(no subject)
May. 27th, 2019 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI was discussing this with folks on FB. They were claiming that the finale of Buffy, Chosen, wasn't that controversial. Oh yes, it was. I can probably hunt down the posts and fights in my journal regarding that episode, if I really wanted to.
But, the big difference between Chosen, BSG, and Lost finales and Game of Thrones is well...the advances in technology and improvements not to mention creation of various internet platforms since 2003 (Chosen), 2009 (Battlestar Galatica) and 2010 (Lost)...since then, Twitter was created in 2006, Facebook in 2004, made accessible to all roughly in 2008, Tumblr more recent, Youtube started roughly in 2005, and took off with reviews and everything much later.
While the first smartphone was in 1992, the iphone didn't launch until 2007 and wasn't accessible to most people until then.
When I was discussing and playing about in the Buffy, BSG, Firefly, and Lost fandoms, we didn't have the internet that we have now. Facebook was not that accessible and there weren't many fan pages on it, Twitter had just started and was like FB limited in characters and usage, Youtube -- people didn't visit it that much and didn't have the capability to post videos to it -- since they didn't have smart phones that could do live video feeds or web cameras on their computers back then -- unless they spent a lot of money or went out of their way to get them. It wasn't quite as prevalent as it is now or accessible.
If you look at and compare the fan reactions to say Buffy, Angel, Lost, Battlestar Galatica and Game of Thrones -- you'll note how much the internet and the accessibility to certain platforms and technology affects things.
Now, in this day and age, a fan can do a lot of things they couldn't years prior. Farscape fans had to work a lot harder to get a movie for Farscape than Lucifer or Sense8 fans did, because they didn't have the same internet that we do now. There was no twitter or petition sites, they had to do it the old fashioned way, with a write in campaign.
Things we can do now in fandom that we couldn't do before:
1. Post video reviews on Youtube
2. Create a site with audio and video reviews of comic books or other works, get advertising, and make lots of money off of the hits
3. Set up petitions to save shows
4. Do a crowd-sourcing site to collect money to get a movie made
5. Coordinate role playing games with graphics among over a million fans worldwide instantly
6. Share fanfic with people globally and do it instantly.
7. Post rants about television series endings to sites reaching billions of people instantly, and have them go viral
8. Share fan art with millions in an instant
9. Stalk television actors and show-runners online and drive them insane
10. Share footage of convention Q&As, musical concerts, etc from various television, movie actors, writers, etc -- without their knowledge or permission.
11. Share television shows, re-edit television shows and news footage, photo-shop images, etc... on the internet.
12. Share music videos, songs, etc instantly
13. Share raw footage, dailies, cast readings, etc from television shows and movies on the internet
14. Self-publish books, music, movies, television series on the internet with no go-between
If you think about the things people can do on the internet now that they couldn't do just five years ago..it will blow your mind.
Also, if you think about it -- how television, film, music, etc is being distributed now is mind-blowing. If I miss a television show or broadcast -- I can see it again. It's not lost. Time was that if you missed a television broadcast, you'd have to wait for reruns, pray someone taped it and could send it to you, or live without it.
When I was watching Buffy in the 1990s and early 00s, I was taping on VHS, and didn't see any shows opposite it. Also if I forgot to tape, if I missed it, or if the show just got preempted, I was out of luck. I'd have to wait for a rerun.
DVDs didn't pop up until roughly 2000. I didn't get a DVD player until 2003 or 2004.
And I certainly didn't access to streaming until much much later. We did file sharing on the net, but it often crashed the computer -- the files were too big for the band-width, or it had viruses.
I watched a you-tube video of Natalie Cole and Whitney Houston singing "Say a Little Prayer for Me" after watching Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Rupert Evert do the same. Then I flipped to a video of the reading of the Game of Thrones script and seeing the cast's initial reactions to that reading. You couldn't do that ten years ago. I also watched footage, raw footage of actors filming a scene from a television series -- the dailies, the bits not seen on screen. People can post whatever they want on the internet and no one will know it.
If you consider that it wasn't that long ago that none of this was possible, that a lot this was and still is considered a serious infringement of intellectual property rights...it will blow your mind.
But, the big difference between Chosen, BSG, and Lost finales and Game of Thrones is well...the advances in technology and improvements not to mention creation of various internet platforms since 2003 (Chosen), 2009 (Battlestar Galatica) and 2010 (Lost)...since then, Twitter was created in 2006, Facebook in 2004, made accessible to all roughly in 2008, Tumblr more recent, Youtube started roughly in 2005, and took off with reviews and everything much later.
While the first smartphone was in 1992, the iphone didn't launch until 2007 and wasn't accessible to most people until then.
When I was discussing and playing about in the Buffy, BSG, Firefly, and Lost fandoms, we didn't have the internet that we have now. Facebook was not that accessible and there weren't many fan pages on it, Twitter had just started and was like FB limited in characters and usage, Youtube -- people didn't visit it that much and didn't have the capability to post videos to it -- since they didn't have smart phones that could do live video feeds or web cameras on their computers back then -- unless they spent a lot of money or went out of their way to get them. It wasn't quite as prevalent as it is now or accessible.
If you look at and compare the fan reactions to say Buffy, Angel, Lost, Battlestar Galatica and Game of Thrones -- you'll note how much the internet and the accessibility to certain platforms and technology affects things.
Now, in this day and age, a fan can do a lot of things they couldn't years prior. Farscape fans had to work a lot harder to get a movie for Farscape than Lucifer or Sense8 fans did, because they didn't have the same internet that we do now. There was no twitter or petition sites, they had to do it the old fashioned way, with a write in campaign.
