Subcultures & The Big Brother Naija Fandom Phenomenon
Businesses can create cult-like brands and future proof their brands by providing a platform for audiences like fandoms and other subcultures to thrive off.
Rise of the Ownership Economy
We live in a cultural matrix. The lines between producers & consumers are blurring as the internet creates new forms of cultural production.
Pre-internet, audiences were simply passive consumers of content (products and narratives). Back then, audiences had no ownership and control over their identity. Their interaction and participation with content were largely passive and limited. They watched, they analysed, and they appreciated. That was it.
Now, the internet is giving ownership back to consumers. Every individual has the power to become a star — to reach any person on earth.
People have the power to speak back to the content they consume, to the people who produce the content, and to themselves as well.
Consumers can now provoke significant conversations, assert their identities, share their fantasies and dreams, and negotiate the changes in their cultural environment.
We see it with crypto, blockchain, meme culture, tokenisation & non-fungible Tokens (aka NFTs), decentralised autonomous organisations aka DAOs, and all types of self-directed online communities that are springing up.
Audiences are no more the passive consumers of old. They’re more visible and influential. They now participate with content in more diverse ways by fitting it to the different aspects of their lives. They can share, curate, critique, lobby for, promote and monetise all types of content that they enjoy.
We’re experiencing this cultural shift riding on the back of the creator economy and the ownership economy.
The creator economy came about from the intense growth of people making a living online. It is serving as a catalyst in disrupting legacy structures as we witness the movement among tech companies to offer as many tools as possible for creators to learn, create, connect, earn more and retain their audiences. This "go solo" and "monetise the individual" trend is fueled by the phenomenon of the individual as both an entrepreneur and a creator.
While the ownership economy is introducing a new cultural structure - the collective- wholly owned by creators, operators, and consumers, this structure results in everyone investing in both the development of each collective and sharing the value of the collective’s upside and risk.
In 2005 Clay Shirky said: “Every time a new consumer joins this media landscape, a new producer joins as well, because the same equipment—phones, computers—lets you consume and produce.”
This is the matrix we live in, where consumers can be creators and be part owners of the 'brands' they love.
Fan power
The Audience-Fan Spectrum
What do sports teams, music superstars and blockbuster movies and tv reality shows all have in common? Fans.
Still, you can't talk about fans without talking about audiences. Most of the things fans do are the kinds of things audiences have historically done— assessing and interpreting content (media) or advocating for alternatives.
In this Internet age, it’s often easier to connect dots than to differentiate between them. So at a first look, it may seem that toxic, obsessive fans (Stans) are the face of fan culture as they have a reputation for taking things several steps too far. But rather than help show all the depth and angles of fan culture, it slanders it.
We live in a world where all types of audiences: Fans, Superfans, Fandoms, Anti-Fandoms, Stans, Fiefdoms, and DAOs are more intertwined than ever. So it can be tricky to pinpoint the differences between the different audience behaviours. But Fan culture presents a near-perfect example of the best way to see audiences in this world since fans come in all forms. Casual fans, hardcore fans, and low-key fans.
The word "fans" is rooted in the word - Fanatics, which means to be inspired by God, mad, enthusiastic. This might be a clue why mainstream society stereotypes fan culture as deviant, disreputable and even dangerous. They tend to see fans as the obsessed individual or the hysterical crowd. This generalisation is a limited way to see fans.
Because fans are a compelling, ever-changing, and dynamic audience that possesses a strong and intense emotional attachment with the objects they consume, they are an active part of the culture they experience. They influence and complete the experience, they impart emotional energy, they support and offer distraction whenever they can. You can see this with Sports fans.
Sports fan culture shapes sports experience and the environment in which athletes play by interacting with players and teams, for good or bad. Sports players can feel and be moved by the energy from the fans. Who often offer their teams a "home field advantage".
We're now at a point where sports fans are building businesses, blogs, vlogs, fansites and their own directed and decentralised audiences and communities off their fanship. These activities are also often taking place within commercial contexts.
This isn't just happening with sports fans. It is happening with the entire fan culture. Fan interactions are now happening at an unprecedented scale, and fans realise the power they wield as both creators, consumers, part owners of the brands, people, and things they love.
Fans are building their communities on top of fan culture, where they can express themselves and critique prescriptive ideas of gender, sexuality, and other mainstream norms.
Communities, Subcultures & Fandom
Sometimes, being a fan in our current digital world can be nothing more than clicking the “like” button on some Facebook page or following a Twitter account. So it can be easy to confuse fanship with fandom, anti-fandom, or the different participatory communities in existence.
