media and marketing by marketing what you’re doing to other people so that you can show that people listen to you and then get access into these cool places that as a fan you just want to know more about.
And so that led to a few contacts at Lucasfilm, and they had a social media position open. I had reached out for professional advice anyway from someone who was there who suggested I’d be a good fit for it. I interviewed, and then a couple of months later I was working for Lucasfilm as their social media strategist, which is really not my first marketing job, but my first marketing job that I actually liked. [all laugh]
And that led to leading brand marketing efforts for ILMxLAB, which is Lucasfilm’s immersive entertainment arm, which is really cool. And then I moved on to Asmodee, which makes tabletop board games. So still kind of expanding my nerd marketing skills portfolio, and then about three, four months ago, I went to video games, and I’m working for a company called Scopely as the senior brand manager for a game called “Star Trek Fleet Command.”
So I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve gotten to work in both of my first nerd loves—which, Star Wars and then also Star Trek, been a fan almost as long as I’ve been a Star Wars fan, which is a long time, as I’m getting old. And so that’s kind of where I am. That is my origin story.
Except, wait, there’s one more part—which is going to Comic-Con in 2009, which was my first one. A lot of people up on stage talking about “and you can do this, too,” which is where I got it in my head to move from Charleston, South Carolina, where I was still working for Verizon, to Irvine, California, which is where I made the jump from, like, training to internal marketing. So, yup. That’s all of it.
ELM: Wait, someone on stage at Comic-Con in 2009 said “you can do it, too” and you moved 3,000 miles just on that?
JB: Oh, like, hell yeah. [all laugh] Which is not meant to make me sound cool or anything, but I think a very fortunate side effect of moving around as a kid, every three or four years—
ELM: Sure.
JB: —is that even if sometimes I didn’t like it, and I had to leave friends that I had made and then go on and make other friends, it kind of taught me how to adapt really quickly to different circumstances, and I think I didn’t have enough time to get attached to one place so much that moving however far away seemed like it was this big thing. So it’s not like, “Oh, I was really brave,” or “I would do it no matter the cost.” It was more like, “I’ve been moving all my life. I can make another move if it’s to do cool stuff like that,” so…
FK: Yeah, but that’s really cool, because, like, I don’t know. When I had been working, you know, doing fan stuff in the film industry, the number one thing I would always tell people who asked me, like, “How do you make the leap?” is, like, “You gotta move! You gotta move to California. You have to do it.”
JB: Yup.
FK: You don’t have to. There’s, like, some number of people who succeed without it, but, like, it’s gonna make everything 500 times easier. So it’s really cool to have somebody—and I didn’t do that myself, [FK & ELM laugh] though, so it’s really nice to have somebody who’s like, “I did it, and it worked!” because it makes me feel like the advice I gave wasn’t terrible.
JB: No, it’s great advice. [all laugh] I think the big value of that is, on one hand, it sounds really daunting and like somebody oversimplifying something that’s a huge life-changing thing. Like, “Move to California, young man in Rhode Island! Or Florida.” [ELM & FK laugh] And you’re like, “That’s easier said than done.” But I think the thing I wasn’t expecting when I moved is to find a tribe so quickly. Depending on where you are, and I guess the overall lifestyle of that area, you know, you can live in an area in which nerd things are seen as having value and being profitable and that means you can parlay all of your knowledge into a job if you’re hardworking and just find that niche that you can plug into.
Versus you going and not finding a tribe and thinking that it’s like those old ’30s movies where you move to New York and the rat race is out to get you, and you gotta be a fast-talking career person in order to make it, and you’re gonna be tempted by the Dark Side, but make it through in the end. [ELM laughs] It really did feel like—and continues to feel like—moving out to a place where a lot of people are like-minded, and you can find them really quickly, and that’s where networking happens, and you’d be surprised at how many people have an in, big or small, working in a lot of things that you’d want to do.
ELM: OK, I want to know—so when you got that job at Lucasfilm, can you talk about the work that you did? I know you probably can’t say everything—
JB: Yeah.
ELM: But can you describe what that meant, as a job?
JB: Sure. So from March of 2016—March 14, and I know that because that’s when Return of the Jedi, the special edition, came out, and so I was like, “Oh, look at that! The anniversary.” [all laugh] But—
FK: You know, I’m just thinking about, like, the social media anniversaries calendar that I’m sure that you must have had that, like, lists every possible date that you might squeeze a post out of. [laughs]
JB: Yes.
FK: Go on.
JB: Luckily, I—
ELM: No, hold on. This was from your birth. You gave your birthday as a range between two Star Wars films. You’ve always done this.
JB: Actually, that is true. But that’s—[FK & ELM laugh] that’s just because that’s—in general, that’s just how my brain works. It’s really weird. But you know what, no! Now that you bring it up—
FK: This is why you were a good social media person. [ELM laughs]
JB: But now that you bring it up like that, you’re like, “You’re always like this.” You made me question, “Why was I always like this?” [FK & ELM laugh] And I go back to me saying that, you know, being sold to—if you’re a nerd, you’re being sold to, like, every second of every day, it seems like. So there’s a big importance placed on dates. Like, the first thing that came to mind is the Star Trek: First Contact trailer, right? It’s like, “On November 22,” and I’m like, “Of course I’ll remember that. [ELM laughs] How can I forget that date when it was being shoved down my throat for weeks at a time on two different TV shows every week?” [FK laughs] And then, yeah, like—
ELM: That’s so funny.
JB: That’s why. Oh, man. Marketing.
ELM: Oh, Justin, do you wanna know the very first date I went on—
JB: I mean, sure.
ELM: Star Trek: First Contact.
JB: Rea—so, wait, like, on that date? November 22? Or—
ELM: I don’t think we went on opening day, but it was probably around that time.
JB: Nice.
ELM: I think we went pretty early. Yeah.
JB: See? That’s a quality movie. And—
ELM: My middle-school boyfriend was a Trekkie.
FK: [laughs] That’s a quality movie.
ELM: I enjoyed it! [laughter] It was all right. James Cromwell was in it. I love him. [laughs]
JB: Yes, you said middle-school boyfriend, so I’m like, well, I’m guessing because you said “he was,” meaning that person is no longer in your life, [ELM laughs] that person may have gone from your life, but the memories of that quality movie will last forever. [FK laughs]
ELM: That’s true. David and I at the, uh, at Star Trek: First Contact in the Wilton Mall.
JB: There you go.
ELM: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Those memories.