Things we can do now in fandom that we couldn't do before:
1. Post video reviews on Youtube
2. Create a site with audio and video reviews of comic books or other works, get advertising, and make lots of money off of the hits
3. Set up petitions to save shows
4. Do a crowd-sourcing site to collect money to get a movie made
5. Coordinate role playing games with graphics among over a million fans worldwide instantly
6. Share fanfic with people globally and do it instantly.
7. Post rants about television series endings to sites reaching billions of people instantly, and have them go viral
8. Share fan art with millions in an instant
9. Stalk television actors and show-runners online and drive them insane
10. Share footage of convention Q&As, musical concerts, etc from various television, movie actors, writers, etc -- without their knowledge or permission.
11. Share television shows, re-edit television shows and news footage, photo-shop images, etc... on the internet.
12. Share music videos, songs, etc instantly
13. Share raw footage, dailies, cast readings, etc from television shows and movies on the internet
14. Self-publish books, music, movies, television series on the internet with no go-between
If you think about the things people can do on the internet now that they couldn't do just five years ago..it will blow your mind.
Also, if you think about it -- how television, film, music, etc is being distributed now is mind-blowing. If I miss a television show or broadcast -- I can see it again. It's not lost. Time was that if you missed a television broadcast, you'd have to wait for reruns, pray someone taped it and could send it to you, or live without it.
When I was watching Buffy in the 1990s and early 00s, I was taping on VHS, and didn't see any shows opposite it. Also if I forgot to tape, if I missed it, or if the show just got preempted, I was out of luck. I'd have to wait for a rerun.
DVDs didn't pop up until roughly 2000. I didn't get a DVD player until 2003 or 2004.
And I certainly didn't access to streaming until much much later. We did file sharing on the net, but it often crashed the computer -- the files were too big for the band-width, or it had viruses.
I watched a you-tube video of Natalie Cole and Whitney Houston singing "Say a Little Prayer for Me" after watching Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Rupert Evert do the same. Then I flipped to a video of the reading of the Game of Thrones script and seeing the cast's initial reactions to that reading. You couldn't do that ten years ago. I also watched footage, raw footage of actors filming a scene from a television series -- the dailies, the bits not seen on screen. People can post whatever they want on the internet and no one will know it.
If you consider that it wasn't that long ago that none of this was possible, that a lot this was and still is considered a serious infringement of intellectual property rights...it will blow your mind.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-28 05:29 pm (UTC)Definitely -- and perhaps most importantly, few members of the media used Internet sites for either personal or professional reasons. Nowadays they are camped out on Twitter in particular, looking for stories. I always feel their activity gets overlooked when we're talking about reactions that get signal boosted.
There were negative reactions to Chosen (though far more to S6 and S7 generally) but it was Angel's finale that was really controversial. Thing is though, no one talks about Angel these days.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-28 05:51 pm (UTC)They barely talk about Buffy. Both were cult shows, so didn't hit mainstream or the broader audience and media's attention. Nothing like Lost or Game of Thrones. Has a lot to do with distribution platforms. Angel was on a little known network -- WB (that no longer exists) and Buffy was on WB then UPN, neither exist. Few of the millennials saw it, and those that did saw it as kids on DVD and see it as something they well saw as "teens". They've moved on to things like Vamp Diaries and well, other series. There's a lot of stuff to choose from.
And the media didn't really notice FB, Twitter, or YouTube until sometime around 2015. You're right -- now they are literally camped out on Twitter -- hunting stuff. (Which is one of the many reasons I don't do much of anything on Twitter -- it's dangerous. My workplace really cautions against doing anything on it.) FB is safer, because you can lock people out of it. There's friends only and private groups, similar to the DW and LJ structure, actually. But the media watches it too, just less so.
It's the professional critics and media pundits who have in a way changed everything -- they made Game of Thrones and Lost mainstream. They boost the signal. And they are the ones who made the Avengers franchise big as well -- by boosting that as well. They also are the ones that control the reception -- Avengers got amazing reviews and buzz before it aired, Captain Marvel got horrible ones -- people still went, but it did affect the performance. And Game's finale -- got really bad buzz from the critics -- who lead the charge.
Another example? Rotten Tomatoes did not exist ten years ago, to my knowledge. That has also changed things.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-29 12:20 am (UTC)Though Buffy was a cult show, it punched far above it's weight online. Online fandoms for shows like the X-Files, Xena, and Buffy presaged where things started to go with commentary & fandoms for "Prestige" shows of more recent vintage.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-29 01:42 am (UTC)They are still teaching courses on Buffy in college. I don't think X-Files and Xenia got that...although Angel definitely did, as did Firefly and Dollhouse.
Which was interesting, because prior to that it was just the Sopranos.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-29 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-29 02:14 am (UTC)I wouldn't be at all surprised if Homer didn't do it.
Star Trek -- was in some respects the first big television fandom. A lot of people wrote slash fic for it. And fanzines. I know people also did for the Monkeeys (believe or not), and Doctor Who. Actually Doctor Who -- 1963, may be one of the progenitors of it as well. Then of course Star Wars in the 1970s.
(There was a murder case in Kansas about two boys writing fanfic on Star Wars back in 1983, and one killed the other over whether it was getting turned into a film by Lucas...).
Not to mention the comic book and soap opera fandom, which I think pre-dated Star Trek.
The internet just took it more mainstream, with Harry Potter and Twilight, and now Game of Thrones.