Fanship (being a fan) is personal. On the other hand, fandom is collective - a community of fans or an overlapping series of communities that partly enables identity for the people involved.
Fandom is about more than liking something (or someone) that others also like or covering walls in posters. These are manifestations of fanship, which means favouring one thing over another. Fandom is what happens when fans unite with other fans.
At their best, fandoms are about celebrating a thing you love with other people who also love it. To be positive and supportive of each other.
Fandoms offer, to an extent, a retreat into something that makes you happy. This is a pretty necessary counterbalance to everything else in the world right now. Yes, there is toxicity and trolls and negativity in fandoms, but it’s the same for crowds or any large group of people.
Fandoms are subcultures also known as participatory culture communities (Makers, Gamers, Modders, Vidders, Collectors, and Subbers). These communities are built around a shared enjoyment of an aspect of popular culture, such as books, games, movies, TV shows, sports or sports teams.
Participatory communities produce and exchange artefacts (fan fiction, fan art, fan videos, cosplay - wearing costumes in an attempt to portray a fictional character) that are built upon mass media. These communities respond to mass-produced products and are distributed for commercial profit by producing on top of these content to generate forms of culture that more fully address their fantasies, desires, and interests.
When we talk about culture, we're talking about the ideas, values, norms, practices and objects that allow a group of people, entire societies, to carry out their collective lives with minimum friction.
We live in a world of diverse cultures where subcultures and countercultures are an active part of our cultural ecosystem.
Subcultures develop as a response to a pre-existing culture. Some people may accept much of the dominant culture but are set apart by one or more culturally significant characteristics. Examples of subcultures are LGBT, bodybuilders, hip hop, etc.
Alternatively, countercultures are groups of people who differ in specific ways from the dominant culture and whose norms and values may be incompatible.
Take music and media, for example; its pre-existing culture or categorisation is the genre. Genres set the taste broadly for what the audience should expect from the artist or creator within that category. But artists have found success in busting through genres and creating a subgenre (subcultures) of their own.
With subcultures, audiences participate with culture in a non-conforming manner by actively constructing alternative cultures (subcultures) from the pre-existing culture. Different fans are empowered to control their experience as consumers through their fandom, either by going against the mainstream and mass media norms or by being courted by them.
Fandoms are becoming an evolving, dominant cultural and social currency because of their ability to generate a cult-like following, spawn obsessives, and create communities that self-manage and self-direct in fantastic ways.
Fandoms do not only exist in sports, music and media. You can now find fandoms everywhere. Here are the different ways fandoms are manifesting:
As Self-directed communities, like Geenie (a culture-first beauty community for discovering, shopping and sharing indie beauty brands), Modern fertility (a community for discussing, sharing advice and information on women's health and Wetalksound ( Nigeria’s largest music community that spawned a digital agency)
As Linear commerce brands, like Magnolia ( A TV show that targeted middle-aged, middle-class American women that has become a behemoth media and lifestyle brand based on the same audience), there is Jojo Siwa (children focused social media sensation that is a merch millionaire and has sold over 80 million hair bows in the last four years, each bow cost $10).
As Creators and Investors. We can see this with the fan monetisation options like Onlyfans, Patreon and Africa’s ear1social. This trend of fandoms as creators and investors is also evident in DAOs and NFTs.
Then there's the Anti-Fan Phenomenon. The opposite of fandoms, these online communities come together to hate as a hobby—critiquing content, belittling influencers and vilifying creators.
With fandoms and other types of subcultures, there might be a degree of escapism and avoidance, but there’s hope and optimism. There is camaraderie, a common shared interest that brings people together.
We’re all fans. Whether it is football or cooking or a popular tv show, you can bet there’s an online fan community for it. We all need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, to feel connected to other people, now more than ever, and we all need to find things that make us happy. Fandoms can give all these things, even if it is just for a while.
We’re all participating in fandoms, just people doing our thing and loving what we love. It’s just that some of us are more comfortable with the label than others.
Big Brother Naija Fandom
Fandoms are fascinating because of how it all fits together -- how specific communities complement certain cultures. Why others compete, why people choose a community versus another, spending their precious time and money.
One place Africans are currently spending their money and time? Big Brother Naija, arguably Africa's biggest TV Show. Last year’s edition of the show saw over 55 billion media impressions, with 7.7 million Twitter users posting the word “BBNaija”.