JB: [laughs] I don’t even know what I was speaking to you before that. [all laugh]
FK: You were going to tell us what your job was at Lucasfilm.
JB: Oh, yes! So I was the social media strategist for Star Wars, meaning that I, in partnership with a manager, Liz Dennebaum, who’s an awesome person and now works for SiriusXM, would basically run and administer Star Wars social media. So every post that was seen from March 14, 2016 to I think December 2018—and there was nothing important going on in Star Wars at that time, I’m sure, right? [FK & ELM laugh]—was written by me, most likely, and copy-edited by me with Liz and, yeah, it was really cool.
So for two, a little over two years I got to come up with programming that promoted Star Wars and I’m really proud of, during that time, I feel like the social media scope of Star Wars expanded quite a bit to not just be talking about the IP itself, but to really relate the fandom of the IP to the products that were coming out in a way that wasn’t really overly commercial, but really saw a lot of value in the story itself and the characters and the nuggets of the continuing story that you’d get out of it.
Yeah, I’m really proud of that time and still look back on it very, very fondly, and I got to do a lot of things that I’d wanted to do for a while, like different movie premieres. You get to go to screenings, the best internal meetings I’ve ever been to in my entire life, where you would learn about content that was coming up, but it was kind of a Q&A, where they will tell you “X, Y, and Z is going to happen in Rogue One,” and you can back-and-forth with people who know more about the stories so that you can really not just know what happens, but start to deconstruct why it happens, and what effect it has on the characters, and then you as a fan can begin to think about all the different ways that you think that that story is going to resonate with people and what beats you can talk about, or what elements to tease that you are privy to, which is not a lot at all, but you know, you take those little nuggets and you think, “All right, who would like this? Why would they like it? How can I make them feel better about their fandom, while at the same time, for the business, getting them really hyped for what’s coming?”
So, it was cool. You got to kind of exercise both parts of marketing brain. Here is all the marketing science that I’m applying to things, but I’m applying that marketing science to things in this way because I love the product so much.
FK: All of this sounds delightful, wonderful, and totally representative of the things that I used to like the most when working in this field. But thinking about being in charge of Star Wars social media during that time, man, makes me want to scream and die, personally. [JB laughs] Just because of, like, all of the drama happening.
ELM: Like, while you’re dying, you’d be screaming? Like, just like—
FK: I feel like maybe there would be a scream and then just a fall over dead. [FK & JB laugh] Waaaa—!
JB: I imagine Pee-wee Herman coming out of the pet shop with the snakes and just, like, [ELM & FK laugh] and then off-camera falling on the ground.
FK: Yeah, you know, I mean, I totally get what you’re saying about how great that was, but there must have been also some psychic damage being done during that time just from the level of engagement and freak-out and, like, arguments and racism in the Star Wars fandom happening occasionally and, like—occasionally. And, like, all of that, just being stewed in it. That must have been a lot.
JB: Uh…yeah. In a word. It was. [FK laughs] I will say, though, I don’t know why, my household was I guess very pragmatic, growing up, so I learned, I feel, very quickly to balance my emotion with a pragmatism that would keep my emotion from “getting out of hand,” quote-unquote.
I like to call it going to my Vulcan place. There’s a great quote in Star Trek ’09, which is simple as hell, but it’s when Spock is beating these kids up, and Sarek, his dad, comes in, and he says—he talks about logic offering a serenity that most people won’t experience. It’s the control of emotions so that they do not control you. That line spoke to me, like, deeply when I heard it, because it’s like, “Yup. I identify with that completely.”
So I’ll attribute what I’m going to say to that kind of sensibility, but I typically take a long view. I like to kind of look up and then out over the entirety of the forest and then concentrate on one tree and see how it affects the forest and then go back to the other tree, and so on and so forth. It’s really hard to turn marketing brain off, [FK laughs] and I find that that helps.
So as far as my own personal feelings, on one hand, being in love with a franchise, it’s really…draining and can affect you emotionally to see a different side of it or an evolution of it or whatever. But I’m big into government and politics, huge news junkie, so I like to see what’s happening in the outside world as well. And fortunately or unfortunately, it wasn’t just Star Wars at that time. It was the world really moving to the same kind of place and that means that every single pop culture touchpoint was also affected by that.
On one hand, it is a tragedy that that is a big aspect of Star Wars fandom and definitely seen by, I think, the quote-unquote “outside world” as a big aspect of it. But, you know, if you’re a core, core, deep Twitter social media Star Wars fan, you see so many of the people espouse the values of what that brand is, and that’s something else that I still geek out about and love as far as the Lucasfilm ethos. If you really take a look at every single Lucasfilm story, they all deal with a band of disparate people coming together to oppose a monolithic force that doesn’t really value individuality and kind of wants to stamp it out. Everything from Willow to Tucker to—I mean, all the Star Wars movies of course, but that to me is the ethos of what Lucasfilm is, and it’s baked into Star Wars, and Star Wars just happens to be the one that was banged up enough to get that pop culture relevance, and that gives Star Wars power. And to be a part of that power—and I don’t mean for, like, this, you know, megalomaniacal, “I’ll take over the world with a Star Wars tweet” kind of way, [FK laughs] but more—I guess maybe power is the wrong word. Maybe an influence. And when that influence is inspirational, you can’t help but still love to go to work and be a part of that.
And at that time in particular, it felt a little bit darker than it feels right now. At least, that’s the way that I see the world. So knowing that going to work everyday and writing things that made people feel like, “Oh, they’re not just trying to sell to us. They do understand what we like about this,” and you can see little rays of light where they’re trying to get through.
But one of the things I think that not enough people really talk about, when they talk about that time and the Star Wars fandom and the uproar and the racism and things like that is, if you were to categorize Star Wars objectively, and not really put emotion into it, and then put it up on a shelf with almost everything else happening in the world that is relevant to people’s lives—and story, I think, is the most relevant thing to people’s lives, honestly—it all began to go that way. And that’s not an accident. There are definitely forces, as sci-fi as that sounds, there are forces out there that are deliberately using these things to peddle an agenda and push it, because they know the stories have power and can get into people’s minds, and when you have a story inside of your head, that story changes how you see the world, and that’s the power that I’m talking about.
So it was less that I felt, “Oh, they’re just tearing everything down, and it’s all falling apart,” and it’s moreso, “OK, on one hand, this is some really, really shitty behavior. On the other hand, it kind of validates the importance of what we’re doing.” And honestly that made me want to do even better.
