Hello! Thank you for sharing your reflections. These are hard questions! I feel like journalistic conventions push a very transactional relationship between sources and writers/storytellers but at the same time it feels difficult for me to conceive of what a shared experience would be. I guess mostly because if it’s shared, it’s no longer controlled by one person and that feels scary! What if someone wants to rewrite a difficult section to come across differently, but then again who am I as the writer to decide how they get to come off…I listened to an interesting podcast from radiotopia that tried to tackle some of these questions, more from a procedural pov rather than actual storytelling but fascinating nonetheless! It’s called “Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative.”
Thank you for your comment! And the feedback on the questions 😅. I rly appreciate you engaging with them. Your comment raises the question: who should be in control then? Theres definitely a power dynamic at play to be unpacked. Thanks also for the podcast rec, I will check it out 🩷
Oooh Our Ancestors Were Messy is right up my alley! I love learning about how messy historical figures were because it humanizes them. A recently learned that Alain Locke had a collection of semen samples, presumably from his lovers. It made me think about how he navigated being a queer Black man during the Harlem Renaissance and also made me question why he did that and who the samples came from 😂
pls check it out, I’d love to hear what you think! And whaaat. So many questions! It’s sad how little we know / can find about our Black queer ancestors’ inner lives. I’m with you on humanizing our ancestors through mess. I’m developing a new relationship with history as a result!
Ahhhhhh so much here! I LOVE Young Charley's gift to you! And I'm so ready for the messy ancestors!
To your question prompts, they make me think of Reesa Teesa and her "Who TF did I marry?" series on TikTok. I spent 8+ cumulative hours over 2 days watching and listening to her story unfold over a fiftysomething part series. I was relatively new to TikTok at that time and was unfamiliar with the regularity of people sharing their stories / telling their business in some form of "story time." Hers caught fire across social platforms and I watched the viewership soar with every update she posted.
By the end of it, I was sick. I thanked God that she was safely out of the relationship she detailed and I prayed for her health and continued safety. And I felt sick because she bared her soul for the internet and I was worried that all she'd get for it was constant eyeballs and scrutiny. But then, surprisingly, I watched an economy form around her: (1) Payouts from the TikTok creator fund for the high viewership (I believe TikTok has a CPM-based compensation structure, but I'm unsure what the rate is per 1K views); (2) Brand deals to fulfill her ex's empty promises to her for trips, a car, etc; (3) Viewers turned fans creating speculative movie posters suggesting who should play the main characters in the story, and that call actually being answered by Natasha Rothwell who was featured in the fan poster, plus Disney, and CAA; (4) The talk show circuit; (5) the return of the realtor in her story who helped her see something was wrong, now helping her to get the house she wanted; (6) And ongoing comments from now 3.4 million followers, that I have discovered are a recurring chant, "we made the right person famous."
This model is certainly imperfect and its up to Reesa Teesa to tell us how she feels about how everything unfolded for her. But I was pleasantly surprised that at the core, there was a Black woman willing to share her story, and a community of everyday people who rallied behind her to care. My prayer is that she has not experienced further exploitation and that she feels whole and supported. Across platforms, I witness the relationship between storytelling and community care every. single. day, regardless of the extractive business models of the platforms. Many would say in spite of. You know what's possible where two or three are gathered (see Matthew 18: 19-20), all folks need is space.
Hi! Thank you for such a thoughtful and thorough comment, I’m sorry for my very late reply. I have been thinking about this tho!
I hadn’t thought of her story in this context but I do think it’s a good example of how ppl can leverage their stories and storytelling. I do suppose she had to sell the rights to her story to Natasha / whatever company and that then goes back to my original thought - why must the IP ownership be stripped from her? If she had a good lawyer she maybe could have retained the IP or some portion of that but that is really difficult to do esp as someone with no industry clout. Hell, it’s a big deal Ryan Coogler will retain rights to Sinners, a story he created and wrote, after 25 yrs. Im sure Reesa got a good payout but Hollywood would never let her payout be bigger than theirs.
I do appreciate what you said about witnessing care btwn the community and storytellers tho, I hadn’t given that much thought or credit. I agree - audiences like being there for ppl they care about and there’s alot of care in different story-centered communities. Thank you ❤️
ohh I have done some research and Reesa is executive producing via her own production company and starring. This sounds like a best case scenario in Hollywood land!!
Hi friend! It was such a joy reading this. Thanks for taking your time with it to give us the full experience of what’s on your heart rather than rushing through it! Why do we create these arbitrary measures of success for our writing (and really our lives?)
Anyways, to your questions. I’ll be doing some more thinking about our relationship to stories & compensation. Last weekend through my business I had community pop up tent at a market to get people sharing their stories through question prompts. It was the first time I’d ever done something like that and there was no real agenda beyond just being with the people. I keep thinking about how much those questions got people reflecting and sharing. People were eager to be heard. To share. In real time. And I want more of that. More people in inter generational spaces telling us their truths as they’ve come to understand it.
Anyways, thanks for thinking about these questions. I continue to look forward to seeing what you channel and build as you keep on keeping on!
Hello! Thank you so much for reading and responding! It means a lot. Congratulations on the activation - in finding similar to you, ppl are ready now to engage in a way they haven’t been before. There’s an understandable urgency that doesn’t even need to be explained. I’m curious what some of your questions were?
