Say Cheese! -- The Lawyers Just Screen Capped Your Fan Site
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Say Cheese! -- The Lawyers Just Screen Capped Your Fan Site |
| Creator: | Merlin Missy |
| Date(s): | July 31, 2008 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | multifandom |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Say Cheese! -- The Lawyers Just Screen Capped Your Fan Site |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Say Cheese! -- The Lawyers Just Screen Capped Your Fan Site is a 2008 essay by Merlin Missy.
Series
This essay is part of a series called Dr. Merlin's Soapbox.
Some Topics Discussed
- the internet makes it possible for us to blur, and participate in the blur, in the lives of people we admire
- celebrities and showrunners have staff to watch your online activity and make sure you behave
- the internet has made it possible to talk directly to celebrities and showrunners, and "If you're eloquent and persuasive enough, you might even be able to affect later developments in the series, although it's unlikely and going into a conversation with a celeb with that in mind is more likely just to piss him/her off."
- knowing we are being watched, has a cooling effect on our opinions and online comments; "if you want to go all Heisenberg and stuff, knowing for certain that we're being observed right back generally changes the way we post."
- controversy regarding Jensenvention
- a link to this author's essay, In and Out, where the topic is outing fans
- a link to this author's essay, Fandom as Democracy
From the Essay
Once upon a time, a well-known fan community received a Cease and Desist letter for the contents of their website and comm. In this particular story, it happened last week, the website was Jensenvention.Com, and the people involved are still upset about it. I am not here to mock their pain. I am here to use them as an example. Famous people are aware of the Internet. Celebrities we adore and cherish have websites. Authors we
Your favorite celebrity, unless s/he is posting directly to his/her own blog or LJ, probably has a person (or people) whose job it is to monitor things posted about him/her online. If you run a fan website with pictures and sightings and interview snippets, the celebrity's web rep probably has visited your site to make sure none of the pics are unauthorized nudes. If you write Real Person Fanfic (RPF / RPS for the slash variety), the web rep may not have read it but probably has dropped by your blog or website to take a look. Ceiling cat is taking notes.stalkadmire have blogs and Livejournals. Wil Wheaton posts about poker and his kids. We live in an amazing era, where a handful of keystrokes may separate you from the person you think is the most awesome human on the planet. As my friend Amilyn puts it, we're living in the future. And so are they.
If you have a website dedicated to a particular actor, writer or series, again the web mod will be dropping by. If you continue to post that Actor A is a fat loser and Writer B is a talentless troglodyte, the web mod is not going to think kindly upon you. Nor are the fans of Actor A and Writer B. (This may be your intention. Tweaking other fans is a risky but occasionally amusing pastime. Ask the Jensenvention folks.) You don't have to let that stop you. Your website and your blog is your space to use as you please, as long as you're not violating any local, federal or international laws. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have to put up with trolls, it means the trolls are free to found their own blogs and websites to say what they think. But your audience, both friendly and not, is there, and you need to be aware of their presence, even if you don't care.