ELM: That’s really interesting. I’m also kind of just fascinated by the compartmentalization you’re describing, because, you know, I was thinking about, when you were giving your initial answer of what your job was like, thinking about what I’ve heard of Flourish’s former work, and Flourish mostly—I know you can’t talk about all of it—but mostly you were not working on properties that you’ve been, like, a lifelong, from-the-earliest-memory fan of, right? Like, generally not.
FK: Yeah. Few of them.
ELM: I mean, you didn’t work on Star Trek or Star Wars, which are two of your life—you know?
FK: Yeah, like, I was working on properties that I liked, but most of the time, I rarely was working on a property that I really felt like, you know, had been my core, original fan thing.
ELM: Right.
FK: In fact, I tried to avoid it, because I felt like, [recoiling noise] about that. [laughs]
ELM: Right. And what I’m hearing from you, Justin, is that is part of what gave you a lot of strength, was the deep, deep level, longtime fandom you had. And I’m wondering, also, now you’re working on a Star Trek-related thing too, so how that feels, also. How did it affect your personal fandom, to kind of work on the inside on these things?
JB: Your mileage may vary. Everyone’s fandom is really different, which I think is the beauty part of fandom. On podcasts, I used to say all the time that the greatest gift a fellow fan can give you is their point of view, because that enables you then to go back into something that you may know intimately well, but through completely different eyes and experience, and in a different way, and I mean, what a gift. So many people these days like to talk about, “I have an encyclopedic knowledge of this thing, and I know what this tank was or this ship and where it came from.” But so many people, I think, sometimes don’t really spend time thinking about the why, and if you have someone else’s opinion, it almost forces you to think, “Oh, why do they see it this way instead of the way I see it?” And then, again, magic happens there.
As far as how it affected my fandom, like I said, your mileage may vary. I feel like my own personal fandom enjoys geeking out about story elements or different cameos from characters that I might see, like, that kind of thing. Like, Palpatine is my favorite Star Wars character. He showed up for two seconds in Obi-Wan Kenobi and it was like, “Oh my God, there he is!” But at the same time, [laughs] for me, just like with collecting things, I couldn’t just geek out about all of it all the time anyway, and so I think there was a part of me that was almost yearning for an evolution of my own fandom, and I personally found that in taking the time and honestly availing myself of the privilege of being in the place that I love to really find out as much about the thing as I could. Not necessarily just the story, but, “Oh, I wonder where else the story could have gone. Are there scenes that may have changed by the time they get to the public that I can actually watch because of where I work and what I need to know?”
And kind of holding onto that knowledge very selfishly, one, because of the thing called NDAs, [ELM laughs] and two, just because it’s really cool to know, “Yup, but there was a scene in which this thing happened differently and would have changed your complete understanding of this that’s locked away someplace at Lucasfilm.” Like, it’s really cool to know that and to—this is gonna sound so pretentious. To be essentially like a Star Wars scholar, where you’re finding all of these things out, and you’re learning about them, one, to be better at your job, but also just for you as a person, so that you know more about this thing that you love a lot, and so that you know it better.
That’s really how it affected my fandom overall. Today, I think that that manifests itself in, I may not always be in the biggest hurry to ingest the content as much. For instance, Andor looks amazing and, like, the Star Wars show that is created for me, and I haven’t seen any of it yet, just because I haven’t. So while I think the urgency around consumption may not be there for me anymore, the intense desire to know more about the craft of the thing is where my fandom kind of changed in working for Lucasfilm versus observing and ingesting the stuff.
ELM: You know, OK, all right—when you gave the first half of the answer, I was like, “This guy is, like, on another level.” You’re like, “I just want different people’s opinions, that’s amazing.” [FK laughs] I’m like, “I don’t want to hear anyone’s opinion about the thing I like. Get out of here, I’m so tired.” And then the second answer was also on another level. I just—I don’t know, I feel like, these are galaxy-brain panel levels, you know? You’re like, [explosion noise]. [FK & JB laugh] You know what I mean. What’s the—or the Vince McMahon one.
JB: I like the starburst. That was—[ELM laughs] and the sound effect. [JB & ELM make explosion noises]
FK: No, it’s really true, though, because I feel like, you know, you hear—you’re expressing sort of one of the classic fan things, which is like, “I want to have total, like, knowledge mastery over this thing.” But you’re taking it to a different place than most people ever get to, as far as, like, the desire and the enjoyment and how that relates to consumption. It’s just, you know. It’s cool. [laughs]
JB: Thank you!
ELM: Well, I wonder—did you guys see the quote from Roger Ebert that’s been going around Twitter the last week?
FK: No.
ELM: It was very negative about fans. He wrote it, like, in the late 2000s, I think. And he was talking about, like—it was just a critique of a certain kind of fan, who’s hoarding knowledge and knows all the facts and is just doing it for the sake of doing it at that point, right? I wish you guys had seen it to know exactly how this relates to that, but it’s sort of like, you want all this knowledge because you really love this. You really love Star Wars. Right? You know? It’s not just for the sake of having the most Star Wars facts. Like, there’s a different person who’s in that role, who would be like, “I know all the things. I know all the things.” Right? Whereas you’re just like, “I just know more about this world. I love this.” Right?
JB: Yeah, there’s a scene in a Star Trek episode—so I’m gonna relate Star Trek to Star Wars, ha ha—[laughs]
FK: Yeah!
JB: There’s a DS9 episode—this is a nerd podcast, so I’m not even gonna say who these different people are and just trust the audience to be the audience. [FK laughs]
ELM: Don’t worry about it. Yeah.
JB: Where a Ferengi, Quark, goes back home, finds out a lot of stuff about his mom, has this heart-to-heart with her later on. Quark has a brother, Rom. His mom compliments him in the end for being a quote “good Ferengi” and says, you know, “You know all your rules of acquisition,” et cetera. And Quark turns to his mom and he says, “Oh, Rom—” who’s his brother “—knows the rules just as well as I do.” And his mom says, “Yes, but you understand them.” There’s a difference—and Star Wars, I mean, episode two, there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom. [FK laughs] Those quotes are saying the same thing. Just because you have a fact doesn’t mean that you understand it or can apply it to the world.
And I would say that when going back to that time, and even this time, where you see Star Wars quote-unquote “fans” espousing values and behaving in ways that are completely antithetical to the values of the thing that they’re professing to love, that’s exactly what that is. And I think that the big opportunity and definitely the harder thing to do there is not necessarily to attack, but to try and get around that lack of understanding. That’s way easier said than done, but going back to again my time there, I think that was the perspective and the track that I took, versus, “Why are these people messing it all up? They’re just ruining everything!” Because that wasn’t ever going to lead us to a good place.