Hello! Thank you for sharing your reflections. These are hard questions! I feel like journalistic conventions push a very transactional relationship between sources and writers/storytellers but at the same time it feels difficult for me to conceive of what a shared experience would be. I guess mostly because if it’s shared, it’s no longer controlled by one person and that feels scary! What if someone wants to rewrite a difficult section to come across differently, but then again who am I as the writer to decide how they get to come off…I listened to an interesting podcast from radiotopia that tried to tackle some of these questions, more from a procedural pov rather than actual storytelling but fascinating nonetheless! It’s called “Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative.”
Thank you for your comment! And the feedback on the questions 😅. I rly appreciate you engaging with them. Your comment raises the question: who should be in control then? Theres definitely a power dynamic at play to be unpacked. Thanks also for the podcast rec, I will check it out 🩷
Oooh Our Ancestors Were Messy is right up my alley! I love learning about how messy historical figures were because it humanizes them. A recently learned that Alain Locke had a collection of semen samples, presumably from his lovers. It made me think about how he navigated being a queer Black man during the Harlem Renaissance and also made me question why he did that and who the samples came from 😂
pls check it out, I’d love to hear what you think! And whaaat. So many questions! It’s sad how little we know / can find about our Black queer ancestors’ inner lives. I’m with you on humanizing our ancestors through mess. I’m developing a new relationship with history as a result!
Ahhhhhh so much here! I LOVE Young Charley's gift to you! And I'm so ready for the messy ancestors!
To your question prompts, they make me think of Reesa Teesa and her "Who TF did I marry?" series on TikTok. I spent 8+ cumulative hours over 2 days watching and listening to her story unfold over a fiftysomething part series. I was relatively new to TikTok at that time and was unfamiliar with the regularity of people sharing their stories / telling their business in some form of "story time." Hers caught fire across social platforms and I watched the viewership soar with every update she posted.
By the end of it, I was sick. I thanked God that she was safely out of the relationship she detailed and I prayed for her health and continued safety. And I felt sick because she bared her soul for the internet and I was worried that all she'd get for it was constant eyeballs and scrutiny. But then, surprisingly, I watched an economy form around her: (1) Payouts from the TikTok creator fund for the high viewership (I believe TikTok has a CPM-based compensation structure, but I'm unsure what the rate is per 1K views); (2) Brand deals to fulfill her ex's empty promises to her for trips, a car, etc; (3) Viewers turned fans creating speculative movie posters suggesting who should play the main characters in the story, and that call actually being answered by Natasha Rothwell who was featured in the fan poster, plus Disney, and CAA; (4) The talk show circuit; (5) the return of the realtor in her story who helped her see something was wrong, now helping her to get the house she wanted; (6) And ongoing comments from now 3.4 million followers, that I have discovered are a recurring chant, "we made the right person famous."
This model is certainly imperfect and its up to Reesa Teesa to tell us how she feels about how everything unfolded for her. But I was pleasantly surprised that at the core, there was a Black woman willing to share her story, and a community of everyday people who rallied behind her to care. My prayer is that she has not experienced further exploitation and that she feels whole and supported. Across platforms, I witness the relationship between storytelling and community care every. single. day, regardless of the extractive business models of the platforms. Many would say in spite of. You know what's possible where two or three are gathered (see Matthew 18: 19-20), all folks need is space.
Hi! Thank you for such a thoughtful and thorough comment, I’m sorry for my very late reply. I have been thinking about this tho!
I hadn’t thought of her story in this context but I do think it’s a good example of how ppl can leverage their stories and storytelling. I do suppose she had to sell the rights to her story to Natasha / whatever company and that then goes back to my original thought - why must the IP ownership be stripped from her? If she had a good lawyer she maybe could have retained the IP or some portion of that but that is really difficult to do esp as someone with no industry clout. Hell, it’s a big deal Ryan Coogler will retain rights to Sinners, a story he created and wrote, after 25 yrs. Im sure Reesa got a good payout but Hollywood would never let her payout be bigger than theirs.
I do appreciate what you said about witnessing care btwn the community and storytellers tho, I hadn’t given that much thought or credit. I agree - audiences like being there for ppl they care about and there’s alot of care in different story-centered communities. Thank you ❤️
ohh I have done some research and Reesa is executive producing via her own production company and starring. This sounds like a best case scenario in Hollywood land!!
Hi friend! It was such a joy reading this. Thanks for taking your time with it to give us the full experience of what’s on your heart rather than rushing through it! Why do we create these arbitrary measures of success for our writing (and really our lives?)
Anyways, to your questions. I’ll be doing some more thinking about our relationship to stories & compensation. Last weekend through my business I had community pop up tent at a market to get people sharing their stories through question prompts. It was the first time I’d ever done something like that and there was no real agenda beyond just being with the people. I keep thinking about how much those questions got people reflecting and sharing. People were eager to be heard. To share. In real time. And I want more of that. More people in inter generational spaces telling us their truths as they’ve come to understand it.
Anyways, thanks for thinking about these questions. I continue to look forward to seeing what you channel and build as you keep on keeping on!
Hello! Thank you so much for reading and responding! It means a lot. Congratulations on the activation - in finding similar to you, ppl are ready now to engage in a way they haven’t been before. There’s an understandable urgency that doesn’t even need to be explained. I’m curious what some of your questions were?