Meta-Folklore and Meta-Fandom

One of the things I find most interesting about delving into the whole mythology and popular culture connection is the equally as confusing natures of both the nature of storytelling more generally and the complicated nature of pop culture. This is especially true when we start talking about the nature of “fandom” and the inherent emotional connections that individuals draw to the things in pop culture they love.

Let’s start with the pop culture angle first. Fandom, or the absolute emotive love that we often associate with fandom, may seem amazingly simple at first. If I’m a fan of Lord of the Rings, that’s a thing I love. And I can love many things. I can love Lord of the Rings and the Dresden Files, and be a fan of both of these things. My fandom groups may overlap. I may recognise in some people a similarity in more than one love, which may strengthen my growing friendship with this person. A year or so ago, I met my new friend Holly, who I’m now doing the I’m a Fan of That podcast with. At first, we met up because of a mutual love of writing and research, but as we chatted we found many other connections. We both had elvish tattoos to reflect our love of Lord of the Rings, we both watched anime and played similar video games. And since that first long chat, we have become good friends. Partly this is because I find them a great person, but also this was helped along by a large number of shared interests.

But of course, I have a specific interest in a specific type of action on fandom: cosplay. I won’t spend a lot of time on cosplay here, as I try to devote separate blog posts to it, but the deep dive I’ve been doing on the subject matter as elicited a level of meta-fandom that exists in the world. Holly, for example - and I hope they don’t mind me using them as an example here - is not only a fan of Lord of the Rings and Discworld, but also a fan of cosplay. They express their love for these pop culture stories by dressing up, but their connection to cosplay goes deeper than that. They are, in essence, a fan of cosplay. Which is itself a reflection of fandom. A fandom within a fandom.

Me and my friend Holly Swinyard being total adults who can talk about serious stuff.

I want to draw on folklorist Alan Dundes now. In 1966, Dundes discussed the idea of “meta-folklore”, or folklore about folklore. This would be stories we tell that explain other stories, or jokes which are about other jokes. Maybe it’s storyteller commentary on folklore. In his article, Dundes tells a story of listening to a storyteller tell a story from American folklore, in which the storyteller added an aside where they questioned the historical accuracy of certain elements of the story. These parentheticals would, in essence, be meta-folklore.

I think fandom can learn a lot from this. There is fandom, but then there’s meta-fandom. Meta-fandoms would be the fandoms within fandoms, or the commentary on fandom from the fandom about the fandom. It’s has it’s own folklore and mythology, stories that are spun and detailed. Speculations, theories, the stories fans spin to each other aside from the canon are all parts of this meta-fandom.

I think the importance of understanding meta-fandom is from an important perspective of context. When we discuss fandom, we often discuss things from the more primary level. We talk about Star Wars fandom as the fans who engage with the canonical Star Wars pieces. We seldom talk about the people who are fans of a fanfiction writer who focuses on Star Wars in their work. We don’t talk as much about people who are fans of a video essayist who makes videos about the lore or theories and conspiracies within the narratives. These are one level removed and are therefore seen as less important.

But understanding meta-fandom means we understand the trickle down affect that happens with popular culture. Recently, Nintendo has come under fire for their intent to wipe certain content creators who focus on Nintendo content, including streamers and YouTubers. This is affect multiple levels of their fandom because it impacts the meta-fandom, the people who become fans of a YouTuber because they are also fans of Nintendo.

I’m not sure exactly how deep the meta-verse of fandom goes, but I think it’s worth chasing down and contextualising. This explores the multitude of ways that people demonstrate their love for narrative and, more importantly, the various ways that people create communities and sub-communities around these narratives. Meta-folklore and meta-fandom are both ways that the community communicates with one another while using the primary narrative as a vehicle to do so.