FK: You know, it’s interesting, because as you were talking about that, it reminded me of observing fans who really want to be able to sort of predict where a show’s going to go, or talk about how they understand sort of the depths of that thing the most. And…I don’t know. It made me kind of wonder about how that connects with your, you know, idea about different perspectives. Because when I think about, like, shows where there’s a bunch of fans who really are into a slash ship or what have you, and they’re seeing something that’s totally real, [laughs] you know what I mean? In the sense of, like, within the story, you can look at that and be like, “There’s a really good argument here for this happening—”
ELM: Are you talking about Finn/Poe, Flourish?
FK: [laughs] I mean, I was actually just thinking about straight Kirk/Spock or something, but you can put in whatever you want.
ELM: Straight Kirk? And Spock?
FK: [laughs] Thanks. Thanks, Elizabeth.
ELM: OK, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.
FK: I’m just saying, you know, sometimes there’s situations where there’s multiple viewpoints on a story that—you know, maybe some of them are more likely to get carried out by an official show, and some of them are not very likely to get carried out, but I don’t know. I guess I’m interested in your perspective on those kinds of competing views, because I can see how that could be interesting, but it feels like it’s also a little bit in conflict with the idea of knowledge versus wisdom, right?
JB: Yeah.
FK: It may not be very wise if you’re really invested in X slash pairing that is not going to happen on the show itself, but is that bad? You know?
JB: No, no, not at all. [FK laughs] First of all, amazing question. I love that. I love this kind of stuff. Lemme see. Where do I wanna start? One, it is not bad. [FK laughs] Two, it is probably not wise if it’s leading with your heart, and I will circle back to that in just a second, because I really want to underscore the larger point, which is, it doesn’t matter if it’s quote-unquote “wise”—it’s fun. And it makes you feel good. And it makes you—it sparks your imagination, and now you’re thinking about the dynamics between two people and why you think that these two people are going to get together, or why this thing is going to happen, and you’re attributing all of these anthropological reasons to why this thing is going to happen, and that’s you thinking at a level that is a hell of a lot of fun, especially when there’s no pressure on it. These things and people aren’t real. You don’t have to worry about if a bill is gonna be passed that will affect your life, or if something else is coming at you. It is purely a mental and emotional sandbox for you to play around in and willfully go to the places that you want to, and that’s an amazing thing that is the best part of fandom and again is why the best thing that somebody else can offer you as a fan is their opinion, because it gives you that gift repeatedly. And if you give it in return, then there’s all sorts of great things there that are going on, just from a place of personal kinship and relationship, which is the other great thing about fandom.
Going back I think to the root of the question—and correct me if I’m getting any part wrong—you know, you always have to have kind of, not a niche, but I hate saying this about people, but a brand that is your brand. For Fansplaining, it’s “we talk about all of this through the lens of the fan,” and that’s the brand. I would say that, like, my brand in podcasting and—I mean, it’s really only continued to be my belief—is that business is the best indicator of future direction. It’s the thing that I try to talk about not most. Like, not from a cold perspective, like, “The business of these means that Batgirl will never see the light of day,” or that kind of stuff. [FK & JB laugh] But more so that, “All right, look at everything going on at the company. Look at what the company needs to do. Look at the environment that the company is operating in, and think about all the places that company wants to go in the next five to ten years.” Because as much as I love all of the stories, it is, at the end of the day, for the company’s owning them, about making money and a return on that investment. And so, using Finn/Poe as an example—
FK: Brave man!
ELM: Yeah.
JB: Yeah. Using Finn/Poe as an example, that is not necessarily the first place that my mind went when I was watching The Force Awakens, but, like, hell if looking back on that entire trilogy now, I’m like, “Man, that really was a big, in my opinion, missed opportunity.” Not to pursue an agenda, just because if you really are making Star Wars in that classic “we don’t necessarily know where we’re going, and we’re being inspired by the very thing we’re making until we get to the end”—that just really did seem natural, because of the affinity between those two actors, and the way that their characters came off.
And personally, I think that because of how hot-button that is for the types of movies that Star Wars are seen by from traditional pop culture and where they occupy a space now, and maybe even how they’ve been promoted in the past—and I’m not talking about Lucasfilm, I mean how they’ve been received and thusly marketed by other people, I understand. I understand why it didn’t happen. Doesn’t mean I think it was the right choice. But I do understand the business decision. And knowing that environment—and I don’t even mean as an employee of the Walt Disney Company, I mean just by looking at the news, looking at where profits are coming from and what future direction the company wants to take, I don’t think that that was ever really a realistic expectation. And that goes back to me talking about myself, as far as trying very hard to be able to, if not separate logic from emotion, at least temper both, so that I can feel one way, but understand on the other hand why the way I think or feel it should have gone didn’t go that way.
I will also say that working in pop culture, nerd marketing, whatever you want to call it, it’s been very interesting to see who your colleagues are. Not everyone comes from this really big nerd background, where “I just loved the stuff so much I decided to try and work on it,” you know? [all laugh]
ELM: Good impersonation of yourself. That was great.
JB: Thank you.
FK: Accurate, also. Very accurate.
JB: I’ve known me for a long time. [ELM laughs]
FK: The voice, especially, like, mwah. [laughs]
JB: It’s like going into AutoZone and expecting that if I need a new rearview mirror that the person who directs me to the aisle is going to be like, “What? You drive a Ford Escape? Oh my gosh, that’s my favorite car! [ELM laughs] It’s a cousin of the Explorer. Did you see Jurassic Park? It’s the same car!” They, like—no one—you don’t have to do that to be good at your job. [FK laughs]
And the reason I’m saying that is because while you don’t have to be a dyed-in-the-wool lover of these things to be good at your job, I do think that that’s one of the areas that quote-unquote “regular” fans, regular people, have to break in. As I said earlier, like, 10, 12 years ago, having a podcast and running a blog was still kind of cutting edge. People weren’t sure of where it was all going, and how it was influencing pop culture, and the answer is it influenced it a lot, and it’s a profitable thing now, where people don’t even need to work for the direct source in order to have pretty good lives doing what I do and what you do.
