Today, I worked on adding our fansubbing survey to SurveyMonkey, so that it would be easier for participants to send us their information. Doing so meant re-examining our questions in the harsh light of SurveyFail, and I found myself considering why Lisa and I use the word “labour” so often in our survey. Coincidentally, I’ve also been reading some other posts totally unrelated to SurveyFail or fan studies about the ideas and emotions we associate with certain words — their specific semiotic baggage. So I thought it was time to think about my own choice of words in this context.

Normally, I try to avoid thinking about fan activities as “labour.” This is because I have some specific associations with the word, or at least assumptions that pop up when I hear it:

• It’s a heavily-gendered term, also used to connote childbearing
• It’s tied to the politics of unionized workers
• It’s tied to British politics
• It connotes paid activity, which fan activity is not

But in our study, Lisa and I are concerned with the very real, very hard work that goes on to produce fansubs. The translation, segmenting, encoding, and distribution of fansubs is a team effort, and the teams often treat it as a matter of pride that their work be the best possible. Ditto scanlation. These people have consumers — client bases that they answer to. (Who hasn’t read a friendly “we’re working as fast as we can to bring you the best that we can! stop bugging us, we do this for free!” message at the front of a scanlation, or on top of an episode release?) So maybe thinking of it as labour isn’t so inaccurate.

After all, time spent fansubbing is time you could be spending at a job — if there were any jobs to be had. And here’s where we get to My Crazy Ideas About the Future: fans might be the best prepared to handle the current economic crisis. They’re used to splitting work into tiny pieces and sharing it across national borders, they’re early adopters of technology, and they commonly think outside or around traditional economies, regulations, and cultures. They frequently keep two worlds (or more) in their heads at once. They speak global. They also know how to organize within a group and prioritize tasks to accomplish a goal. Today’s fansubbing teams in high schools and universities across the globe are tomorrow’s employment roster, and when the economy finally has room for them and their skills, they’ll be better-prepared than their peers because they’ll have learnt all of this on the ground rather than in the classroom.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m too much of an optimist. But I think that the experience of fan “labour” is valuable — and not just because it might make you a better editor or communicator or designer, or because it’ll teach you about Japan or Korea or any other country. Like any other activity, fan labour is a chance to form identity and share community with others. And unlike a traditional labour environment, the motivation is love and not money — more School of Rock than Office Space. But what the traditional work environment looks like will soon be up to them, not us. And I’d be happy if it looked more fannish.