Cosplay on Demand? Instagram, OnlyFans, and the Gendered Fantrepreneur

Abstract

Fan producers engaged in monetization, or what Suzanne Scott has termed “fantrepreneurs,” struggle with legal mechanisms for brand-building given the limitations of both copyright and platform moderation. These challenges have been amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has fundamentally changed the way that cosplayers, or fans who dress up as characters from their favorite television shows or movies, market themselves in an increasingly online space, as opposed to their initial public platforms of conventions. Restricted by digital platforms and their various moderation and monetization methods, cosplayer fantrepreneurs have developed new, multi-platform methods for sustaining their content and community connection. One prominent platform significant to this turn is OnlyFans, which is billed as a “peer-to-peer subscription app,” and allows users to “Sign up and interact with your fans!” Through a sample analysis of 50 cosplayers, this case study considers the approaches of cosplayers on integrating OnlyFans as part of a multiplatform struggle for economic viability. When we contextualize this platform labor in the history of cosplay, we note the hypersexualized labor that has always been central to monetization in this space, and the media franchise exploitation that profits from that labor at the expense of the fan producer, demonstrating the fundamental, gendered exploitation of the trend toward a patronage economy.