In 2004 Showtime launched The L Word with a site that encouraged fans to login and chat about the show. Over time, they updated the site with all of the emergent bells-and-whistles: blogs, social networking, and Second Life portal. These new spaces simultaneously provided lesbians an expanded and easy-access online community and created a corporate-controlled space that spoke to Showtime’s own economic agenda. To partake in these new toys, fans were encouraged to define themselves in ways most conducive to the network’s sexual, economic, and gendered vision. Through an examination of the sites’ strict reins on identity construction as produced by its texts, interfaces, inclusions, and striking omissions, this article seeks to shed light on the subtle means by which corporate participation in and design of fan spaces can lead to fans (perhaps unwittingly) bending to corporate designs and playing on a field skewed to corporate rather than personal advantage.
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