We often talk about fandoms in academia, or “communities.” We also like to catalog how they form and how some essentially die. What we haven’t looked at much at is migration. What happens when a person leaves, and does that have any echoing impact?
I was thinking this through the other day after talking with a student about non-human actors and gaming. To simplify for those who might not know what I mean, a non-human actor is pretty much exactly what you think it is: in actor-network theory, a non-human actor is a thing (usually not a living thing) that has agency, usually agency someone imbued in it.
The last few weeks on-and-off I’ve been peppering in my WWE 2K18 create-a-wrestler stuff. It’s a hobby, and when I get super busy, I need that sort of “making art” moment to relax and get work off my mind. Tonight I’m finishing up a Mustafa Ali that I started last night.
Years ago– like a generation of video game consoles ago, like WWE 2K12– I was a relatively big part of the Xbox creator scene. I developed a great deal of art for people to use. Most specifically that year I made a number of Jeff Hardy face paints. I digitally repainted most of them by hand.
The other day, as I was searching through the images uploaded to the game, I found most of my old Jeff Hardy stuff, and some of the tattoo work I did for other wrestlers.
Now I’m not offended. I’m flattered. It’s not like it’s my IP or anything; these are images of people who exist out in the real world. I’m amazed that even with the advancements in the ability to create digital images and the now much easier way of uploading images (we used to have to use an injector a game hacker made and a specialized, modified Xbox to inject), people are still using the stuff I made years ago.
That makes those Jeff Hardy paints, in the most general sense, non-human actors. I made them so people could create Jeff Hardy from various moments and events. Then I left. And other people made sure those Jeff Hardy face images were uploaded every year.
It’s kind of sweet. I’m impressed.