Abstract
ABSTRACT Increasing numbers of individuals and groups are turning to subscription-based platforms like Patreon to create smaller, more private digital spaces, and income streams less contingent on social media platforms. Within this shift, feminist groups are notably visible, from private community platforms to messaging groups. In this paper, I consider this shift by reflecting on findings from a three-month digital ethnography with the Anti Diet Riot Club, a UK-based group who in 2021 launched ‘The Community’, a subscription-based online community. Drawing on ethnographic data, I explore how in contrast to experiences of social media platforms and algorithms as fast-paced, exhausting, tiring and boring, being in a space which was algorithmically simpler, slower and sparser was experienced by participants as enabling, agency-building, and connective. Yet, ‘The Community’ ultimately sits behind a paywall, and this generates powerful tensions between building participatory feminist communities, and the kinds of consumer, service-oriented expectations and relationships that emerge. I conclude by considering the opportunities slowness and sparseness afford for building feminist networks of community and support, while critically reflecting on how subscription-based memberships entangle feminist initiatives within the neoliberal digital economy and the challenges this poses for creating and sustaining feminist digital spaces.
Published Version
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