FanloreProject talk:YouTube Fandom

From Fanlore
Jump to navigation Jump to search

questions about scope

Hi! I don't tend to interact much with YouTube fandom, especially YT RPF, but here are some thoughts about youtube in general — I don't want to add them directly to the page because I don't know how much they actually have to do with YouTube RPF and the related fandom. Thoughts in order from probably most to least relevant:

- Hoopla (talk) 22:31, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Ahh, thank you! This is super helpful! Nerdfighteria/Vlogbrothers had (have?) a huge fandom, so those pages are definitely part of this project. And while I created this initially with a focus on 'fandoms OF youtubers' (instead of 'fandom ON youtube'), you're right; youtube as a fandom space needs more work, and can definitely be part of this project! - Punkpixieprince (talk)


  • Also: should we add Anitube? Digibro, SuperEyepatchWolf, Mother's Basement? ProZD? Does other analysis like Wisecrack, fall more into academia or fandom? PBS Idea Channel might count as Perspectives on Fans occasionally - Liaroflesbos (talk) 00:27, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely! I'm going to go through the Pages To Add list and try to organize it a little better so the Scope is clearer, but basically if you think it's a YouTube fandom, than it is. Also, I would categorize Wisecrack as Academia, Celebrities & Real People, and YouTube Series. Thank you! --Punkpixieprince (talk)
  • Would Reaction channels qualify here? And in a similar way: would Drama channels qualify as a meta-like part of the YouTube fandom given that more often than not they are posting to YouTube about other YouTube channels? -- Roamingcataloger (talk) 06:38, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

what to do about channel awesome

like, the thing is that That Guy With The Glasses/Channel Awesome/League of Super Critics/i literally don't even know how many other things it's been called presents a kind of is a reverse roosterteeth where it didn't START on youtube but since the death of blip most of the content has moved TO youtube and now the nostalgia critic is almost entirely centered on youtube afaik? but i don't necessarily know if that fits under the scope of this even if the primary course of #changethechannel discourse happened over youtube via video essays and the like... or i guess option 2 is create a youtube abuse scandal category where we can just toss that under bc it definitely fits under that at least. why the fuck is youtube fandom like this.

this also brings up a weird point of where reviewers like Lindsay Ellis fall too. obviously her early Nostalgia Chick stuff falls under the same scope as the rest of what we're doing but Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera: A Video Essay and her "Loose Canon" series definitely fall more on the side of academia.

I'd say we should definitely categorize it as YouTube Series for now, since it's at least partially youtube, and detail how it started and where it ended up. If nothing else, #changethechannel DEFINITELY needs a page/subsection, as part of the ever-evolving discussion of youtube fandom culture.
As for Lindsay Ellis: I need to work on a good category for video essays specifically, but for people who make video essays, I think we can categorize them under Academia, Celebrities & Real People, and either YouTube Series or YouTubers. She might not always fall under our scope but she does at least partially! --Punkpixieprince (talk)
I was wondering about TGWTG/CA as well, since I was a big fan several years ago and still follow a handful of former CA reviewers (including Lindsay) on YouTube. I had come to the conclusion it might be beyond the scope of this FP because those folks were all on Blip - but I would love if we did cover it, because I'm all for helping to make the pages!
(PS, flyingthesky, don't forget to sign your Talk page messages! You can just type ~~~~ at the end of a message to sign it :3) enchantedsleeper (talk) 13:36, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Phandom, Phan, and Individual Pages

There are currently four pages for Phandom: Phandom, Phan (pairing), Dan Howell, and Phil Lester. We should definitely delineate better between Phan (pairing) and Phandom; shipping stuff should probably all go under Phan (pairing), as it's the ship tag, rather than on Phandom. But the bigger question is: Should we merge Dan & Phil's individual pages into Phandom, considering the fact that nearly all of their content is collaborative (with each other)? --Punkpixieprince (talk)

