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“I feel that the faster you make money, the more it takes out of you.”
The world needs to discuss how to find the $26bn needed to get all children into school.
We have an idea how it can be achieved: http://bit.ly/10PdBJJ
This machine allows anyone to work for minimum wage for as long as they like. Turning the crank on the side releases one penny every 4.97 seconds, for a total of $7.25 per hour. This corresponds to minimum wage for a person in New York. This piece is brilliant on multiple levels, particularly as social commentary. Without a doubt, most people who started operating the machine for fun would quickly grow disheartened and stop when realizing just how little they’re earning by turning this mindless crank. A person would then conceivably realize that this is what nearly two million people in the United States do every day…at much harder jobs than turning a crank. This turns the piece into a simple, yet effective argument for raising the minimum wage.
Lots of really amazing writers denigrate their work (or have their work denigrated by others) because they write fanfiction rather than “real stories.” The more I think about this, the more messed up I think this is, and I’d like to talk about why.
Part of the reason fanfic is often denigrated is because a lot of it is erotic, a lot of it is about escapism and wish-fulfillment, and a lot of it is queer. So much fanfiction is queer, in fact, that it should come as no surprise that it is widely reviled and made into a joke; homophobia is still very real and I trust that I don’t have to explain how it would cause queer literature to be denigrated.
But that still leaves the fact that a lot of fanfic is erotic. Given that I’m a sex educator, I’ve seen first-hand the effects of sex-negativity and its accompanying effects of silence and shame. People’s lives are ruined or ended every day by what they did not know, have had hidden from them, and could not find out for themselves. I’m not exaggerating this in the slightest; ignorance about sex and sexuality regularly causes death, either from dangerous abortion procedures, suicide, disease, or murder. With that degree of violence surrounding sexual information, I see an obvious connection between cultural sex-negativity and the fact that erotic literature is so widely viewed is worthless. Of course this extends to fanfiction.
The fanfiction which isn’t directly sexual is often still about wish-fulfillment of desires other than sexual ones, many of which center around the desire to be loved and able to recover from trauma. Hurt/comfort is one of the most popular genres in fandom, and this is for good reason. The fact that anyone sees a problem with people exploring pain and recovery and love is deeply disturbing. Why would anyone complain about people spending time fulfilling their desires in a way that hurts no one? The only answer I can think of is “Because people are supposed to suffer.” I obviously disagree with this.
And this is, finally, where capitalism comes into it. One of the biggest reasons people see fanfiction as a waste of time is that it’s unpublishable because of copyright infringement. And since fanfic can’t be formally published, no money can be made from it. This is, fundamentally, the ONLY difference between fanfiction and “real” stories—copyright infringement prevents fanfiction from being given a monetary venture.
We might like to hope that published material is, somehow, of better quality than that which is unpublished or unpublishable. But this is not true, as anyone who has tried and failed to get published will tell you. More crap gets published every year while more masterpieces languish in anonymity than we can ever truly know, because it’s not about quality, it’s about money.
Which then begs the question: if the only difference between fanfiction and “real fiction” is the capacity to make money, why is fanfiction considered so worthless? Because capitalism wants us to believe that monetary value is the ONLY system of value with any meaning.
Nevermind the fact that many of us have learned more about consent, negotiation, gender, and sexual orientation from fanfiction (and other ‘unpublishable’ content on the internet) than we ever did from anything published or offered to us in school. Nevermind the fact that fanfiction is the first and ONLY place many of us will ever see people like us being represented. Nevermind that fanfiction is often written to help us explore and heal from issues of trauma, abuse, internalized bigotry, and self-loathing. Nevermind that fanfiction gives so many of us access to characters we love, cherish, admire, and look up to being like us, feeling like us, loving people like us, or just plain representing us in a way we often cannot get from the real people in our lives as a result of bigotry and shame.
In this homophobic, sex-negative, capitalist society, minorities of all sorts are supposed to be worthless and fandom is often the only place they can seek representation. In this bigoted, capitalist society we are not supposed to believe that our pleasure and fulfillment is worthwhile. We are not supposed to see ourselves as having intrinsic value. Lots of us need escapism because the world around us hates us so much that the only way to survive it is to escape it sometimes into a created place that views us as valid and good. Fanfiction, moreso than mainstream published media ever can, gives value and space to people and feelings and experiences that are given no space or value elsewhere.
But we are supposed to think that’s worthless.
American males enter adulthood through a peculiar rite of passage - they spend most of their savings on a shiny piece of rock. They could invest the money in assets that will compound over time and someday provide a nest egg. Instead, they trade that money for a diamond ring, which isn’t much of an asset at all. As soon as you leave the jeweler with a diamond, it loses over 50% of its value.
Americans exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process, because in 1938 De Beers decided that they would like us to. Prior to a stunningly successful marketing campaign 1938, Americans occasionally exchanged engagement rings, but wasn’t a pervasive occurrence. Not only is the demand for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare. Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers has kept the price of a diamond high.
Countless American dudes will attest that the societal obligation to furnish a diamond engagement ring is both stressful and expensive. But here’s the thing - this obligation only exists because the company that stands to profit from it willed it into existence.
So here is a modest proposal: Let’s agree that diamonds are bullshit and reject their role in the marriage process. Let’s admit that as a society we got tricked for about century into coveting sparkling pieces of carbon, but it’s time to end the nonsense.
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