Synthetic Fandom vs. Organic Fandom

For my honors thesis at Indiana University I proposed a spectrum as a means to classify organizational structure and function of contemporary fan communities. I coined two terms, and I will provide definitions and examples here. I am proud of these terms because they do an eloquent job of describing a larger phenomenon.

Organic Fandom: A fan community that arises naturally from fans finding each other and pooling their own resources to share cultural experiences with one another and express their love of a cultural product. They have little to no involvement from the producers of the content they consume. The interaction they do have with producers of content is mostly direct connection. A bottom-up community, less concerned with legality and more concerned with expression and creativity.

Synthetic Fandom: A fan community organized by producers of content and the business enterprises that fund them. These communities attempt to emulate the practices of organic fandoms but in a controlled environment designed to capitalize on cultural communities. A top-down community, more legally minded.

Joss Whedon’s fans are an example of fan communities that are organic. The “bronzers” helped pave the way, from their own ingenuity, for structures of internet fan communities to come. Browncoats are a contemporary example of a bottom up community. Whedonesque.com is hub of these fans and is a fan generated site.

Heroes is a television show with an obviously synthetic fandom. The main web-site is an offshoot from NBC and the scope of fan created content that is sanctioned on the site is limited.

The “Gleek” movement bounces between synthetic and organic, although not as obnoxiously so. Much of the community organizing happens through pre-exisitng social networking sites, in particular, Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.  The fans are genuine, but a large part of their fandom is expressed via purchasing power.

Star Trek has no midnight showing in Bloomington

I saw Watchmen at midnight on the night of the release in Bloomington. What puzzles me is why there is no midnight showing for the even bigger film Star Trek. There is clearly a crowd for it. Perhaps it is to make more money, anticipating an older target audience, people who might not be as keen on staying up that late. Perhaps it is to make more money.

I think that a film as epic as the new Star Trek deserves a midnight release. There is something about the film experience at midnight, something so momentous about being up at the change of date to see a film, that contributes to the filming experience. Seeing a movie with the right audience greatly improves the movie watching experience.

At the midnight showing of Watchmen in Bloomington, the entire experience was worth the advance tickets and staying up late. There were excited college boys entertaining themselves, and everyone else, by performing in front of the theater as the crowd came in. The noise was always at a steady buzz, and any there was a steady commentary of snark and geekdom all the way up until the film’s start. The loud cheers as the house lights dimmed and the eruption of noise as the film commenced was just one sign of the excitement in the room for a media consumption experience. These fanboys (because the gender ration was about 4:1) were consciously consuming media, all looking for a shared cultural experience, not just a couple of hours of entertainment and suspension of disbelief. Despite thoughts about the quality of the film, the midnight experience is one that cannot be replicated.

Which makes me wonder, what elements of the ethos of a film make something midnight worthy? Harry Potter films are midnight worthy. Watchmen was midnight worthy. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were both midnight worthy, but why not Star Trek? There are still the hardcore fans who would show up to a midnight show, and it a college town, it isn’t like the hours are too ridiculous? Does the movie lack the intimate fandom required for a midnight release? Or perhaps the fandom is too large to contain a midnight release?

Whichever way, I think Star Trek deserves the midnight experience.

fan of CouchSurfing.com

Couchsurfing.com is a web site where people can volunteer their couch space, spare bedrooms or other places for guests to stay and can find places to stay when in need of free temporary lodging. It runs on the plausible promise that the reviews are trustworthy and the people who would decide that this is a good way to travel are all similar in trustworthiness and adventuresome spirit.

I am a fan of couch surfing. I have only surfed someone else’s couch once. I recently went graduate school shopping at UT Austin. I was accepted into their MA in Media Studies program. I had planned on going there until I got into UCLA for their MA in Cinema and Media Studies. Because I had a legitimate decision to make I planned a trip to visit Austin on very short notice and on a very limited (almost nonexistent budget). Initially I had planned on staying in a hostel, until a few friends of mine independently suggested couch surfing. I had read about the web site and immediately did research and signed up.

I read all of the tools for beginners and guidelines for women traveling alone. I looked up hosts in Austin and sent messages to a few of them. Each host has a profile page. On this page are their conditions for surfers and descriptions of the space available and means of transportation near their place of residence. There are comments on their walls from previous surfers and there are statistics about percentage of replies to requests to surf and demographic information that make it easier to discern if the person you are looking at is the kind of person who you would want to stay with.

