“Do you Love Me?”: virtual sincerity and the cyberspaces of wonder in Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files

The chapter will suggest that the charismatic rock singer and author Nick Cave’s recent public persona has been characterised by a ‘therapeutic turn’. The chapter will focus upon the launch of Cave’s ‘The Red Hand Files’ (TRHF) project in 2018 - an online forum to facilitate an open unmoderated dialogue between the artist and the public. There appears to be no filter on either what can be asked of the artist or how the artist can answer.

The chapter will suggest that TRHF is representative of a (re)positioning of Cave as digital-media guru. Moreover, the apparent compassionate nature of exchange between artist and fan signals a momentarily cultural counterpoint to the often ‘toxic’, and highly regulated interaction between artist and fan that normally characterises the social media relationship.

In this respect TRHF appears to problematise the traditional para-social nature of celebrity fandom (Rojek, 2016). This in turn opens up potentials and possibilities for a more humanist cyberspace, predicated perhaps upon a more contemplative subject.