That’s another one of my passions is, it’s really easy if you live in Charleston, South Carolina, or in Missouri, to think, “Man, that stuff’s really far away, and that’d be cool to do it one day, but I can’t do it.” It’s way closer than you think it is. And way easier to do it, and your passion will give you a crazy leg up on a lot of people who can’t necessarily break down the things that you’re working on, but can leverage their professional knowledge to enhance yours. And a lot of really cool stuff can happen because of that interplay, and if you love all of this, it’s a great way of impacting the course that these things you love ultimately take.
Put another way, you do what you have to do, so that you can do what you want to do, and being somebody in the room where some of those decisions are made, and really advocating for the business, but also in a manner consistent with the kinds of emotions that the audience is baking in, or—baking in is the wrong word. The kind of emotions and vibes and good will that the audience is really directing at the company, because of the story, is a really, really powerful thing that I would love to see more nerds take advantage of.
The last thing I’ll say about this is after, like, every comic con—New York, San Diego, it doesn’t matter, right? You will always see fellow nerds who are doing their thing online, say things like, “I got to interview Oscar Isaac,” or “I got to interview this person.” With all due respect to all of those lovely people, I hate seeing that, because the phrase “I got to” implies that somebody exists who can give you that permission, or there’s a gatekeeper who you have to satisfy before they allow you or deign to let you do this thing. And every time I see that, I’m like, “F— that, that’s your hard work. You wrote stuff. You did networking. You maneuvered yourself to a position where you got access to the people that inspire you. And that in itself is inspiring, meaning that you are now getting at that level.”
And so, yeah. TL;DR, too late, if you’re a nerd and you’re passionate about this kind of stuff, try and hone your craft and see how far it can get you, and then take an active role in changing things. It’s not quite like getting elected and, you know, [FK and ELM laugh] changing your local government, but if it’s something that you love and you can help change it, again, story’s powerful and that has a lot of positive impact on society and the direction that society’s going as well. And marketing and brand management, I think, is sometimes an even larger part of that than the story itself.
ELM: This is so interesting. So, like, you’ve had the side of your—like, the fan, just feeling it side, and the analytical side. There’s many sides going on here. It’s gonna be, like, quadrants or whatever. And then the—[laughs] Yeah. And then, uh, and then the marketing and the business knowledge, right? And you obviously have a lot more information about that now than you did probably 10 years ago, right?
JB: Yeah. Or even a year ago.
ELM: Or—even better, yeah. So, I feel like one of the things that we’ve observed, observing fans over the last close to a decade now, Flourish, I just want to say that. I think we can start saying that. Yeah. Shocking. Flourish looks shocked. You know, is, like, a huge increase in fans talking about corporations, talking about perceived [laughs] knowledge of corporate interests or machinations, or whatever. Like, I’m assuming that this is something you’ve observed also.
JB: Oh yes. One day, and I’m not gonna go down this rabbit hole at all, but the whole perceived knowledge and machinations and stuff like that, [FK laughs] look up “Luke Skywalker red X,” and just go from there, but yes. I have experience with…[laughs]
ELM: Red X…wait, sidenote, how about the conspiracy theory about Luke Skywalker’s height?
JB: Uh…I have actually not heard that one.
FK: [gasps] Oh, we’re gonna hook you up with that one.
ELM: All right, we’re gonna have to get into that.
JB: Yeah. Gonna have to write that one down too.
ELM: I mean, celebrity heights in general, an amazing topic.
FK: Always debated.
JB: Have you ever seen Tom Cruise in person? If so, you know. [FK laughs]
ELM: Yeah, no, I think, if—when a male celebrity lists their height as 5’7”, I’m like there’s no…[FK laughs] You’re already going there. My love, little James McAvoy, [JB & FK laugh] that’s a small man. Anyway! Anyway—
JB: You made him sound like Stevie Wonder. “I love little James McAvoy.” [all laugh]
ELM: He’s just so small.
JB: “I love little Stevie Wonder.”
ELM: [laughing] He’s small. He’s jacked, but he’s, you know, wee, so… [laughs]
FK: [laughs] Like the mighty ant of the celebrity world, he can lift large amounts.
ELM: OK, all right. All right. Anyway. So you know, we’ve seen this huge shift in fans, like, getting more knowledge about how things are made, and also in fans thinking they have more knowledge. And I guess that’s what I’m getting at, is the latter. Is like…you know, you or Flourish or even me to a lesser extent because I have this secondhand information from Flourish and other people that we know in the entertainment industry, have some sense of why decisions are being made. But you increasingly see fans talking very authoritatively that they know why these business decisions are being made I think based on not a lot of fact. And so I’m wondering how you sort that out, like, how do you square that with the very good answer that you just gave.
JB: Let me first, real quick, point back to my previous talking about the power of pop culture and story, and how for the time around The Last Jedi, if you looked at Star Wars objectively and put it on a shelf with everything else, you saw the same slide toward negativity and rancor. I would say that what you just said was a perfect encapsulation of that. So you said, who may not be able to speak knowledgeably, and I hope I got the words right, but they are speaking authoritatively.
ELM: Sure.
JB: And so what I wrote down was, I would disagree slightly, and say that—I would choose a different word. They’re not speaking authoritatively, they’re speaking with passion. And not to get too far down, like, a news hole, but that’s the world right now. It’s definitely our country. Where you don’t have to have firsthand knowledge of the science of the thing, you just have to have a very passionate opinion about the thing.
ELM: Sure.
JB: And the level of passion can override the rational want for facts to kind of balance things out. That’s, I think, to answer your question, that’s kind of how I’ve balanced that out. Writing copy is fun because you can hide messages in there, and they don’t necessarily—I know, right? [laughs]
ELM: Don’t say that! Everyone’s gonna think every single message is coded.
JB: No, that’s good, because honestly every single message is coded. [ELM laughs]
FK: Oh my God!
ELM: Stop it! [laughs]
JB: It’s true! Every message is coded, right? Wang Chung. “The words we use are strong, they make reality.” People pick them for real reasons and use them for real reasons—
ELM: [laughing] OK—
JB: And when I said “hidden,” that might have put too fine a point on it. I mean more so, like, words and presentation are all chosen for a very specific reason. They are there to change your opinion and make you feel differently about the thing that you’re looking at, and that lasts for longer than a theatrical marketing campaign. And the stories that we tell ourselves are really strong, and I think that sometimes, I think oftentimes people don’t stop to kind of think about where the stories they tell themselves about themselves come from. It’s not to say that if you are informed by a story, you’re less-than in any way. Like, God knows I’m informed by a million stories that I love. But thinking about why your opinion is what it is, and where it came from, I think just makes you kind of more aware and on guard against people incepting you in ways that are not good or less than altruistic.
