All Hail or Down With King Copyright? (I will take this opportunity to publicize my favorite show, because I’m a fan, and that’s what fans do)

A few years ago, preluding the fiftieth anniversary of BBC show Doctor Who, a fan created a montage (“Doctor Who: The First Question – 50^th Anniversary Trailer”) celebrating the show’s history. It’s brilliant. The extended version got over a million views. It had to be removed due to copyright, so the creator put it on another account, and it’s stayed thus far. But I suppose it was so popular the BBC didn’t want viewers to think it was official. There’s loads of other fan-made videos, and they’ve been left in peace. Some viewers commented that the BBC should have been thankful for the publicity.

The creator said the video was a love-letter to the show.  I think about pre-Internet, when fans had the options of sending an actual letter of admiration to an actor, band, ect. or create a collage of pictures in their closet, secretly, to not embarrass themselves (was that really a thing?) But now, it’s awesome that these love letters aren’t passive. They’re not secretive. They make up, like Baym says, a community. I like what Ethan Kaplan said about community: “The label promotes, distributes and develops artists while the fans support them underneath” (Baym, 41).  Even if fandoms start out as a means to share a common interest, these videos, fanfiction, two-second gifs popping up again and again on Tumblr, are all both drawing in and tightening the community. I think some producers hope the community will grow into a kingdom, with all the fans subservient, but that’s not the way fandoms work.

I understand why some people wouldn’t want fans taking over their image. I bet that can get pretty awkward, even rude. But I see it this way. Once something is posted on the Internet, it has the potential to grow. Growing, whether artists like Usher or Prince like it or not, doesn’t just mean “getting bigger.” It means being added to. Of course, people who are rude, who bash artists just because they feel like bashing someone, ought to be tossed into the dungeons (but since we’ve decided fandoms are communities, not kingdoms, that’s not likely). It’s also not fair that, like Baym says, fans “prefer to maintain independence” (32) while the artist allows himself to be pulled apart, examined, and pieced back in sometimes grotesque forms. Is there no control?

Well. Copyright is control. But then we have to ask where to draw the line, because certainly not every fan-made piece means harm. And some people engage in mocking their idols because they love them so much (think HISHE or Honest Trailer, YouTube channels that nitpick movie gaps and faults but ends up highlighting how awesome those movies are).

The Internet has allowed for so much publicity. My last blog post mentioned how a YouTuber can gain enough fans solely through YouTube that a huge crowd will jump at the chance to meet that person. I think one of the reasons people do is they feel like they can participate almost on the same level as the YouTuber. I wouldn’t go as far as to agree with Baym’s statement that fans need to be seen as equals (42), but certainly the sense of community is stronger when a person is able to communicate to his fans through a blog or a video, rather than through more indirect means, like an interview in a magazine. We feel like we know that personal on a personal level—well, as personal as you can get between a script and a screen. Overall, I agree with Baym that the Internet has changed the relationship between artists and fans for the better. Maybe if I were famous, I’d feel differently, but from a fan’s point of view, being able to connect with people over the same interest is half of the experience.

Fandom Buried Paul

Where else are the lines between producer and consumer blurred as much as they are in fandom? The internet has led to some crazy cultural advances, and I feel as though the endless collaborative opportunities is one of them. The article stated, “Fans need to be seen as collaborators and equals” and I couldn’t agree more. Without one, there is no other. Fans and artists are created in each other’s image, especially now in the digital age.

Baym’s article did a great job outlining what online fandoms seek to accomplish. To reiterate, fandoms seek to:

• ·      Share feeling
• ·      Build social identity
• ·      Pool collective intelligence
• ·      Interpret collectively

Growing up, I was endlessly fascinated by Beatles fandom. To be specific, sixth grade me was obsessed with Beatles conspiracy theories. I spent an inordinate amount of time online examining clues that led to the possibility of Paul’s death, exploring potential arcane symbology on the front of Abbey Road, and trying to get the “magic-eye” effect to work on the cover of Magical Mystery Tour so I could call the number that appeared and, purportedly, listen to a voice message left by John mere hours before his death.

It’s all preposterous, now that I think of it, but these interactions at a young age shaped my online identity in many ways. I grew accustomed to these online communities and learned to navigate them. Of course, the subject matter was probably a little dodgy for a sixth-grader in his elementary school computer lab to be looking at during free time, but I only got kicked out once.