Hmmm. I wouldn't say so - it would seem like an oversight to me to not have pages for Dan and Phil as individuals, even if they almost always collaborate. If anything, I would say that Phan (pairing) and Phandom have much more overlap, but I'm assuming those are separate because not all Phans ship the two of them? It's a general term for fans of the two, right? (I don't know how much of Phandom is shippers versus just general fans).
Also, Dan and Phil aren't the fandom - they're the creators who gave rise to the fandom, which is another reason I don't think they should be merged into the Phandom page.
On a separate note, this has reminded me of a question I had about Cherimon. I know the ship, but I never shipped Cherimon - I just followed Charlie and Alex as individual YouTubers - so I wanted to ask: is Cherimon considered a fandom on the level of Phan(dom), or is it just a ship? Is/was there such a thing as Cherimon fandom? --enchantedsleeper (talk) 13:43, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
ok so that brings up a different question: what goes on their personal pages that doesn't go on the Phandom page? because the issue is that yes, Phandom is different from Phan in the same way that being a Directioner doesn't mean you're also a Larry. using John and Hank Green as an example for what we're talking about, because they're also frequent collaborators, John Green's page has his work as an author and Hank Green's page has his work with Pemberley Digital, both of which are Totally Separate Facts from the (as of yet uncreated) Vlogbrothers, which in this case would be equivalent to the Phandom page. Dan and Phil don't really . . . have anything like that? their wikipedia pages are so similar that there's literally whole paragraphs that appear verbatim on both and running them through a plagiarism comparison basically reveals that if i copy-pasted Dan's page and removed like two sentences and a paragraph, i'd have a perfectly serviceable page for Phil. and yes, they have done things that are unrelated to the other (Dan won Supernote in 2012 and Phil has a Guinness World Record for coin stacking) but they don't really have anything that . . . separates them, in a fannish sense? there was a period of time like . . . a decade ago? where you probably could have been a fan of one without being a fan of the other (and even then most of us who followed one followed the other, because phil is basically the reason dan became a youtuber) but especially in a post-Dan and Phil world (which is roughly where i would place the formation of "Phandom" as it is now) i don't actually think that's possible. you can be a "dan girl" or a "phil girl" but i don't think you can only have contact with one anymore.
basically i don't think the statement "Dan and Phil aren't the fandom, they're the creators who gave rise to the fandom" is accurate because they're vloggers and not - their content is literally About Them. all of it. even with the McElroy Brothers, who are another fandom that's centered around content that particular people produce, MBMBaM is an advice podcast, even if only tangentially, so they're creating A Thing that's separate from them as people. this isn't a situation like Markiplier where he primarily started off as a video game commentator and now has more vlog-type content. Dan and Phil have always been vloggers. their "content" has always been about them and their lives. i would liken it more to a small-scale version of the Kardashians, whose fame is mainly built on marketing themselves, rather than most rpf fandoms where things are based more on personas related to other content that's been produced.
re: cherimon, though it was never really "cherimon" as a fandom in my experience? it was, like. you were a chameleon circuit fan! or you were a sons of admirals fan! it basically played out similarly to how, like. even if you're a "larry" and there's a "larry fandom," it's still just a particular ingroup of one direction in the end. (the actual ingroup in this case was, uh. dtfba records/nerdfighteria? probably. that was the kind of nebulous, like. how most people ended up knowing about all these people in the days before gaming the algorithm.) i could be wrong, but Phandom really only exists because . . . like i said, Dan and Phil basically never do anything BUT appear together professionally - barring their solo channels where . . . the other one frequently appears because they've been living together for seven years so. even that really isn't an individual endeavor. Flyingthesky (talk) 02:20, 3 December 2018 (UTC)


as discussed with caelan, i moved the Tinhatting section from Phan (pairing) to Phandom (YouTube RPF) under history and also the "Canon History" section of the pairing page, since it was mainly about the history of the fandom itself rather than tinhatting. kind of found another issue while doing so though which is that Phan (pairing) has both a "Canon History" section and a "Ship History" section. would the entire "Canon History" section be better off on the Phandom (YouTube RPF) page instead? how do we want to deal with this Specific issue of Phan vs Phandom as pages? it's weird because phandom is basically a fandom for a ship, whether it be friendship or a romantic relationship, so it's hard to know what goes where. Flyingthesky (talk) 03:28, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Alex Day abuse linkdump

Moved to New Research Page --Punkpixieprince (talk) 03:22, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Questions about Categories

I was going to create a page for the channel ShippersGuideToTheGalaxy but I wasn't sure if there's a category for Youtube channels yet. This channel is run by one person and is mostly focused on discussing ships and fandom tropes. I guess the vids would be Video Essays. I think it'd be more appropriate to have a channel page than a page for the individual but not sure what category to use.

