Wearing a band T-shirt from your favorite artist is a way to signal to other people that you enjoy a particular band. Pins, bags with logos on them, bracelets, hats, etc. can all be used as a way to say you’re a part of a fandom and you don’t mind people knowing that.
What if you did mind, though? As time passes, a streamer, a band, a TV show host, even a beverage brand might lose its appeal and become just another item to you. In the worst-case situations, it becomes actively painful or controversial. Wearing a shirt signaling that you align your values with the person on it can spark fights if the figure is recognizable enough – even mainstream shirt staples like Bob Marley or Che Guevara can get the wearer into an uncomfortable political debate! YouTube creators are constantly embroiled in drama, sometimes funny, sometimes so serious it could end in legal consequences. What do you do when your favorite Minecraft guy growing up turned out to be a wifebeater? What do you do with the shirt then? The shirt could be anywhere from twenty to fifty dollars, depending on what creator you were trying to support when you bought it. Do you save it for painting and housework? You can’t exactly wear it outside or to conventions.
Where bigger mainstream artists, to some extent, have PR teams dedicated to making sure they don’t suddenly become radioactive overnight, smaller creators just don’t. Doja Cat’s recent streak of deliberately pushing fans away is a massive anomaly. Meanwhile an announcement that a Youtuber had been texting inappropriately with an underage fan is just another Tuesday. If you Google it, you’ll see dozens of people you’ve never heard of crop up with allegations. Not all of them are true, of course, but enough of them are that it’s considered a real problem with the Youtuber community.
If you were a fan, outgrew your gamer of choice, and now you keep the shirt for the memories, you still have to keep an eye on them lest you go out wearing a shirt that suggests you’re okay with their next controversy however many years down the road it is.
Buying Merch to Support Someone’s Career
This is made worse by the fact that most merch is unimpressive by itself. Even today, merch ranges all across the board: some are just shirts with slogans (often branded as stealth), some are actual art created by an artist for the express purpose of the merch, and some you couldn’t wear outside or to the grocery store because the subject matter of the merch is deliberately controversial. The fans are buying a shirt as a token of support, essentially. You are buying a 75$ hoodie purely for support.
Thus, the shirt doesn’t need to be good. It would be nice if it was, but the artists know it doesn’t matter. Melanie Martinez’s relaunch into her Portals album has generated a ton of buzz for the wrong reasons: the new merch, everything from the perfume to the dresses to the candles, is waaaay too expensive for the products that they are. The perfume bottles were mostly plastic, not glass, and the holder for them was inconsistent; the dresses sometimes tear when people try to put them on, so more inconsistency; the candles reportedly smell and look nice, but are 75$ and only 4 oz. Melanie’s Crybaby album put her on the map, and had much better merch quality, so this dropoff is a big disappointment to fans.
Olivia Rodrigo suffered a similar fate during the release of her album Sour. Fans ordered shirts, the graphics were misplaced and the shirts were not purple. Fans ordered vinyl records, same issue – not purple. Mispelled merch, hats the wrong size, etc. all came through the mail, all at once, and created a bit of a social media storm.
Still, for both of these artists, the push is to buy to support them, not to buy because you want the product. These two artists are very different – Melanie’s gothic fairy theming is wildly different from Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘just broke free of Disney’ only slightly edgy brand. One indie singer, one as pop as it gets. And yet both are failing to consistently produce merch that’s good and well-made. The issue is the industry of merch at large, not the artist.
Why Even Bother?
So the merch is poorly planned, it could become a problem to wear outside at basically any time, it’s not always made well, even though it always costs more than an equivalent shirt of the same size and quality, and it’s kind of a bummer to be reminded that the artist or influencer wants your attention and your money, too. Why bother with this strange dance between fans and merch companies?
Maybe you shouldn’t, actually. When fans buy merch no matter what, it is a signal that they will continue to buy whatever the artist or influencer signs their name to regardless of quality (this includes the content they make, not just the merch they sell). It may become a point of pride in the community to spend the most money out of anyone, because the money proves that one fan loves the artist more than anyone else. It provides constant fodder for social media, and scares off younger or less rich fans who can’t afford to buy 50 of the same vinyl record, over and over again, to prove their love. The atmosphere changes, and the fans begin checking each other, correcting less-‘supportive’ fans and insisting they buy in. It’s not fun anymore. It turns toxic and bitter.
You don’t need to spend money to be part of a fandom. That’s not how being a fan works. You should be buying the merch because it’s well-made and you want it, not because you believe you’re helping out a cause or earning some sort of recognition from the artist. The attitude around the merch and being a fan has to change.
Sources:
https://www.thecut.com/2021/08/olivia-rodrigos-sour-merchandise-isnt-good.html