Today, I attended my university’s Acts of Storytelling Class, and I asked my classmates (who are all mostly my age and very familiar with the Internet) if they were following the Goncharov stuff on Tumblr. While a couple of them knew what I meant, most were still unaware. I briefly explained what Goncharov was, and how it grew from its origins as a knockoff shoe label to a whole fictional movie made through the unrequested creative efforts of a whole social media platform. “Isn’t it interesting?” I asked. “Isn’t it cool?”
I was surprised to hear a collective response of sighs and scoffs.
“Please explain how this is interesting,” said my teacher.
“I don’t know how some people find the time to make stuff like this,” said one of my classmates.
“Yeah, of all the things they could be doing,” said another.
I immediately responded by saying that the people making Goncharov content aren’t all flippantly devoting “valuable free time” to something that previously didn’t exist. They’re participating in a group act of creation, making a story out of nothing. People are making high quality gif and photosets, movie posters and VHS/DVD box art. There are named characters and debates about if the two lesbian characters are good representation or not, or if that even matters. Just today, I heard music that someone composed from the “soundtrack.” This was all made relatively unprompted, just for the love of creation, and all from a knockoff shoe label.
“You’ve got to wonder what else is going on in a person’s life if they’re making music for a movie that doesn’t exist,” replied one of my classmates.
I didn’t reply after this. I didn’t know how. I was too baffled by how my classmates, in a class devoted to the Acts of Storytelling, could look down on this miraculous and fun act of storytelling that was happening as we spoke, just a few clicks and keyboard taps away. How they could all dismiss this as a waste of time.
Aside from the fact that Tumblr has a multitude of people and published authors (or their equivalents in other mediums) usually work alone, how is this any different from reading or watching a story that someone poured their heart into, a story created out of random wisps of inspiration, and saying “How could someone find the time to make this?” with an equal amount of disdain?