You can compare BBNaija to a “four-month football tournament”. And like any sporting event, there's hype, drama and uncertainty, community and competition, favourites and underdogs and maybe even a little friendly trash talk with your strangers and friends.
It's hard to find TV shows in Africa that draw the type of following or fanaticism that Big Brother Naija does. Fans enjoy tracking the players every move in the house and unpacking their behaviour. They try to understand more about players’ psychology and social behaviour by watching how they converse, react to their housemates’ behaviour, and execute mundane tasks like cooking and cleaning. They naturally gravitate towards the housemates that resonate with them.
Today Reality TV shows are an essential part of popular culture. They have become a driving force in pop culture by increasing ethnic and sexual diversity and breaking the ceiling by casting unknown people from all walks of life.
The Big Brother Naija TV show has taken advantage of this cultural diversity and the audience interactivity that comes with it to create fan communities and build viewer loyalty.
For BB Naija show, viewer activity doubles as a form of value-enhancing labour for the show producers in two ways:
By allowing fans to take part in making a show interesting for themselves through content creation and community building. From people who post daily updates of the goings-on shows, discuss players’ strategies, and share spoilers, to WhatsApp groups of players' devoted fanbase that put in hours of labour into thinking how they can promote their fave and derail other players’ strategy. Just your classic cult passion-like sports team fanbase.
And by providing instant (if not necessarily statistically representative) feedback to producers.
The current housemates (BB Naija 6) already realised the power of fan bases long before they came into the house, and some even went on to create a name for their fanbases when they got into the house. Beyond some of the fanaticism that one sees on social media, the show is helping fans build communities and genuine friendships that outlive each season of BBNaija.
For a reality TV show that many write off as ridiculous and low-brow, Big Brother fandom offers contestants the ability to build their audiences, communities and businesses from a pre-existing audience. When you have fintechs like Flutterwave and Abeg clamouring to be your headline sponsors, they probably know or see something most don't.
Like the Big Brother Naija Fandom, anything with a giant passionate fan base or subculture has cultural and commercial power that cannot be ignored.
What Startups can learn from the Fan Momentum & The business of Subcultures
The digital economy has created shifts in every industry and ultimately shifts in customer value. People have more capacity—collectively and individually—to consume, connect, produce and share media on their terms. This has presented an opportunity to put consumer relationships front and centre by introducing ownership, creation and community.
It’s hard to lose money betting on gigantic fanbases or anything with a cult-like following. You can see it with popular fandoms like Tesla, Lululemon, K-Pop, Star wars and everything in between.
Cult-like brands are cultural businesses. A brand becomes a cultural business when its brand is so transportable that commerce and community are built without direct involvement from the business itself.
Brands are in the business of manufacturing, eliciting and tapping into subcultures, as they are sources of massive brand growth. When a brand can form or become part of a subculture, the subculture dictates the identity and longevity of the brand. The fans themselves are defining the culture as well as the brand through their activities individually and communally.
Through the product, brand, and community of a business, an entire subculture can be developed to the point where businesses, identities, and communities are built outside of the brands’ direct participation.
The life of a business is contingent on consumer interest, participation and loyalty. A business’s value stems from the connection it can create with consumers.
The business of fandom and subcultures is in element of ownership. In fandoms, consumers build on the culture. You can see it with sports teams, music artists, movie franchises, and TV shows. When consumers or fans can become creators and associate their value with not just building within the brand environment but outside of it as well, the brand becomes a platform.
Consumers aren’t just a commodity. They now view themself as a part of the brands they love and associate their ideas with their consumption and engagement with the brand. Examples include the band Phish and K-POP; who listed their IPO, which institutional and retail investors oversubscribed. Fans are investing in the artist’s success and are incentivised for them to do well.
Businesses can future proof their brands by encouraging fandoms and creating an environment where consumers can become creators. Consumers becoming creators are suitable for your brand, especially if it’s built with your brand in mind. If you want your business to have a cult-like following, your brand needs to be so associated with the consumer identity that some even model part of their life, or business, around it.
The biggest brands of the future will be those that combine content, product, community building and the new ownership structures, where consumers can be invested in the brand (part owners) and are incentivised to continue to promote the brand's story. They'll be those that invest in brokering deeper connections with consumers and fan communities (fandoms) while enabling them to become creators as well.
There is an incredible opportunity for startups in Africa to leverage subcultures, and I’m excited to see what will be built.
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Thanks to @ngbede for reading and editing this piece.