The life of a fangirl
What fan communities can teach us about designing public spaces for learning.
Like most things these days, a TikTok video sparked a reflection. Something for me to mull over and feel like all my scrolling has a Purpose.
The video was a person dancing to “Kiss and Tell,” a 2010 Justin Bieber song that for some reason ***gestures at the torturous music industry*** is no longer on Spotify, so I hadn’t heard the song in almost 10 years. After racking up an unsightly amount of YouTube views, the song activated something in me that I haven’t felt in a while: fandom.
Merriam-Webster defines fandom as the state or attitude of being a fan. Society’s non-neutral definition often claims that it’s a preteen girl, in too deep and one step away from becoming a succubus. (If you want to read more on why we swiftly and unequivocally devalue anything girls like, check out Gayle Wald’s 2002 essay “’I Want It That Way’: Teenybopper Music and the Girling of Boy Bands.”)
Back to the mulling over: what’s interesting about fandoms, specifically internet-era fandoms, is that they’ve built some of the most effective learning environments. When people are obsessed with something they don’t wait for traditional learning, they create a sort of…self-organizing educational ecosystem where observation leads to participation, and participation leads to peer-to-peer learning and peer-to-peer learning leads to expertise.
The challenge is that the majority of this effective learning happens online, limited to those who have time to take the journey into far-reaching corners of the internet. But our physical world, our public spaces, are still designed around a completely different model of learning with structured programs and predetermined outcomes.
Stick with me here, but, what if we layered in some of the fandom logic into public spaces?
First, why are fandoms strong examples of top-tier educational experiences?
They have a low barrier to entry and a high ceiling for mastery. Fan communities operate on the principle that you can learn by watching without having to participate, meaning, I can join a Discord server and never say a word, but still absorb. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger call this “legitimate peripheral participation,” which is the idea that newcomers learn by observing from the edges of a community before gradually moving toward the center (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In their research on apprenticeships, Lave and Wenger found that tailors, midwives, butchers, etc., all learned their crafts by hanging out with experienced professionals and slowly taking on more responsibility. Fandoms work almost identical to this, except the “craft” is really just the expertise.
Extending past observation, fandoms create environments where participation happens almost always naturally and almost always horizontally. Typically we have a top down approach to education where there’s an expert, and that expert speaks to the non-expert about a topic. This looks like your standard school lecture, or an older sibling telling everyone what to do.
Peer-to-peer learning collapses the learner/expert divide so everyone plays both roles simultaneously. I know study groups are marked with the terror of cramming for college finals, but when done well, they’re great examples of people, at the same level, working together to understand and apply a topic. Educational theorist John Dewey notes that “learners reach better results if the learning process reproduces, or runs parallel to, some form of work carried on in social life.” (Dewey, 1899). Fandom culture has always understood this. You might read other people’s fanfics first, engage by leaving comments, then improve through doing by getting feedback on your own. Social learning isn’t new, but it’s not as developed in traditional learning.
The common argument with mainstream internet-era fandom is that it’s all completely meaningless information. People ask: how will knowing all the K-pop idols’ birth charts get you far in life? I respond: I don’t think that actually matters and we’re asking the wrong question.
Getting to the point of knowing an idol’s birth chart requires layers of knowledge: understanding K-pop and idols as a cultural phenomenon, studying astrology well enough to interpret charts and maybe even learning some Korean. And you did all of this while scrolling, with a matcha latte in hand, because you wanted to. This is interest-driven learning, which is learning that is motivated by passion rather than external requirements, like school. It usually leads to deeper engagement and skill development than traditional schooling.
Right now, the internet is calling this flow state.
So, what would a public space look like if it was designed to accommodate the full learning cycle that fandoms naturally create?
Public spaces, what I’m defining as schools, libraries, museums, parks, and community centers, are already among the most equitable learning environments we have. They’re free or low-cost, intergenerational, and physically accessible in ways the internet isn’t. They already support browsing, observation, and self-directed exploration. My thoughts below aren’t about recreating or fixing what exists, but extending it. And honestly, much of this isn’t just about the physical space, it’s about how we encourage people to learn in the first place.
(In the most non-creepy way) Lurking spaces: Places where you can observe without being observed. Things like window seats or nooks where you can see an activity but aren’t required to “come sit with us and introduce yourself!”
Creation spaces: Not to be confused with a maker space which is great, but feels like a level above low barrier. The physical space equivalent of opening a Google Doc and starting a fanfic nobody will ever see. I see this as a 1:1 relationship with free play.
Sharing spaces: Bulletin boards, zine racks…general places to post what you made and get feedback. It’s the physical version of the #ShareYourWork channel in a Discord server.
Archive spaces: Libraries obviously excel here, but for everywhere else, a catalogued collection of “here’s how we do things here” built by the people using the space.
All in all, public spaces and education don’t always need to be organized by activity (art room, computer lab, etc.). They can also be organized by by mode of participation.
All in all, public spaces and education don’t always need to be organized by activity (art room, computer lab, etc.). They can also be organized by mode of participation.
The point isn’t to turn every library into a Discord server. It’s to recognize that some of the most effective learning already happens in spaces we don’t associate with education. Instead of always asking “how do we make learning more engaging,” we could try asking “how do we design spaces that support/honor the ways people already choose to learn when no one’s forcing them to?”
Sources
Dewey, J. (1899). The School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wald, G. (2002). “I Want It That Way”: Teenybopper Music and the Girling of Boy Bands. Genders, 35. Retrieved from http://www.genders.org/g35/g35_wald.html