Now that we’re well into the internet age, I’m still heavily involved with online fandoms. Certainly, the forms detailed in Baym’s slightly outdated article have changed, but the principles remain the same. To be honest, it seems as though I spend more time on discussion forums than actually engaging with the source material, but that seems to be a critical aspect of fandom. I use fandoms to enrich my experience with a work, whether it’s a piece of music, a book, tv show, video game or whatever. Fan communities have really enriched my interactions with things I find interesting.

Scouring grimy forums for info back in the day was a blast, don’t get me wrong, but now it seems as though accessing info and interacting with like-minded fans is so much easier. In fact, most of my interactions are localized around Reddit, which allows me to combine nearly all of my interests into vibrant sub-communities. It’s an incredible resource and takes the hassle out of finding a discussion. Of course, the more in-depth discussions require a little digging, but sites like Reddit offer a jumping-off point for most fandoms.

Some might say that fandoms detract from individual interpretations of a work, but I think that’s just nonsense. Communication is an essential part of being human, and the more voices and brains we can get on a topic the better. Plus, if we somehow find out if the current "Paul McCartney" is just an actor, my life can finally have some validation. 

The Hater's Gonna Hate (hate hate hate hate)

"The internet has transformed what it means to be a music fan." ~ Nancy Baym, "Online Community and Fandom"

How did people ever get famous before the internet?
 
I was very young when cassette tapes were still in use. The music industry then switched to using CD's and then gradually to a purely digital format which, I would agree, changed the culture of the music industry. It was a lot more effort to be a fan back then. You had to physically meet with other fans and exchange information and franchise that you had gathered from various pre-internet sources. It's is hard for me to comprehend how much time devout fans sacrificed for certain bands back in the day. While I was reading Baym's article, she was talking about how it took years to accumulate all of the information, music, and other "stuff" from any given band. Does anyone else agree with me that bands had to be pretty amazing to become famous at all back then? It seems as though today it's so much easier to get famous, and so perhaps there is less skill required to do so. Or maybe it's just the opposite in today's world; fame in the music (or any other) industry may be much more competitive today than ever before due to the widespread availability of the tools needed to make music and share it.

Whichever the case, it is unquestionable that it is much simpler to be a "fan" in today's world. You can find any song you want on the internet. The information for any artist is available for everyone, and you can connect easily with other fans through forums. Franchise is advertised on the internet and can be shipped to you so that you never even have to go to a concert to get a T-shirt for a band. The things you would have had to accumulate through years of devoted fanhood can be found with the click of the button if you are able to find the right website, even music that you can download for free.

But I wonder ... has this new culture of fandom been more hurtful to the music industry or the individual artists involved? Nancy Baym claims that despite the negative side-effects of the fan industry, the benefits are mostly positive. Because fans can so easily share what they love about certain bands with others, fans are multiplied every day, even if some illegal downloading happens along the way. I would agree--fans generally help more than they do harm. However, there is something else that seems to have been born with the new culture of internet fandom: haters.

You've seen them. There are entire articles on the internet and in magazines dedicated to tearing down a certain artist or celebrity. It may have been around before the internet as "gossip," but it seems to be more prevalent now more than ever. People probably write them less because of how passionate they feel about hating on a certain celebrity and more because they know that it will attract many readers who will be drawn in by a title that bashes on someone who they admire or at least have heard about.

It's so annoying. Whenever I see articles like that, I just feel like slapping someone. Or look the people responsible in the eyes and say, "Get a life." They are literally earning money by criticizing others, often taking what they say out of context and making harsh judgements about them. Can you really ever make a judgement about anyone you have never met or tried to get to know before in your life? 

Taylor Swift seems to be one of the hardest-hit. If I were her, I would be seriously affected by this, but she at least appears to understand that "the hater's gonna hate." 

I was not expecting to rant about this pet peeve of mine in this post, but it seems to tie in with the theme of Baym's article. Fandom has grown and changed ever since the internet has become widely-used, so it's only logical that the opposite has also taken place--there are also more "haters." Their influence does seem to have at least a minor effect on how many fans a group can accumulate. However, there seems to be little or nothing to be done about it. It's the same case with the fans. Trying to control it is impossible. 

Or is it? How do artists go about dealing with that?

