Please Disappoint Your Fans

If you want to grow your fandom...

It’s a tale as old as time.

An author gets a negative review or some bad feedback and the immediate fear is… what did I do wrong? Why don’t they like what I did.

But what if you actually did something very right by disappointing that fan? Not just as a sorting mechanism for who isn’t “for you” as a reader, but also by the potential for the disappointment to grow your fandom?

Hear me out.

I did a recent Quitcast episode on the first “food” of fandom in preparation for the BFA Digital Conference on Fandom and Leveling Up, and today, I’ll do a bit of a deep dive into that food, just because I know understanding breeds action for most of us, so let’s put on our thinking caps!

In the video, I gave you three reasons why you need to disappoint your fans, and I want to dig a bit into exactly how the disappointment grows your fandom. (Watch the video, if you haven’t... it’s helpful for introducing the argument about the group size, etc.)

Disappointment Feeds Fandom

I said it was necessary for disappointment to happen. Disappointment is one of the foods of fandom, which means a fandom will die without it.

Why is that?

used by permission from shutterstock.com

First of all, and this is really important:

Humans don’t trust anything that has no flaws.

There are a lot of psychological reasons why that happens (uncanny valley, rejection sensitivity can make things with no flaws intimidating, survival of the fittest makes us look for weakness in our unguarded moments), but this reality is important.

Yes, we all somehow feel like we shouldn’t have any flaws (or there shouldn’t be any flaws in the system), but our biology runs so much more of our choices than we know.

When we see someone make a mistake, it makes us feel okay to have flaws. (And yes, there are the 5% of extremely high Compliance people who dislike any mistake at all, but this is just the general population we’re talking about here.) Flaws relax us and make us all feel solidarity in being human.

Disappointment actually makes us safe on a biological level. (In the sense that, humans are biologically scanning for safety all the time, even if we don’t realize it. And our survival instincts are honed. We know what makes us feel safe and what doesn’t.)

So that’s the first reason. It makes people feel safe when you have a flaw (or two, or three). Even if they also capitalize on it. It’s a strange world, isn’t it? But I digress.

Your Flaws Serve Your Community

Second of all, flaws provide opportunities for the community to practice talking to each other and regulating each other.

Flaws or disappointments form a cohesion around group unity that actually strengthens bonds. Yes, it might make a small group of very vocal people eventually leave the group. But it also makes the group itself stronger.

There’s nothing that unites people like a common enemy. I’m not sure who said that. But I know I’ve heard it somewhere...

While it might feel unsafe to have a group of people discussing all the things you’re doing wrong, it’s also part of what draws your actual fans together. This is why one of the foods of fandom is disappointment. You need to have something for people to soothe each other about.

Picture it. You have a fan group. Person A is frustrated by something you’ve done, and they come into the fan group to complain about it. Yes, it risks that Person B or C might be also frustrated with what you’ve done, but then it gives the group a chance to step up for you.

Please hear me: I’m not talking about sending your fans on review bombs of other authors, or encouraging troll behavior. That’s all dysregulated behavior. If you’re ever sending people after someone, that’s a sign you are dysregulated. That’s a place for some inner work, not some vengeance.

But in the group, if Person A is frustrated, and even if B and C join in, it gives Person D-Z a chance to say, “I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way.” Or it gives Person M, who read the email, a chance to say, “have you clicked this link instead, since that one is broken?” And then the fans get to regulate each other, rather than being regulated by you, the content producer.

Yes, there’s a place for content producers to answer fan questions. And also, if it’s widely available information, there’s nothing wrong with fans talking to each other about it. There’s nothing wrong with fans getting frustrated and being soothed by the fandom.

Assuming, of course, that the group is big enough, there are people who love your work and will help other people, and who want to be part of the fandom.

If we assume that (as I said in the video), once your fan group passes a certain size (250), you stop being able to have one-to-one mutual relationships with people, and once your fan base passes a certain size (1000), you stop being able to have one-to-one parasocial relationships with people, what’s the impact of both those truths?

The impact of losing one-to-one relationships is: you can no longer care for each individual member’s needs. There are enough people, if you spend too much time on any one person, the rest of the group is neglected. So once the group gets big enough, if you want the group to stay big, you have to stop being concerned with one person’s needs. (Or the group will stagnate.)

But here’s the thing.

