Post-postmodern consumer authenticity, shantay you stay or sashay away? A netnography of RuPaul’s Drag Race fans

Abstract

Consumer negotiation of authenticity is explored through a netnography of online fans of the reality television series RuPaul’s Drag Race. Suggestion is of a post-postmodern approach to negotiating the authenticity of series narratives consumed, associated authentic identities of consumers, and of supporting interactions of the consumer community. A more reconstructive stance arises from some fans’ occasional frustrations over staging interfering with narrative truth and at times perceived dismissal of meaningful fixed identity. Public performances before and with other online fans help to agglomerate and assert preferred versions of these. This post-postmodern approach is distinct from more deconstructive and typically postmodern attitudes also evident among the fandom, and themselves shown to interact with and be reinvigorated by reconstructions. Highlighted is the complex negotiation of authenticity by consumers overall.