Some people like to hang out with their hosts, and some hosts like to take time to really get to know their guests, others are being hospitable but are independent or busy and expect guests to do the same. Surfers will note things like if the hosts give an extra set of keys, or if there is wi-fi available and other helpful pieces of information. Surfers can rate experiences with hosts as positive, neutral or negative and guests can be rated too.

I was choosing between a nice sounding married couple who lived farther away from campus than I would have liked, but on paper looked less sketchy and the apartment of three men, who lived very close to the part of campus that I needed to be at, but whose host said he was a photographer and a producer, all of which sounds suspect to a single white female.

Out of convenience I chose to stay with the men, and trying to explain to my parents that I was going to Austin alone and staying with three guys I met on the Internet was significantly easier than I expected. It was a valuable life lesson and a great way to stay for a few nights somewhere for free. It was easy for me to feel comfortable with because I am not creepy and I think that couch surfing is a great idea because I am trusting and trustworthy. I therefor made the connection that other people who think that couch surfing is a good idea are similar to me. I also assume most of the people I know or at least have met once are trustworthy enough for me to feel comfortable sleeping on their couch for a night even if I don’t know them very well. It was like sleeping at the apartment of a classmate who I never really talked to.

It is a great example of collective action via the Internet and have clear social tools (cell phones, the Internet) and institutions that make couch surfing something that I willingly participated in. In his book Here Comes Everybody Clay Shirky describes the organizational power the Internet allows without the typical structure of top down organizations. Couchsurfing.com is certainly an example of organizing people that would have been difficult in a pre-web era. People looking for something have a place to go to find it and can unite around a web site. In order to manage costs of running the web site and the traditional organizational structure, the site takes monetary donations as part of a verification process.

There is an unseen institution that monitors Couchsurfing. When registering, they required emergency contact information and ever communication through the site is monitored. This means there has to be a staff of people who do the monitoring as well as a webmaster who does upkeep, and these employees must get paid.

All in all… I am a fan of couchsurfing.com and am glaringly aware of the people and institutions at play that make a site like this function, and most of all, the plausible promise of a free place to stay with people who are as reasonable and normal as one’s self. This is more than just a site that enables action to come from interaction online in the intended form of couch surfers and hosts, but it has also become a kind of social networking. The hosts in Austin TX have a monthly pot-luck. Many of them know each other and are friends. Not only does it draw like-minded people for the purposes of temporary housing, but it draws like minded people together with the result of knowing more people.

fan of facebook

I am a fan of Facebook. I participate whole- heartedly in the culture of Facebook and am fascinated by the rules of decorum and the way that Facebook has permeated my social life… and now for some musings on “becoming Facebook official”

I had been thinking about asking my significant other about becoming “Facebook official” and a few nights ago he asked me if I would like to become “Facebook official.” Now, as two rational media scholars would naturally do, we had a big conversation about what that meant and how to approach this.

Thus far, my profile had the “interested in” and “relationship status” categories removed from my profile, because, quite honestly, that is not the business of people over the Internet. I feel the right to keep my personal information personal. Give away too much over Facebook and suddenly you wind up with people knowing more about you than you expected because they read it over Facebook. Michael’s status said “single” which had clearly been inaccurate for weeks now, and at the very least, we decided should be removed.

He, out of courtesy to me, asked if he too should remove status, but I consciously decided I would not mind taking this public and for the scrutiny of all of my friends, not to mention, anyone who knows me well already knew about Mike. This was just committing to each other semantically.

This is a big commitment because it is changes the discourse surrounding a relationship. Up until this point I had referred to him as “the guy I am seeing” or “my tango partner” or “significant other” however becoming Facebook official designates the switch over from whatever kind of terms to a more standard use of “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.”

I had asked him what he called me when he was talking to other people about me and the discourse surrounding our coupling thus far. We had seemed to be in agreement that we were not at a proper place to refer to each other in terms of b/f and g/f.

In addition to a shift in personal discourse, linking one’s Facebook profile to another’s in that way offers friends of either party to Facebook stalk the linked person. I realized that my Facebook did not project a digital profile I was comfortable having his friends stalk, and probably judge me over and so I told him I needed 48 hours to make my profile what I wanted his friends to see, which, was a reasonable request, and an opportunity for the both of us to do some routine maintanance on our pages that were much needed.