The reason I’m saying that is there are definitely a lot of people who feel genuinely about these properties and will be “bad actors,” quote-unquote. But just like in Star Wars, [laughs] if you follow where the bad actors are coming from, there’s usually somebody more powerful than them holding some puppet strings that are causing them to do something for greater personal gain, whether that’s to conquer the Galactic Senate and declare an empire, or just get 100 extra bucks on your YouTube channel from this person. It’s really important, I think, to know where your opinions come from, and just really try and hone your sense of self.
And, hearing myself right now, all that stuff sounds super hoity-toity and whatnot, but I’m like, nah, it’s just wanting to know yourself better so that you can improve and maybe even find new avenues with which to enjoy all of these stories.
ELM: That’s a really good answer. Point taken, about—I was not saying authoritatively, like, you can speak in an authoritative tone and not be speaking with authority. [FK laughs]
JB: Yeah.
ELM: I agree. Because, it’s interesting, you using the word passion, just a sidenote, because passion, to me, is connected to irrationality, and just, like, raw emotion, and, yeah. You know, that’s a little irrational, some of this stuff. But I think it’s, like, the confidence in trying to present things as fact. I think, you know—I mean, we see it, people talking about, I don’t know, COVID or some pseudoscience stuff or whatever too, right?
JB: Yeah.
ELM: In politics. Like, it’s absolutely not unique to pop culture, but—
FK: And also, like—I have to say, I have heard a lot of things from people in the entertainment industry that were their opinion and totally wrong about what other businesses were doing and why they were doing it, right? Like, so even with a comparatively large amount of knowledge, you can still be like, “Oh, I’m reading the situation as X” and be totally wrong.
JB: Yup.
FK: Even if you know a lot about the business end of things, so…
ELM: Would you say the people in the entertainment industry have Answering Man Syndrome?
FK: Some—
ELM: Are you familiar with Answering Man Syndrome? [laughs]
FK: We’ll say it for our listeners anyway, because I know Answering Man Syndrome. [laughs]
JB: Yeah.
ELM: It’s like—and it’s not all men, it’s—people of all genders can have this, where you just, like, you cannot say “I don’t know.” You need to have—like, you ask a question, and you need to, like—and you pull something out of your ass if you need to, to say it in an authoritative tone.
FK: Yeah. I mean, I think that there are definitely people in the entertainment industry, as in every industry, who have Answering Man Syndrome. And I think also there’s, like, a lot of people who are—they’re genuinely trying to guess what’s happening at another company so that they can make their own moves, right? So that’s not the same thing. That’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been trying to play three-dimensional chess with everybody around me, because I want to, like, get in the right spot for my business, so obviously I’ve thought through this.” And then sometimes you’re wrong. A lot of times people are wrong, right?
So I guess that’s just to say I—maybe not to totally push back on everything you were saying, Justin, but to slightly push back in the sense of, like, I think that sometimes people know who they are and know what they’re speaking from, and they’re trying to do that within fandom also. You know? They’re like, “Oh, yeah, it would be so great—” I’m just thinking of some, you know, uh—
JB: Yeah.
FK: —some of the podcasts, and some of the, you know, like—
JB: Yeah.
FK: —large fansites that I’ve worked with in the past and been like, “That is such bullshit. You’re saying it with such authority—”
JB: Yup.
FK: “—and I know why you’re doing it. [ELM laughs] It’s not because you really think that you have all this information, it’s because it’s good for your, like, because you’re trying to, you would like it to be true—”
JB: Yup.
FK: “—and you’re kind of trying to make it true.” [laughter]
ELM: Yeah.
JB: So, for the record, I don’t consider that pushing back at all. Like, nothing’s a monolith. Right?
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
JB: What I was talking about—if there’s a shadowy figure behind the scenes pulling the strings, they need Answering Men, right? Because those are the people—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Sure.
JB: I would incorporate them into the structure that I was talking about by considering them, like, lieutenants. They’re people who are in-the-know, [FK & ELM laugh] but not so in-the-know that they can be one of the people holding the puppet strings.
FK: Yeah.
JB: And that’s apart from the people expressing those passionate opinions because they believe it, so I didn’t take that as pushback. I agree 100% with you and have definitely seen that. I think it’s impossible to be a marketer in any way, shape, or form—
FK: [laughing] And not—
JB: And not see that on a regular basis.
ELM: [laughs] I’m obsessed with the fact that you, uh, having done social media for a massive franchise, and you’re talking about coded messages and puppet strings and everything that every fandom conspiracy theorist is convinced—and you’re just like, “Yeah, don’t worry about it. It’s true!” [laughter] And it’s like, “Holy shit.”
JB: No, like—yes, except for the “don’t worry about it” part. [ELM & FK laugh] I think it’s less that you don’t have to worry about it, and I think that’s another way of saying what I was trying to say when I was talking about, like, it’s about wanting to be better or not wanting to essentially be someone’s puppet. It’s okay. Like, it’s always going to exist in one form or another. But I think that you, as a person, can hone your sense of self so much—or rather to the point where even if they work on you—because, like, on one hand, I’m like, “Yeah, there are hidden messages in everything. You gotta be totally concerned with what happens.” But, like, let an Excelsior-class starship be presented in some kind of Star Trek trailer tomorrow and I’ll be like, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” [all laugh] Right? Like, I watched the Picard season three trailer and Moriarty appears, and I paused it and I got up off the couch and I said, “MORIARITY?!” [FK & ELM laugh] and, like, ran down the hall and then ran back and sat down and kept the watching it until, like, the Enterprise showed up. And then I did the same thing. Like—
FK: Which, which is especially infuriating, because—and I’m sorry if you disagree with me, but it’s an objectively bad show that should have less fan service. And yet, every time I’m like, “Yeah! No, wait, no! I don’t want this. I’m gonna hate it when it comes out. But yeah!”
JB: I know what you mean. [ELM & FK laugh] Because, like, for instance, there was a scene in last season where Jurati is being slowly assimilated-ish by the Borg Queen and she sings, like Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night.”
ELM: [laughing] Flourish’s face right now.
JB: And I have never had such a love-hate relationship with a scene in my life. I’m like, “What the hell is this?” But at the same time, like, damn if I didn’t listen to that song in the next 24 hours, because I’m like, “That was a good scene.” [laughter] Like, it’ll—it’s gonna work—
FK: It was a bad scene! [laughs] But it’s working on my brain!