The Queen, Obsession, and Toast

Once, I was obsessed with the Queen of England. (Elizabeth II. You know, the one that’s alive.) Like, SO obsessed. I was eleven or twelve, and I spent a LOT of time in the biography section of my local library, checking out every book possible on the woman, watching documentaries, learning royal customs, wondering if our pedigrees cross at some point many generations back…(they don’t, by the way.) Did you know she has a major obsession with hats? Seriously, the woman has a hat for every outfit, and she has a billion outfits.

             

The thing is, when I was in the throes of royal obsession, I did it quietly, by myself. Well, sometimes I’d talk to my mom about it, so that she could be in on my life, but mostly, it was me. And that was just fine. As an extremely private person, I felt like I could feel an appropriate amount of ardor for a total stranger without uncomfortably invading their privacy, or divulging any secrets of my own.

             

Maybe if I actually lived in England, there’d be some other people to joy in the fandom of the Queen. But if that were the case, I would probably find something else to obsess over.

             

The idea of Fandom in general is really off putting to me. If I were in the shoes of one of these musicians, I’d be thoroughly freaked out if people were constantly discussing me, everything about me, everything I did, and so forth. Like I said: Extremely. Private. The whole thing just makes me slightly uncomfortable.

             

Be that as it may, I can see how the internet has effected the way people choose to geek out over their personal idols – especially in the music industry. My father-in-law was a Deadhead, and at the age of 70, he still wears T-shirts from his band following days.

             

The thing I found curious about this new-age “relationship between fans and the people and things around whom they organize” was how dependent a person’s success is on their fans.

“The flip side of fans’ increased power is a loss of control amongst those who’ve been able to control music production, distribution, and coverage….Getting control back is not an option. That’s just not going to happen. So the question is how you can build relationships with these fandoms that are mutually supportive. They do this best when bands and labels have to do their part to make that work.”

Can you imagine if the livelihood of the Queen of England relied on whether or not people liked her? Set aside that she’s a figurehead monarch who comes from old money. Fine, bad analogy. Can you imagine if your own personal livelihood, your success in your chosen career, relied on fans? Regardless if you are the most passionate, amazing, ingenious artist on the face of this good green earth – if you don’t have a good following, you’re toast.

Beetoven! He’s a good example. The man was outright mean, they say. Just a grumpy pants, and deaf to boot. But he was talented as all get out, and people respected him for it. Even now, long after he’s gone, his music lives on. What if he’d had to have a fandom based on his personal character rather than his actual talent? Isn’t that exactly what fandoms are like now?

“Fans need to be seen as collaborators and equals.”

Really? I don’t think they actually NEED to be seen as anything other than overly obsessive. I understand that the internet, it’s so easy to connect over things we love, and if we really love it we’ll support it. It’s super great, and helps people get on in the world. But we also connect over things we don’t love. And if something we don’t love is the attitude of the base player in such-n-such band then that thing we don’t love so much? It’s toast.

Maybe I don’t get it. I just see fans as invaders of personal space, and I have a very large personal space bubble that I do not want invaded.

I guess I’ll just have do my best to never become interesting. Or famous.

On Reliability, Democracy, and Nyan Cat

“The Golden Age of Artistic Innovation and Achievement”(DiMaggio 368)

Paul DiMaggio’s article seems mostly about how awesome the Internet is for consumers and how devastating it is for some industries. Take the news industry.

I pity it. Or rather, I pity the old news industry—the one that lost its footing as producers scrambled to adapt first to television and then to the Internet, in the process breaking up into nearly unrelated organizations. Would anyone wish they could go back to just newspapers? No, because news as we know it has branched out; it’s not the “newspaper” anymore. I think someday, it’ll be the same between newspapers and online news. They’re widening their influence, thinking how what they’ve already got can be digitized and how they can take control of what’s new.  Other industries had begun long ago to take over some fronts (it’s no longer the newspaper’s role to advertise). 

If a news site is determined to remain in one place, as if stuck to the pages of a traditional newspaper, the only people who will visit it are those sincerely only interested in news, such as it arrives on the doorstep. KSL.com’s got more than just news. They’ve expanded their “news” to include several categories and added a “Marketplace” navigation where people can shop or search for jobs. Their job is to tell us what’s going on, but I figure there’s other ways to do that besides writing an article. I think networking and bringing readers into the conversation is a key feature of the Internet, even though news sources are supposed to be objective.

I was poking around on the Internet for other opinions and came across a 2011 article from The Economist, titled “Bulletins from the Future.” While DiMaggio’s article focuses on the negative side of the Internet’s effects, the writer explains that it causes innovation in journalism.