You, personally, losing parasocial relationships with fans (as the fan base grows) is not dangerous. I can’t say that enough. The whole point of a fandom is that it’s an internally momentum-producing organism. It grows because of the momentum of the fan interest, not because of your individual attention.

They will not lose parasocial relationship with you.

Most of us don’t have the skills to know that it’s safe to let fans be disappointed, so we aren’t able to actively practice the affirmation that negative talk in the fandom will still grow the fan base. Assuming we continue to produce what they want from us (or assuming the fandom is big enough or voracious enough).

Sometimes, if the fans are a big enough group, you can subsist for long, long periods of time in between “feedings” (of any food) because the fans are self-producing their own discussions and/or content about your work. This is obviously the goal of the fan group, for it to become a true fandom, and have all the foods of fandom, and feed itself and grow itself.

Obviously, that’s the goal.

But I can tell you, if you never let your fans feel disappointment and then regulate themselves (either let it go, or let the group regulate), then you’re not experiencing the most full fan experience there is. The bigger the fandom grows, the more disappointment there needs to be room for.

And that leads us to:

Pleasing Everyone Limits Your Scope

Third of all, if you try to please everyone, that will limit the diversity of your fan group. No individual person can make a large enough fan group happy. There are people who think Han shot first, and then people who are right. There are people who think Katniss belonged with Peeta, and then people who are right.

Anyone disappointed yet?

There should be opinion diversity (among all other kinds of diversity) in your fan group if you want it to be a fandom. (If you want it to cross the threshold from being a group of people who like your work, over into a self-sustaining community of parasocial relationships that support the growth of your work.

Fan groups and fandoms are not the same. If you want fandom, you need disappointment. But again, not everyone feels comfortable with disappointment, so... if you’re too concerned about the fans being disappointed, there are three potential reasons:

1) You’re still relating to the group like it’s under 250 people (like I discussed in the video... this is not a one-to-one group anymore). If you group grows, you’re limiting the size by encouraging them to have this kind of relationship with you. Eventually, you’ll have to change the dynamic, or the group will stop growing.

2) You have a trauma response around people being disappointed in you. Doing this work will be key, because the bigger your fan group gets, the more you need to practice letting them feel disappointment and then regulating themselves. It’s part of what will teach you that it’s safe for disappointment to happen. But if that disappointment terrifies you, it’s a great place to do some therapy. (Especially if you have trauma around groups of people turning on you, disappointing you, or being allied against you for any reason. Or if you are a Social subtype in the Enneagram.)

3) You are paying more attention to the fans than you should be. If there isn’t some space where you are absent and they are wondering where you are or when you’ll appear, there’s no scarcity. And there needs to be creator scarcity sometimes, where the creator is not visible and not present. They need to miss you.

People can feel disappointed and still stay in a fan base. They can feel frustrated and still hang around or still be interested in what you have to say. (Ask me how I know.)

Whenever possible, we need to practice safely disappointing our fans. Consider cutting back on your social media responses. Or consider having an assistant be the main answer-er. Consider not answering every fan email, or not responding to every fan comment. Consider not giving them that one pairing they really wanted. Consider letting them down in the story you’re telling by doing a cliffhanger.

This is maybe the clearest evidence that disappointment is a good thing... cliffhangers. Everyone says they’re disappointed by the cliffhanger, yet if it’s done well, everyone is still buying the next book because they want to know what happens. Assuming it’s done well.

Look, I know this is hard to internalize when everything we hear is always, “you have to make them happy.” But safe disappointment, especially in the largest groups, helps the fandom grow. It’s why listening to fans too much is a slippery slope (especially the things they directly ask for), and why watching their purchase behavior is so much better as a predictor of their engagement. It creates pockets of need for safe regulation that teaches the group there are a lot of social relationships to be had, and there’s more connection around you and your content to be had. It’s like an inside joke, if that inside joke hated your guts and wished you’d stop writing.

But in a way that won’t make other people wish you would stop writing. In fact, that kind of disappointment has the potential to make lots and lots of other people ask for more of your writing. It’s a weird, weird world, my friends. But this is where we are.

All things. being equal, you need each of the eight foods of fandom in order to let your fandom really grow. And we’ll talk about more of them on the Quitcast, in these articles, and then of course, in the conference.

I hope you’ll join us!

I’ll do another article in a few days, while I’m prepping for the conference. It helps me to talk about the content, as I’m finishing the workshops.

And don’t forget to register for the conference! We’d love to see you there.

http://betterfasteracademy.com/links

<3 Becca <3