Hello, I hope you are well. I meant to make this video on Wednesday,
but then I went to see Once instead and ran out of time. So oops!
So you get a video from me on Friday and Saturday,
you're very welcome. Also I'm still a little bit ill so if I sound like an
elderly gentleman at any point in this video that is why.
On Tuesday Louise/Sprinkle of Glitter on YouTube made a video about YouTube
culture
and about the relationship between the 'YouTuber' and the 'fan',
and about how Louise as a successful YouTuber
sometimes feels overwhelmed by the attention that she receives.
It was a really interesting video and I recommend you watch it if you haven't
seen it already. I shall put a link
in the description below, and I shall also put a link
on the TARDIS, so I shall
make an annotation on the TARDIS and if you click on the TARDIS then the TARDIS
will take you
into the past and you can watch the video. Excellent.
The video got me thinking a lot about fan culture and fandom, so I guess I wanted to
talk about that today.
Obviously I'm coming at this whole debate
from a fan perspective. When I was younger, in my day,
I was a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
and I still love Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
but this being a big fan mainly consisted of me
just watching the show once a week when it was on BBC2,
and buying the magazine. That was all I could do
to show my love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But now,
kids today. Now with technology the world has got a lot smaller
and there is now so much more you can do to express your love for something.
We have access to TV shows and films and music and
YouTube videos whenever we want, we can find other people with similar interests
and talk to them about the things that we love,
we can go to conventions, we can meet the cast, we can talk to the cast on
social media.
There's all sorts of stuff we can buy to show our appreciation,
there's fanfiction, and fan art, and all sorts of things that we can do.
What am I trying to say?
Obsession is easier.
We like to talk about how much we love something. How much.
At some point a scale of love seems to have been
introduced, bear with me. A person may,
say, be higher up on the scale if they have watched
all of their favourite YouTuber's YouTube videos. They may be higher up on the scale
than somebody who has watched four of the videos. You may be higher up on the scale
if you've seen your favourite band perform live.
You may be higher up on the scale if you've read the books,
higher up on the scale if you have met the cast,
you may be higher up on the scale if you were a fan of this actor
before he got super super famous, if you queued overnight and got the book on the
day it was released,
or saw a film on the day it was released, or if you have a
wonderful successful fandom blog,
or you go to conventions. And to some people,
the people higher up on the scale
of love may be considered
as a better fan, or a bigger fan,
than somebody lower down the scale. And I'm not saying it's bad to be at the top of the scale,
I mean look at me, I am
quite high up the scale myself, it's wonderful to have passions and it's
wonderful to communicate through them, and
to express yourself through them, and to indulge them, to be inspired
by them. Pretty much my advice for life is just to like things and concentrate on
them
so if you are anywhere on the scale then you're pretty much doing life
right so well done. Wherever you go on the scale you will find wonderful,
excellent people. But what I am saying is that I don't think that you are awesome
because
you do those things, I don't think that you are awesome because
you do more of those things than somebody else, I think you are awesome
because you like this thing that I like.
It is not about how you love it, it's about that you love it.
Let's get back to the whole YouTube culture thing,
and to Louise's video, because the train of thought needs to get back to the
station,
there are leaves on the line and there may be a derailment. I think that one of the
biggest problems that has arisen
in the YouTube community in recent years is that we have formed a
division, a divide, between the 'YouTuber' and the 'fan',
and the gap widens daily.
And there is also a gap between the 'superfan' and the more casual 'fan'.
Do you see what we're doing, we're filling our community with holes.
And this isn't the good kinda holes that makes a mesh really strong or that
makes clothing warm in the winter,
these are the kind of holes which will cause the building to collapse and fall.
Not good.
We need to fill in the holes with our shared interests. What are you talking about,
Mouse? The sooner we realise that we are all just a bunch of people who like online video,
the better.
See you tomorrow.