Head Canon Is How You Get Fans Talking About You

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Head Canon: The Secret Weapon

Head canon is another thing I'm considering a lot as we're building out an artist's presence these days. Basically, the more you give fans hints of things to think about, the more you bait them to make up hypotheses and discuss them with other fans. Now there’s a nuance to this in that just throwing things out with no ties to your lyrics, lore or other strengths will not help you create this word of mouth. But let’s first start with painting a picture of what this even looks like.

Headcanon is a fan's personal, unofficial interpretation of a fictional work, filling gaps or developing theories about characters, relationships, or events not specifically confirmed in the official story.

The levels: Level one builds around preexisting canon, fills the blanks. Level two takes elements from canon and explores them in a transformative way. Level three is not rooted in canon material at all, builds off preexisting fan content. Level four: You literally made that up.

All of this is how we're thinking about what gets put in fan accounts. Making shit up is very common in fan accounts.

Metaphor vs Direct Content

One of the ways I want to put this in your head is that there's head canon and then there's direct. For example, Doechii has this grid post about supporting her fans with this new website. Fans will search throughout this single photo to try to find the meaning, zoom in to read stuff in the fine print. Once you have some enthusiasm, they're going to make up things about it, ask about it. Even if you have a hundred fans right now, if you make a post with small details, somebody's probably going to ask you about them.

Whereas if you just take a picture where you're looking hot, there's not much defined. You're positioning yourself differently.

With an album cover like Doechii's, some head canon could be the white alligator. People can make interpretations. Alligators are known to be dangerous. It's white. Is there a white person who is dangerous in their life that she's now taming? They will start to make up things and interpret them.

You can seed these things with your fan account. How much of that you're doing is a scale:

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