Welp. I did something potentially ridiculous: I started a project called The Joy Factory on Patreon, launched it, and now I’m here to explain what this whole thing is about. Here we go…
What is The Joy Factory?
The Joy Factory is a Patreon project designed to draw more attention to joyful things, whether it’s stuff I’m doing (TTRPGs and writing) or stuff other people are up to (movies, books, and more). It’s really that simple. OK, well, there’s also some silliness about getting on a space cruise ship called the Joy Factory, but mostly it’s that first thing.
To get an idea of the kinds of things I’ll do there, here’s the main description from the page:
Every week, I’ll put together a splattering of joyful material that gets me through the day. There’ll be a weekly Joygasm collecting links to interesting geeky things I’ve found, glimpses into my TTRPG shenanigans and writing, imagined histories, book reviews and recommendations, and occasional other things such as podcasts, literary criticism, and deep dives into important and exciting academic work in the SF/F/H field. Plus, there’ll be fun polls and silly discussions with me about all things geek. Basically, the Joy Factory is a space cruise ship of wonders designed to bring joy.
Basically, it’s me concentrating energy into the things I already love, but with more force on doing it, sharing it, joygasming with it, and so on.
Sounds like fun, right?
Why am I doing this?
I’d like to say that all of this is from spending seven-ish months in isolation during a pandemic and an election year in a rapidly declining superpower, but it’s more complicated than that. While politics in this country have gradually grown more toxic since I became politically active, it has ramped up to extremes since 2016. Add to this an environment of algorithms and grifters jockeying for attention on social media, and you have what I’d call a seemingly permanent hurricane of Things Being Bad and People Being Terrible. But the real world isn’t Twitter. Even THAT permanent hurricane isn’t all that social media and Internet culture has to offer. While I’ve often criticized Henry Jenkins for being a tad overly positive about digital fandom and the culture surrounding it, I do think that he ultimately had the right idea of focusing on what participatory culture can do in the positive rather than on all the ways it can be poisoned.
For that reason, I want to redirect more of my energy to positivity. I want to share and focus on more joy to get away from giving air to those who seem hellbent on getting our attention when all they have to offer is misery. By this, I don’t mean that political thought isn’t important or that calling people out has no value. Rather, I’m saying that so much of the way our online existence is managed is through algorithms of misery. I don’t think we get rid of that by responding to it; I think we get rid of it by depriving it of oxygen and focusing on the good in spite. That doesn’t mean ignoring real world issues and the ways that people in power do real harm; it means ignoring those whose only purpose in life is to make incendiary comments or state deliberately absurd or uneducated nonsense to get a reaction from us. To me, all this Internet stuff has to be greater than the algorithmic grind of social media. Fandom can and should be more.
And so The Joy Factory is a response to that. It’s my effort to move my energy away from that grind to forming spaces of joy for SF/F/H fandom, for my own mind. It also means focusing my political energies where I think they are most effective and to build a better relationship to fandom and the things that bring me joy. And I want to bring that joy to others (and to share in it with them, if they’d like to join me).
So with that in mind, come join the party. Book a cabin on the Joy Factory today!