DiMaggio predicts that news will decline in quantity and quality (376). I’m not so sure about quantity, but quality might be affected. The Economist article also explains how journalists are presenting news in formats other than newspaper or through broadcast, such as Tweeting real-time or showing shaky amateur videos that express immediacy and authenticity. Really, anyone could do that, but we totally trust our major news sources. 

DiMaggio states “The issue is less whether newspapers will survive than whether they will be willing and able to pay for the quality of reporting . . . that healthy democracies require” (387). I figure as democracy pertains to the news industry we’ve got a right to know what’s really going on. Because the Internet roots for the individual, we get that individual’s perspective stronger than from a “reliable” news source. Some people prefer that, but whether such a concept shows TRUTH can only be guessed at, probably by synthesizing all of the sources about the issue. That probably wouldn’t be so hard, considering the Internet allows people to take in more news. I’ve got Windows 10 and if I click on the search bar, news stories from various sources pop up. I really never would have looked at any of them otherwise. So even though they’re not getting particularly decent revenues, hey, they’ve got me as an interested reader! That’s something, right?

Just a quick word about DiMaggio’s section on the record industry. I've got songs by YouTubers on my free Spotify playlist. How's that for toppling both the record industry and artists? But as DiMaggio says, such services benefit the industry and artists who agree to YouTube fame rather than radio fame. VidCon, for example, is a huge gathering of online video makers and viewers. A bunch of screaming fans showed up in 2011 to listen to a Trock band (music about the show Doctor Who), formerly just on YouTube. Some of the members have sold merchandise relating to things they’ve said on camera. Fans eat it up.

Basically, the Internet is good or bad to you depending on what kind of fame you want. Artists can share their work online. Fewer people go to galleries. Hence, Nyan Cat blasts into what DiMaggio hopefully predicts to be “the golden age of artistic innovation and achievement” (368).

So the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter ... Maybe it's not so equalizing after all.

You know, I had originally thought that the internet had a largely equalizing effect on society. After all, it makes available to literally anyone who has access to the internet a great amount of knowledge. That knowledge is not blocked from anyone--all they have to do is search for it, and voila! There it is. What an amazing age we live in today where the same knowledge and information that used to only be available to the elites of society are now plastered on the digital billboard for all to see, if they choose.

However, a key phrase here is "if they choose."

After reading Paul DiMaggio's article on the influence of the internet on production and consumption of culture, he mentions a worrying possible trend that researchers have dubbed "the knowledge gap hypothesis—the paradoxical notion that if good information becomes cheaper, better-informed members of the public will become even more well informed, and less-informed citizens will fall even further behind" (389). That is because of the idea that well-informed people tend to value knowledge much more than people who are less educated or informed to begin with; therefore, they will obtain much more of it as the price goes down while the rest of society does nothing to search out more information. If this is the case, it will cause the gap between the more informed and the less informed to grow gradually wider and wider, putting a wrench into the notion that the internet creates more equality, especially in terms of democracy.

This idea seems to ring true, especially when I think about the different ways that very educated and less-educated people use the internet. Highly educated people probably know how to use the internet in a way that makes them smarter, finding and reading the scholarly articles that are most reliable while everyone else spends all of their time on mainstream websites which do not always hold the most useful or even reliable of information. Thus, the internet could be considered to have a more "dumbing" effect on some people than on others, depending upon how it is used, and that "dumbing" effect is probably most influential on those who primarily spend their internet time on mainstream, social media, and entertainment websites, only choosing to read an informational article if it is sensational enough to capture their interest despite their tiny attention spans. They probably rarely finish the articles they begin reading. (We discussed this problem in previous posts.)

However, does this effect not also extend to those who are more inclined to find reputable sources on the internet? Nicholas Carr, someone I consider to be on the side of "information-lovers," admits that he is finding it increasingly difficult to actually finish the articles that he started reading on the internet because of the effect it has had on his attention span. This effect leaves out no one, and so likely affects even those who know how to maneuver the internet for their greatest informational benefit.

However, if this is the case, it will only slightly slow the growth of the "knowledge gap" that exists rather than completely diminish it. Even if more avid knowledge-seekers are hindered in their daily quests to obtain knowledge, it will not stop them, and they will still grow more and more educated than those who simply "don't care."