JB: But I think what I’m getting at is you have to—you have to understand why you didn’t like it, right?
FK: Yeah. [laughs]
JB: And you have to—or you have to understand why you like it in spite of knowing that it’s like, “Oh my god, what was that? That was cool, though.” [JB & FK laugh] Like, I don’t—it’s the weirdest dichotomy. But that’s how brains work. But it’s just, again, learning yourself to the point that you…you at least know where that feeling comes from, which is a whole other conversation. But yeah, exactly. Like, Moriarty. Why is he here? What’s gonna happen? Yeah. You know, like, hell if I wasn’t excited to see that guy. [laughs]
FK: Yeah, but that kind of makes sense. Because, if I understand it, right, like, one of the things you’re saying is like, “OK, like, it’s okay to, like, look for the hidden messages, try and figure out what’s going on. That’s all great. But also, you’ve got to understand, like, what in yourself is making your personal interpretation of that so important to you, and understand that you might be wrong about it. And if you are wrong about it, like, that’s because you loved something so much.” And then, like, be able to reflect on that, as opposed to just being like, “Ahh!”
JB: Yeah, exactly. And I hate to sound like a Ferengi myself right now. But going back to saying how, if you are passionate about a storyline or in fandom spaces, how this is where you can turn this into a profit for you and a job or a career that you might like. There’s value in that, in, like, man, Picard, I know kinda uneven, but damn if I’m not going to be there at six in the morning when it comes out the next day watching it before work, because I’m that excited for it.
And then ask like, “What about that excites me? Why is this working? Could I replicate this for other people like me, or give that feeling about a different franchise or fandom or product that I love to someone else who is like-minded? What might I figure out about people who are super into the show and not watching it just because they want to see what happens to the characters, but because they’re new fans and invested in the storyline?”
And then that gets you into some of the more academic things like audience segmentation and figuring out what demographics identify with different things more or not. It’s almost like the science of fandom. And it’s really…I don’t want to say it’s easy, but it feels a lot easier once you love those things. Or if you’re at least enjoying your fellow fans and thinking about how you can be of service to them, which sounds really altruistic. But remember, again, about the return on investment. By being of service to a fandom, you can also get that fandom to give you money.
I think that sometimes we say that, like, the capitalistic relationship that exists between fandom and corporation is horrible. And I mean, you don’t have to look any further than Discovery right now to see how yeah, absolutely, sometimes it is. But at the same time, it’s a relationship that, going back to what I said, you can be an active part of changing. And it’s crazy the amount of money that you could theoretically make—quick point of order, I’m not making all that money. [ELM laughs] But you can make if you understand these kinds of things, and if you are already involved in it. And as a lot of fans can sometimes feel when we’re super invested in the story, and it goes in a way that breaks our heart, you too can have a role in how that shakes out just by maybe getting a little bit more involved. And it’s…it just, again, is I think easier than people think it is. It’s a job like any other, and you get it in the same way that you get any other job. A hell of a lot more nepotism in some quarters— [all laugh]
FK: Ain’t that the truth. [FK & ELM laugh]
JB: But you can still go after that job in the same way that you could go after a job in your local community.
ELM: OK, so we are short on time, unfortunately, because I feel like we could both talk to you for, like, another four hours. I know you would love that. You love to be on someone else’s podcast.
JB: I just like talking to people. So we’re good.
ELM: [laughs] But I’m curious, so March 2016 is when you started in your first role in this. Now you’ve had multiple roles, different franchises, different mediums, all kind of connecting to fans. It’s been a while now. Looking back at where you started and what you knew then, like, what—I don’t know, is it cheesy to say like, “What have you learned?” [FK laughs] But, like, I’m really curious, because also this space has evolved, like, in the time—that’s about as long as we’ve made this podcast, and we’ve seen a lot of this from our perspective. And I’m wondering…I’m wondering what’s changed for you in the work that you do?
JB: That’s a good question. [laughs] Here’s what I’ve learned, and really quickly before I even answer, genuinely, thank you both for having me on. This has been a really great conversation. Any conversation in which I think back and I’m like, “Oh, I guess I learned something about myself.” [FK laughs]
ELM: Amazing.
JB: And I honestly think that I’ve learned three things about myself since we started talking to each other. So thank you.
ELM: I’m so touched. [all laugh]
JB: So what I’ve learned and what has changed, I’m going to try and link both of those. What I’ve learned is—and I’m serious about this—is the fans of a—you know, I’m not even gonna say fans. I’m gonna say the audience of any story—and story is a very hot commodity right now, because story means IP, and IP means licensing, and licensing means money—the audience for any story has far more power to affect that story and the direction in which it takes than even they realize. And I mean that even with fan drives popping up because they think that a corporation doesn’t understand the LGBTQ perspective, and they want to show that there are segments of the fandom that appreciate and see and value them and are, in fact, not quote-unquote “allies,” but actual allies to people—to people, not necessarily causes, but the people behind them. Everything from that, to fan podcasts, to YouTube shows. There’s power in that.
We were talking about Answering Man Syndrome a lot. That was a good part of the conversation. [ELM laughs] Look around YouTube, at any YouTube show having to deal with nerd things, and they look basically 100% the same. There is a person standing, standing or sitting in front of posters and toys and memorabilia or things. Really quick, first point I want to make is, if you’re surrounded by things, you had to buy them, and if you bought them, something had to connect your heart to your mind and made that purchase an easy one for you to make. And that goes back to brand and marketing and social and all this stuff that I’ve been saying if fans get more involved in, in professional ways, that they have more impact on all of that than they think.
But getting back to my point about the background, why do all of those backgrounds look the same? Because one person did it, and because someone else essentially copied them. They have their own voice, they have their own perspective, but the backgrounds just always look the same. [ELM & FK laugh] And now look at any official production from a studio or any kind of source that is now putting people in front of you to provide the news or talk about the newest product, and they all look just like that. These are the actual corporations, and they’re looking out at fans in the audience to figure out what drives them.
But in my very personal opinion, the overwhelming majority of the time, they only end up copying fans. That, again, is power. They’re looking to you to figure out who they should be, how they need to be, how they need to talk, what they should do, in order to continue getting your business. I can say this because I have not ideated anything that I think answers the thing I’m going to say, but somewhere out there, there are people, there’s an entity, there—somebody is going to figure out a different way of speaking to the audience. One that connects with the feelings that they have for whatever story they’re invested in. And they’re going to do it in such an authentic, regular-person kind of way that doesn’t do…this, that—[FK & ELM laugh] I’m pointing to all of these posters and books and stuff I have behind me. [laughs]
FK: [laughs] It is true. I was thinking that whole time, like, [JB laughs] “Also, the place that you are, you know, contacting us from looks just like all the other ones.” Yeah.
