Last year, a fan editor named Melanie uploaded what seemed like thousands of similar edits—yearning glances, over–the–top transitions, and a curated soundtrack stitched together from clips of the viral gay hockey show Heated Rivalry. That New Year’s Eve, she got a DM. Two months later, she was an associate producer at HBO.
Fan edits have existed for years in an undefined space between culture and legality—lauded by fans, attacked by copyright holders, and disregarded as the domain of the terminally online. Now, one of the most influential companies in entertainment has recruited directly from the frontlines of fandom.
Melanie’s story is an indication of a paradigm shift in media. Studios are no longer ignoring fandom—now, they pursue it. Lionsgate is one of many companies who has embraced TikTok–style fan edits on their official channels, with other studios falling in line to tap into these community networks: monitoring for viral posts, commenting on popular art, or even providing exclusive invites and merch to diehard fans on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. What was once relegated to the realm of nerds is now being recognized as a major asset in a Hollywood marketing landscape driven by clicks.
Yet, this new relationship has blurred a boundary that once defined fandom culture. Fan works may slowly come to form the bedrock of the entertainment industry’s marketing and PR machine, but it once began as an independent, often oppositional, form of participation.
Fan edits, fanfiction, and fan art have always existed in some way or another. When people love a piece of media enough, they’ll spend hours, days, or even years creating something out of it. Long before our modern–day fancams, there were the housewives who gathered around Star Trek in the 1960s and 1970s, producing mimeographed zines and writing “Spirk” fanfiction—stories imagining a romantic (and oftentimes sexual) relationship between Captain Kirk and Spock. These fans went way beyond mere media consumption. They created alternate narratives, built communities, organized conventions, and developed entire infrastructures of cultural production decades before the internet made such activities visible.
Media scholar Henry Jenkins famously described these fans as “textual poachers” in his 1992 book of the same title. Borrowing from Michel de Certeau, Jenkins argued that fans actively appropriate media and remake them for their own purposes. Rather than acting as passive consumers, fans become producers themselves, generating fanfiction, fan art, criticism, videos, and interpretations that circulate, elevate, and even surpass the original work.
That idea was foundational to what Jenkins later coined “participatory culture”—a culture in which audiences don’t just receive media but actively create around it.
The internet accelerated this process. Fanfiction archives proliferated. Communities formed on LiveJournal and Tumblr. Anime Music Videos, or AMVs, transformed existing footage into entirely new emotional experiences. Entire fandoms developed their own vocabularies, trends, and social structures.
Though these spaces thrived, the relationship between fandom and the corporations producing the content was tense as the specter of copyright infringement loomed overhead. Few figures became more infamous than Anne Rice, who aggressively opposed fanfiction based on her novels and issued legal threats to countless fan creators. The hostility many fans experienced from rights holders contributed directly to the founding of the Organization for Transformative Works in 2007, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and preserving fanworks. The OTW explicitly emerged in response to concerns about commercialization and corporate control over fan creativity.
You may not have heard of the OTW, but you’ve likely heard of the organization’s flagship project: Archive of Our Own. AO3, a digital fanfiction archive, was built with a very simple goal in mind: give fan creators more ownership of their creations.
For most of fandom’s history, this labor existed largely outside the entertainment industry’s purview. Fans created derivative works because they loved a piece of media. Their biggest fear was whether studios and copyright holders would shut them down.
The rise of social media changed the game. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok didn’t just make it easier to share fan creations, they established those creations as a primary source of promotional energy on the internet. Suddenly, instead of being largely ignored by the media conglomerates, fandom became something for them to exploit.
If participatory culture turned fans into creators, TikTok turned those creators into marketers—whether they wanted to or not. Gone are the days of finding fan edits in obscure, fandom–specific internet enclaves, shared within a community of already engaged viewers. In today’s TikTok age, short, catchy montages set to pop music are catapulted onto millions of screens around the world, even reaching viewers who have never seen the original.
Former Street staff writer and avid fan editor Derek Wong (C’25) described how editing itself has changed under platform pressures. “Given the rise of TikTok and stuff,” he says, “a lot of that becomes condensed down to be more snappy, more quick, and less text–heavy.”
Algorithms prefer the immediate. A slow character study is less likely to go viral than a rapid–fire montage set to a trending sound. As Derek puts it, audiences want edits that are “short,” “straightforward,” and “attention–grabbing.”
TikTok democratized fan creation. Anyone with a phone can now attempt to make a viral edit. These fan edits have influenced pop culture to the point that fanfiction and fancams aren’t weird anymore. Superfan behavior is normalized, even expected.
Studios have noticed. Fan edits often outperform traditional marketing because they speak the language of social media. Instead of selling the plot, they sell a feeling. They package chemistry, aesthetics, and emotional resonance into an enticing format optimized for short–form circulation. It’s an inversion of fandom’s traditional relationship with media companies. Where fandoms used to work to amplify their own content, the content now only gets off the ground as a result of the fans’ efforts.
