Photo by dronepicr, CC BY 2.0
Those of us who are terminally online are aware of using the adjective “safe” to describe something with the less conformist part sanded off. The two that come up the most are “safe horny” (like The Last of Us Part II and Baldur’s Gate 3) and “safe edgy” (like Babes.) The point of both is they don’t gore any liberal sacred cows. That’s what makes them safe. That’s what it means in practice. That which is “controversial” without actually truly being controversial, since no liberals, those with the most institutional power in America, are upset about it. Ya squares. The point being is that it isn’t truly safe nor is it truly edgy or horny. Safe as an adjective in this case is much like the adjective “social.” It undermines the term it is being used to adjective-isize to the point where it isn’t that thing anymore. Hayek’s whole lecture against social justice is the most common example of this dichotomy.
I wish to enshrine a new term: Safe Nerdy. That which purports to be for nerds, but is truly for normies. Take any franchise and make it “safe” for general audiences, which will inevitably lose the hardcore fans of said franchise. Who won’t show up or, worse still, tell other people not to see it. They might hate watch it, being the early adopters that they are, but they will mostly do so in order to give examples as to why the show or movie or video game is trash. The most common example in recent times I can give for this is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a show that is based on the works of Tolkien but is clearly not for fans of Tolkien. I am not the biggest Tolkien fan, but I understand how that is not what they were looking for in a pre-The Hobbit universe.
The Big Bang Theory might be the most pervasive example of this for something not adapted from something else. A show that is about nerds, but mostly makes fun of them. So, it isn’t actually for nerds. You can claim it is pandering, but the stuff brought up in most episodes makes the nerds at the core of the cast out to be horrible people or morons or just plain targets of mockery. When my anti-nerd father loved the show, I kind of realized he mostly liked to make fun of Sheldon. And he also loves Young Sheldon. I don’t really get why, but that’s neither here nor there.
When a Safe Nerdy adaptation does poorly, especially among the hardcore fans of the franchise it was adapted from, the entertainment media cracks open the GamerGate Playbook to call those fans one of many things. “Fake fans,” fair-weather fans, or, the most hypocritical of horse manure, fans the franchise no longer needs. The hardcore fans’ love of the franchise got that adaptation greenlit in the first place. Fake fans is rich, mostly because hardcore fans being upset about the franchise is par for the course. Hardcore fans rarely agree on what they dislike about a franchise, but every hardcore fan dislikes something. There is a difference between a hardcore fan and a fanboy. A fanboy will eat any slop he or she is given if it has the sticker of the thing they’re a fanboy of on it. Hardcore fans are the fans that stick by when a franchise sucks, but it doesn’t mean they show up for everything. Fake fans are normies, especially of the fair-weather varietal. This has a No True Scotsman logical fallacy smell to it, but it makes sense to me. But that last one, fans the franchise no longer needs, is where I point my ire most severely.
“The franchise is not for you anymore” is a common problem people with power, money, and influence like to use against those without any of those three things. The entertainment media loves this stuff. Seen with GamerGate, Star Wars, DC Comics, the MCU, Warhammer 40K, The Rings of Power, and any number of other franchises. Asking hardcore fans to not consume the media they love anymore doesn’t exactly sound like a long-term success strategy to me. The problem is that without the hardcore fans, a franchise loses its early adopters.
The Early Adopter Problem is seen in every industry. If the consumers who tend to show up first for something stop showing up, the new product can explode on the launchpad and fall into the swamp. Without the early adopters, the new product or service or fried chicken sandwich doesn’t get much positive buzz, as early adopters tend to be the most engaged consumers within a product line. So, it doesn’t spill over into the normies and is a product line failure, which is true for five of every six new products or so. Escapism and consumer products and everything are vying for finite resources, money and time most especially. Apple loves its early adopters. As does Tesla. And Nintendo. And Taco Bell. Treating those people well, not just the media mouthpieces who will write positive things about your product after any measure of special treatment, is how you build hardcore fanbases by generating positive fan goodwill.
Any profitable venture can squander any amount of goodwill with bad product. Disney is dealing with that right now. Wish alone lost Disney over $100 million. Steep is the price of failure when fan goodwill is in the toilet. As it currently is. Deadpool & Wolverine is the only MCU movie releasing this year. Even if it does well (and it may very well crack a billion worldwide,) the health of the MCU is on life support. Even with one of the most respected character actors in all of Hollywood as the lead, the studio is fumbling the Blade movie. Every single Disney+ MCU show lost the studio money except for maybe Loki season one, largely due to their gargantuan budgets. Secret Invasion somehow cost about $250 million.
Hollywood outside of Jason Blum (and horror in general) seemingly can’t make a cheap movie that makes money. A24 being the biggest example of this. Even the A24 movie that won Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once (a movie I love to death,) didn’t even crack $150 million at the worldwide box office. And that’s A24’s highest grossing movie! Their other two are Civil War and Talk to Me, which is their only out-and-out runaway hit other than Everything Everywhere All at Once, as Civil War cost $50 million to make. (Talk to Me cost about $4.5 million to make and grossed over $90 million at the worldwide box office.)
What is the solution here? My call to action, as it were? Ask the hardcore fans what they want. Do focus groups if you have to. Free ideas are free ideas. And then put out trial balloons to see if fans in general would like something. And then make said thing with as small a budget as you can if the fans are receptive. Step 3: Profit.