We expected, much like history has shown, that when relationship statuses change and show up on News feed (stalker feed) then there tends to be an onslaught of commentary that comes from the woodwork either congratulating or expressing condolences for said change. So, we made the change. After sorting through all of our photos and un-tagging things and changing privacy settings and all but changing our profile pictures, we made the change.

I had forgotten about the ideological change I had made on Facebook I made a year ago. I told my Facebook to not notify people about my change in relationship status. I noticed this because I had not received the expected deluge of commentary and had to go back through my privacy settings. This led to the conclusion that there are degrees of becoming “Facebook official” and that changing a relationship status was one thing, where as letting it show up in all of my friends’ news-feeds was another. There is being open in public about a relationship and adopting a set of terms to use to describe the relationship and then there is forcing people to acknowledge a relationship and fishing for congratulatory remarks.

I retroactively changed my Facebook settings to have changes in relationship status show up in news-feed, however since I had already made the change, it did not get announced to my world of friends. I am okay with this. He is okay with this, but we have made the digital leap into linked profiles on Facebook.

Which led me to another Facebook image issue. Sharing profile pictures. I told him that I do not want to ever share profile pictures because that infringed on my space as an individual. Sharing an image that is supposed to be representative of one’s self and including another person in it makes me think that the person in the photo who actually has the profile attached to it feels that they are not an individual without another person in their life. I do not wish to be known as half of a whole, but a whole unit in synergy with another whole unit whose lives are linked, but not deeply entrenched in the other’s.

I have yet to receive an acknowledgement of a change in relationship status via Facebook or otherwise, which leads me to believe that my change still has not shown up on news feed, and will not show up on news feed and that people are not clicking on my profile and bothering to comment on the relationship status, presumably because they might feel they missed there opportunity and didn’t notice when it showed up on stalker feed, which would have been the appropriate time and place to comment.

celebrities are people too

Los Angeles is so full of celebrities that anyone with a camera large enough to be conspicuous might pass as paparazzi. I was at The Grove with my father, who happens to be a professional photographer, but not a paparazzo. He had his camera for work there just to photograph the pre-Christmas mess that the mall was.  A little boy walked up to him outside of The Gap and asked if he was waiting for a movie star, and which one.  My dad explained that he wasn’t waiting for a star, just merely taking pictures. 

I have had my fair share of celebrity sightings during my life thus far in Los Angeles, and what people don’t seem to think about is how easy it is to see them doing mundane things. I saw Jamie Lee Curtis at the drive through window at In-N-Out in Westwood, and my friends and I have almost been run over by Dame Judi Dench leaving a public parking lot in Beverly Hills. My most recent run in was at the grocery store. While shopping for dinner at Bristol Farms in Beverly Hills we ran into a few in their natural habitat. 

It is interesting to me because there are so many people who come to Los Angeles looking to see celebrities and go to all of the wrong places. They have to eat, drive, and do mundane things just like the rest of us, but because society stalks them as if they were part deity part endangered species, it always comes as a surprise to find out that they do exactly what we do, but spend more money doing it.

The Television Event Is Not Dead

As all college kids might know, the next episode of your favorite show is a must see, but no one likes spending time alone. My freshman year of college it was Heroes and Gray’s Anatomy. I have friends who are Office addicts, the audience entourage for Entourage, and who are over all television oriented people. Some say Must See TV died with time shifting. I say there is still TV that I must see. 

Before I started watching Heroes, I would show up to bagel brunch and be out of the conversation. The ” I can’t believe Sylar did this, or Hiro did that” statements were being tossed around to the point that everyone decided to watch it on a big screen TV at someone’s place. During the season premire this season I was texting a friend of mine every time something shocking happened. 

This year we have Monday night Gossip Girl and Heroes. People come over to my place, or I go over to a friend’s who has a DVR so we can skip commercials. Wednesday night for my friends and me, we watch ANTM and Project Runway, at least for the time being, and we are not alone. 

It seems to me that ANTM is watched this way. Everyone gathers in a common room, or the bedroom with the largest TV and makes an event out of it. Granted, no one knows which show is a Must See and it differs from audience to audience, but there are shows out there that are still social events. It might not be the same, where everyone watches shows alone and talks about them the next day, but that still happens. 

I am proud to say that I participate in the culture of television, and I don’t believe that technological advancement will radically alter the fact that the shows I watch are shared cultural experiences with my friends.