Heated Rivalry is a great example of the modern trajectory of fandom. The show’s popularity exploded through TikTok edits that eventually left the apps and found their way onto the dance floor. Hudson Williams, who stars in the show, credited fan editors with driving a reported 600% increase in viewership. Other companies have embraced this same strategy, making it easier for fans. Prior to the release of the indie queer horror film Leviticus, distributor Neon and writer–director Adrian Chiarella supplied fans with official scene packs so they could “edit their hearts out.”
The fan edit was now the marketing campaign. In response, instead of simply speaking to fans, more and more companies are speaking as fans. Studios use internet slang, flood comment sections, repost fan edits, share fan art, and are even actively recruiting fan creators.
For longtime fan editor Bella Romeo (C’28), this development has been overdue. “I think it’s a really good thing that fan edits are becoming part of official companies,” she says. “For a long time, people have thought of fan edits as completely separate from the products.”
She believes that fan edits can become more influential than the media they depict. “It brings so much attention to it,” she says, “That’s more of a way to connect with audiences … it makes you more interested in the media.”
Bella sees the rising acceptance of fan editing as a form of validation. Skills that were once dismissed as internet hobbies can now serve as portfolios. Editing can lead to job offers, clients, and professional opportunities. Fan labor is finally being acknowledged as legitimate labor. However, this new recognition has also changed the surrounding culture.
“I feel like it’s really business–oriented now, more than it was in 2020,” Bella says. She describes an editing world influenced by replication, visibility, and status. Popular creators sell project files and editing resources. Certain styles dominate because they attract likes and views, pushing editors to follow trends to increase engagement.
“The already popular people get the views,” she says. “A lot of the editors who are already viral, they only edit one type of content. I feel that drains the originality and creativity out of editing.”
Derek has noticed similar pressures. While he admits engagement feels good, he avoids chasing trends. “I’m not saying that I don’t care [about engagement] because whenever I do get a decent amount of likes, that’s validation,” he says. “Out of pure stubbornness, I try to keep within my editing style and not specifically jump on trends.”
As fan editing becomes more visible, it often resembles influencer culture as much as it does fandom culture. Bella mentioned popular K–pop editor Naeuzi, whose fan–editing presence has turned into a personal brand with a Discord community and paid promotional tools.
“She has a Discord server … it’s her company for editing,” Bella says. After Naeuzi reposted one of her videos, Bella was struck by how much influence prominent editors hold. “If you go on her Payhip, you could pay for her to boost your video. But she just did it for free because she liked [my] video.”
The emergence of these creator hierarchies also raises questions about who really benefits from fan edits.
Derek understands why studios are embracing fandom. “The traditional way of media promotion isn’t going to cut it nowadays,” he says. “You have to engage with the online space in some manner.”
The numbers alone explain why. A viral edit can reach millions of viewers, revive interest in a franchise, reshape audience perceptions, and advertise a product more effectively than a multimillion–dollar campaign.
“These edits heighten the fan experience,” Derek says, “and most of these people are doing this [labor] for free.”
That reality makes conversations about compensation difficult. Most fan labor is voluntary. Many editors create “for the love of the game.” As Derek puts it, “Having a company hire you because you’re doing something that you thought was for fun, hell yeah, that’s really cool.”
He also sees the growing acceptance of fandom as a positive change. “There can be a tendency for studio execs or critics to look down upon fans,” he says. “News flash, this is very human. This is how people engage with things.”
However, he worries about what happens when corporate interests become too embedded in fan spaces.
“You have studio–commissioned fan edits versus people who are still doing this for the love of the game,” he says. “It becomes less of a democratic system of people sharing what they like and more of an extension of the studio marketing.”
Fandom has always served a purpose beyond marketing. It’s a social, creative, and communal space. “Fandom grows because it’s people wanting to connect to other people about the things they like,” Derek says. “If you have a big old studio representative that tries to insert themselves too much into it, the safe space becomes violated.”
Convergence seems inevitable, and an ideal outcome may lie in a middle ground. Brands could reward fan creativity while avoiding micromanagement. Even so, as fan culture becomes mainstream, recognition is arriving on corporate terms. The forms of fandom that get elevated tend to be those that generate measurable engagement, and the creators who thrive often cater to platform incentives. In other words, fandom starts to mirror the same hierarchies seen throughout the creator economy.
Bella’s own goals reflect this shift. “I just edit for the content rather than keeping up with fandoms,” she says. She now aims to turn her editing into a business.
For years, fandom existed in a strange position—crucial to media culture, yet largely excluded from it. Fans generated enthusiasm, discourse, and free publicity, while studios alternated between ignoring them and cashing their checks. Now, fandom has finally been welcomed. Fan editors are getting hired, fan edits are shaping marketing campaigns, and fan labor is being recognized as valuable.
But recognition isn’t everything. What began as a space for people to share their passions is turning into a space where that passion is quantified, optimized, and monetized. The more valuable fandom becomes to studios, the more it risks losing the community that made it valuable in the first place.