Also is there any conventions for channel names like the one above, ie. use of capital letters and spaces?--Auntags (talk) 12:46, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

it would fall under "Category:YouTubers" (please make note of the capital T in YouTube) unless it's a series? i'm not familiar with this channel so you can decide if it goes under "Category:YouTube Series" or not. you could probably also put it under some of the fan categories, but again i'm not familiar enough with the channel to tell you which, specifically. we also have a new template that, thinking on it, i should probably link on the page somewhere for regular old youtube videos (think more vlogs or music videos or what have you) under Template:Video if the particular video you want to talk about isn't necessarily a video essay.
as for naming conventions, we go by name and not channel name. so if the person behind this channel has a name, make the page under their actual name rather than the name of the channel and make the channel name a redirect or make a specific page for the series (as in Game Grumps and Jontron) in question. As in danisnotonfire takes you to the Dan Howell page, rather than a page titled danisnotonfire. you may want to use the Template:FanProfile in this case, rather than the Template:PersonProfile, since the channel is more of a fannish thing rather than a fandom unto itself as you say. if the person doesn't have a name, go with whatever way their channel's title is stylized? for example The Try Guys is written like that rather than The Tryguys or The TryGuys. if they write their channel title as The Shipper's Guide To The Galaxy, that would be the page. if they write it as ShippersGuideToTheGalaxy then write it like that. PewDiePie. for example, capitalizes within his channel name so that's how we do it here. Flyingthesky (talk) 23:30, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for such a comprehensive reply. I really wasn't expecting that. I will create the page under Category: Youtubers for now. I think it'll have a similar structure to pages we currently have on fan's personal sites from back in the day, simply because the of the type of content and fannish engagement with the channel. It's more fans discussing fandom, rather than fans creating works about a Youtuber. Thanks again --Auntags (talk) 14:58, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

New Category

I'm thinking of creating either Category:Meta on Youtube or Category:Meta on Video category as mentioned above. Any preference for one over the other? Two examples already on Fanlore are The Conflict and Compromise of Uchiha Sasuke and Sherlock Is Garbage, And Here's Why. Also came across a vid explaining the Xiao Zhan fans and Ao3 that was pretty widely shared and has a huge number of comments relevant to fandom. They all seem to fall into this category, but there are two other examples I am unsure about.

I've added two Youtubers who only create meta vids related to fandom; ShippersGuideToTheGalaxy and Passion of the Nerd. Would it be appropriate to put these Youtubers into the same category? As in add their fan profile page to the category? --Auntags (talk) 19:59, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Hey, Auntags - we have a meta vids category which might already be what you're looking for? You might also be interested in the discussion about fan documentaries/non-fiction fan films taking place on the Fan Documentaries category talk page which has some overlap with this. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 20:35, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Correction: I've now looked properly at the metavid page and realised that it's a bit different to what I assumed, so ignore that. However, I've also noted that we have the Video Essay Template so if we do make Meta on Video a category, should it auto-add that category? There are probably lots of videos that use the Video Essay template that would belong in this category. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 21:12, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks enchantedsleeper, I think it would be good if we could make it a subcategory of Video and Meta. But that wouldn't be possible if we autoadded to video. At the moment we have a small number of examples, so autoadding to Video and making it a subcategory of Meta sounds good.
Just to clarify the suggested scope for this category: Any vid made by fans, and posted on any platform, discussing fandom events and/or episode reviews or critique of the source material. Is that wide enough or is there other stuff that could fit in this category? Or is it too broad?
Also can Youtube channels whose focus is meta be added to this category, or is it for specific video essays only? (Sorry that's a lot of questions)--Auntags (talk) 22:06, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Picking this discussion up again, in light of the fact we are planning to create a page/pages on Lindsay Ellis' video essays. Is there agreement on having Category:Meta on Video and autoadding Template:VideoEssay to this category? If so, would it be appropriate for this Category to be a subcategory of both Category:Video and Category:Meta? Also if this discussion should be moved to a more relevant talk page, let me know.--Auntags (talk) 12:59, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm definitely in favour - I think we could use a category like this. I agree that it makes sense to have it as a subcategory of both Meta and Video. (We would probably also want to link to Category:Vidding Meta and Category:Meta Vids on the category page as a "You may be looking for...")
In response to your previous question on whether YouTube channels whose focus is meta would belong in this category, I don't see why not, if they focus exclusively on meta - but if they cover other stuff, even occasionally, I would use a more general category instead. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 21:46, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=FanloreProject_talk:YouTube_Fandom&oldid=1756771"