*aggressively rewatches Season 1 of Hannibal in one sitting*
Okay, on the one hand, the Hannibal showrunners are doing a brilliant job interacting with fans, and showing how producers and consumers can work together to increase the scope of the show’s pleasures. (Making…
Nope, can’t say it’s bothering me in this particular case. For one thing, very often, the people who end up in these social media jobs ARE actual fans. They’re not necessarily co-opting the lingo. They’re using lingo that is theirs. They just happens to get paid for doing it.
For another, the way they’re using social media makes me comfortable with their use of fan language. In not just fandom, but ALL sorts of social media communities, there’s a sensitivity to being exploited. Social media looks, at first glance, like such a fantastic marketing device. And early attempts were made—horrible, ill-advised and disastrous attempts, in many cases—to use it as exactly that, as a push-marketing tool, or to treat those communities like captive audiences. But social media is where we go to get away from that crap. This is the place for word of mouth, for honest opinions and emotions, for personal creativity that doesn’t have to be legislated, for being real people in an increasingly terraformed technological world.
These folks, though, they’re not just pushing. They ARE engaging in that dialogue—and it’s not just the nbchannibal Tumblr, it’s the people making the show. Bryan Fuller is a big social media geek, and I know the food designer is active in engaging with fans and listening to their ideas. It’s a real conversation, bringing the fans in as stakeholders in the show, and that’s legit.
Actually it’s kind of ironic—or maybe just on point—that you bring this up, Prof. 🙂 As someone who makes no bones about being a scholar active in fandom studies, you—as I know you yourself are keenly aware—operate in a space where your motives could be easily distrusted or your activities could be in danger of being exploitative. I know you deliberately put work into participating as a member of the community, to avoid precisely that. Maybe that awareness and care make you more sensitive to the points where fandom culture could be co-opted or exploited.
It’s a good point, though. My own nervousness in the face of these things comes from the fact that anytime I see a corporate/professional job like Hannibal doing it right, I always mentally brace myself for the flood of imitators who’re likely come in, miss everything important, and just stomp all over everybody. At least we seem to be moving past the early days of, “It’s like email, right? We can just spam everybody!” but now we’re getting more sophisticated, grey-area approaches like Kindle Worlds (which is totally a social media approach to professional fiction publication) that make it harder to determine whether the thing is a genuine attempt at engagement or if it’ll end up being another ugly attempt to capitalize on the community.
One Hell of a Steep Learning Curve: Some uncomfortable questions about the nbchannibal blog