(symphonic music)
- Namaste.
I'm Christian Sager,
and welcome to Brain Stuff.
As human beings,
none of us are strangers
to being part of a community.
We all have the psychological need to feel safe,
respected, and wanted
so we form social relations with other people,
usually based on our values and beliefs.
It used to be that our communities
were always based on our physical proximity to one another.
Now, with the growth of mass media,
you can find communities of people
separated by vast distances
who build social structures
based on their common interests in similar content.
When it comes down to it,
almost everyone's a fan of something, right?
Then how does fandom work?
Who runs these communities,
and what makes them different
from my neighborhood book club?
For the answers to these questions,
there's one man to turn to.
Henry Jenkins has been studying fandom for decades,
first at MIT
and now at the University of Southern California.
Jenkins's first point about fandom
is something we've already touched on,
that it constitutes a kind of
alternative social community for people.
You can apply this to Brain Stuff
in the community built around our videos and social media.
Every day I see people contributing something new
to our explanations of the everyday world.
Often, you are helping us all learn more
by sharing your personal experience or knowledge
about the topics that we cover.
Jenkins says that fans have a very distinct way
of receiving the content that they adore,
usually with undivided attention.
You know that one television show you watch
where you won't pick up the phone
or answer the door when it's on?
That's what he's talking about.
Fans aren't just faithful consumers.
They also want to talk about it
with other fans as it's happening.
Here at Brain Stuff we've got viewers
who will watch and comment on a video
in the first 10 minutes after it goes live.
You know the people who write "First" or
"Under 301" in the comments?
That's what Jenkins means when he says
fans receive content differently than everyone else.
Fans can be some of the strongest critics
if they're disappointed in their object of fandom.
Don't believe me?
Check out how many people said
our twins episode wasn't funny.
I wrote that one, by the way,
or the conversations about whether Lauren
uses a teleprompter or not.
It's true.
She's really awkward naturally.
Now personally,
we love it when fans get engaged like this.
It usually means that you care enough about what we're doing
that you want to make sure it's done well.
Finally,
in Jenkins's model,
fandom actually constitutes its very own world of art
with a functioning market
and awards evaluating their aesthetics.
Fans create everything:
videos, poems, paintings, sculptures,
songs, short stories, podcasts, you name it.
Here's the thing.
The corporations that own those brands
don't usually like it when someone else
starts making money off their intellectual property.
Then you get into all kinds of arguments about copyright
and whether fan art falls under transformative fair usage.
Don't worry.
Ben and I know about
the slash fiction you're posting about us,
and we're not going to sue anybody.
In fact,
maybe one day
you could write an episode of Brain Stuff for us
because that is another important thing about fan art.
It's often a training ground for up-and-coming creators.
Consider this.
Peter Capaldi,
the guy who is now playing Doctor Who,
used to write letters to the creators of the show
when he was only 15 years old.
Now he's the star of the show,
playing the character he loved so much growing up.
This is why foundations and media companies
are following Henry Jenkins's research so closely,
because fandom's influence on the media
is growing considerably.
Back at the turn of the 20th century,
it was fans writing letters to Arthur Conan Doyle
that motivated him to return to writing Sherlock Holmes.
Today, movies like Veronica Mars and Serenity
are being produced because of fan campaigns.
When the market shifted
from satellite to cable television,
fans were targeted by networks
as the ideal media consumers,
especially when DVD box sets came out
and binge-watching television series became common practice.
Now, even after a show gets canceled,
fans continue engagement with the product.
Now that we all know a little bit more
about how fandom works,
what are you a fan of?
Besides Brain Stuff, of course.
What's your fan community like,
or do you make art for your fandom?
Let me know in the comments below,
and I'll try to engage with you there about it.
Don't forget,
every good fan subscribes to our channel
so they know the minute we've posted a new episode.