JB: Yeah, looks just like that. Yeah.
ELM: That guy, yeah.
JB: So when somebody figures it out, and I don’t think that TikTok, for instance, is the thing that’s going to figure it out. I think TikTok right now is a very buzzy platform. It’s powerful. But to me, at least—and I’m old—there’s something about…not consistency. I don’t see the evergreen of TikTok. There is a lot there until tomorrow. And then there’s no there there anymore.
Someone’s going to figure out basically how to talk to fans in a way that makes fans feel like they are actually talking to a friend. And not just a personality who is reading off of a script. But somebody who has the same kind of level of respect and appreciation for the product. Again, just somebody genuine who, for whatever reasons they were hired or doing it by themselves, is connecting with an audience in a way that no corporation and, in my opinion, no current generation or even last generation, if you stop and think about it, you were saying you’ve done it for almost 10 years. That’s about when I got started in all of this. We feel very contemporary talking to each other. We have the same form of reference, you know. Like, we’re basically on the same page.
But to make a very long story at this point short, someone’s going to crack doing what we’re doing better and for less money and in a way that earns them more money, not because they’re setting out to just make money, but because there’s a genuine want to connect.
I think even more so after COVID, people really want connection. And story is the easiest thing to get that connection with. And I don’t know who it's going to be, but there’s a…there there that has not been discovered or put in front of people yet. And the thing that’s changed is studios copying or taking a lot of inspiration from what fans are doing, so…it’s a race.
ELM: Such a fascinating answer. And, like, I don’t know—
FK: No, we can’t have more questions. It’s the end.
ELM: OK!
FK: We have to—[laughing] I just was sitting here—
ELM: Wow, I can’t even compliment the answer?
FK: I was just looking at your face and I was like—you know when you can see, like, the little wheels turning behind someone’s eyes—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —and you’re clearly thinking up three more things, and it’s like, [ELM laughs] “Buddy. [laughing] Buddy don’t waste the brain juice. We can’t do it.”
ELM: OK, goodbye! Goodbye! See ya! [laughs] Thank you!
FK: Thank you so much for coming on, Justin, this was wonderful. [JB laughs]
ELM: Absolutely wonderful. It was such a—like, truly fantastic conversation. So thank you so much.
JB: Thank you. I had a lot of fun.
[Interstitial music]
FK: Every time we talk to Justin, it is a total pleasure. We say this about all our guests, pretty much. But it’s—every time it’s true. [laughs] And right now, it’s the most close in time’s line to me. So it feels truest.
ELM: OK, well, that’s—I’m gonna say something that’s specifically about him and not about all our guests. But he truly is operating at another level. And it’s, like every time too, it would be like, “Where’s he going with this? Where’s he going? And then he just, like, wind—just wheel on back to, like, and tie it all together. It’s like, “How are you doing this? [FK laughs] I don’t understand.” Just—I’m just dazzled. Dazzled.
FK: Wonderful. Like a sparkly vampire. [both laugh]
ELM: Oh, OK, that’s a dazzling figure for you. How tall do you think he is? Do you know? [FK laughs] What’s his height?
FK: I have no idea.
ELM: He seems like a medium-height man.
FK: Yeah, medium.
ELM: I mean R-Patz, not Edward. I don’t know…
FK: No. I think—I feel like R-Patz is a medium-sized guy.
ELM: Yeah, he’s got a medium personality, so…
FK: All right, great. [laughs] Now that we’ve established that, we need to do our thing about, you know, Patreon, and how we make this podcast.
ELM: OK. So, speaking of vampires. [laughs] You’re like, “What the fuck? How’re you gonna get there?”
FK: Is the idea that we, like, suck the blood out of people to support our podcast?
ELM: No!
FK: I don’t think that’s how it works, Elizabeth.
ELM: No! So, patreon.com/fansplaining. That is, as everyone probably knows, how we financially support the podcast. And our patrons at $3 and up or higher, get our full collection of special episodes, and we haven’t done one in a while. And last episode, we pledged to do one on Interview with the Vampire, the series from AMC, and we haven’t watched it yet. But we’re definitely gonna do that. And I just—that’s a perfect connection. I don’t know what the problem is here.
FK: [laughs] Now, you’re right, that was a good place for it to go.
ELM: And—
FK: There’s also—
ELM: And—
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: We have another special episode on the horizon, because we’re going to see what is soon to be Flourish’s favorite movie—
FK: Oh my God.
ELM: The Knives Out sequel Glass Onion, starring Daniel Craig, my neighbor.
FK: [laughs] That’s true. So you have those things to look forward to. We also recently sent out a Tiny Zine, and we’ve still got a couple of copies left. So if you pledge at a $10 a month level, you can look forward to that. There’s also cute little tiny pins with a little fan on them that we send out at the $5 level. So there’s lots of ways that you can support us.
ELM: Yeah, and obviously, even $1. You know, we still really appreciate it, and you get access to one special episode with former Comic-Con panelist of ours, Javier Grillo-Marxuach.
FK: And, if you can’t support us financially, there’s lots of other ways you can help, largely by spreading the word about the podcast, adding it to your podcatcher. We still use podcatcher, and we say this every time. I feel like it’s old. We’re gonna do it until the end of time. And of course, by writing in. As we said earlier, obviously, we want to hear from folks who are interested in taking part in the disability episode. But we also want to hear from people in general. Your thoughts, your responses, your questions. Those things help us make each and every episode, and we really appreciate it.
ELM: Yeah. Are people going to write in to talk about how the former social media manager for Star Wars said that all messages are coded? [both laugh]
FK: If you want to—if that is your life path, then you can go ahead and do that, and we will—
ELM: [laughing] I’m not over it. I’m not over it yet.
FK: —we will see what happens.
ELM: So that’s at fansplaining.com, or 1-401-526-FANS, is the number, or fansplaining.tumblr.com. The ask box is open, anon is on. Fansplaining.com the website, there’s a similar submissions box. Or you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram, but that is not a place to really get in touch.
FK: OK. I think that might be it.
ELM: Yeah, I think that’s it.
FK: You think so?
ELM: I think that’s it.
FK: All right. Talk to you later, Elizabeth.
ELM: OK, bye, Flourish!
FK: Bye!
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