... I really hope the people who "don't care" at least inform themselves sufficiently before voting. If they only get their information from mainstream sources or ads and then don't even finish reading the articles, they probably aren't going to be too informed at all. It seems as though, for one to make a good vote, one must objectively consider all sides of the candidates and issues and hand. But because so many of the articles we find about politics are never totally objective, we are forced to read many articles to see the bigger picture. This is why voting stresses me out. But after posting this, I think I'm going to put forth more of an effort to be more informed. I don't want to help society turn into a bunch of brainwashed internet-zombies controlled by the internet overlords who make the most interesting and/or convincing propaganda on the internet. I have the power to be informed. All I need is a sufficient desire. It's time to breech the knowledge gap.

Hello? Are you there, readers? Please respond....

“Not only are people accustomed to putting their thoughts online but also in so doing they believe their thoughts and ideas are registering . . . One believes that it matters, that it contributes, that it means something” (58).

Oh, YouTube comments.

Oh, maybe not exactly YouTube comments.

But I see Dean’s point. The rest of the Internet isn’t so different. People struggle to get a message across. They believe at the very least, they’ll win an argument, even if they haven’t actually changed anyone’s mind.

Someone wondering where they can share their opinion might consider YouTube, a blog, or a forum. Like Dean says, they go in with hope, “presuming that there are readers for their blogs” (60) and doers, who gratefully utilize the blogger’s message. But no matter how many exclamation points they send into cyberspace, they’ll encounter difficulties in getting that message heard:

1) Someone has to seek out the message or happen to come upon it.  The chances of someone seeking out, say, the meaningless of circulating content and its relationship with politics, are pretty unlikely. More likely that someone comes across it because it’s already popular and linked to other sites, or perhaps a professor has assigned it as a reading.  

2) Location matters, even on the Web. How many people scroll through every comment in a forum? There’s so many voices, a few heartfelt lines are going to get lost. If someone does read it, what are the chances they share it? If they forget it, it’s lost in the void.

3) The content needs to be eye-catching. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter if it’s well-written, but if viewers aren’t intrigued, and they really weren’t all that interested in the topic anyway, few people will click on an obscure link to a dense article about cleaning under the stove.

Despite these difficulties, why do people continue to contribute?

When I was a kid, at my family reunion my cousin and I decided to ask family members to sign a petition to “Save the Whales,” and eventually “and Dogs.” Some people were confused or distrustful. But most of them smiled, knowing we were just seeing how many signatures we could get. They signed knowing nothing would come of it. I figure those people would be more believing if they were clicking a button on the Internet. Before the London 2012 Olympics, I came across a petition to get David Tennant (Doctor Who) to light the Cauldron, because he did so on an iconic British show. I entertained thoughts of how epic that would be. I didn’t know who the petition was going to get sent off to, but there was a substantial amount of votes. My finger lingered over the mouse, and knowing how stupid it was, I added my vote, hoping “they” would at least get Tennant to be present during the ceremony. (Hardly even a mention of Doctor Who. Losers.)

My point is, the Internet is a hopeful medium, because we can’t see “behind the scenes.” We believe in the fantasy Dean refers to, and that keeps us from getting riled up enough to do something about anything. She writes, “The technological fetish 'is political' for us, enabling us to go about the rest of our lives relieved of the guilt that we might not be doing our part and secure in the belief that we are after all informed, engaged citizens. The paradox of the technological fetish is that the technology acting in our stead actually enables us to remain politically passive” (63).

I’ve seen loads of people assuaging their guilt through the Internet. For the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, if you didn’t want to make a donation, you had to get soaked. People who sort of kind of cared about the cause could feel better knowing they were spreading the word, if not actually contributing. And sometimes, it did help. Sometimes it’d reach someone who was willing to donate, and that made it all worth it. Until it went from supporting a cause to a dare amongst friends. Then people could only ask “Why would I dump ice cold water on my head?” and let the cause fade back into the shadows with its millions. That occurrence, like all things Internet, was flowy, through blogs and Facebook, in and out of sight. 

I think the take-away from Dean’s article is that we can’t rely on the Internet to keep our passion. It’s like leaving milk out of the fridge and hoping someone else will take care of it. It doesn’t keep, and you can’t assume someone will even see it. So what’s someone to do? Someone who has a strong political message but without the authority or personal connections to get it past the barrier of other cyber voices? Not sure. But if someone years from now finds this blog post and tells me how transformative it was for him, I’ll definitely let you all know with another blog post. I’m sure you’ll read it.