Fandom and me

[rivkat]

For astolat: Vincent Terranova sued for trademark infringement.

Random fandom/political thoughts: I wasn’t personally hurt by or otherwise involved in the latest SV imbroglio, so it’s really easy for me to feel objective. I think everyone lies, and everyone constructs a persona, but those aren’t the same things – sometimes constructing a persona for others to see is the most real thing, the most human thing, we do. My best guess for what happened is that a small lie got out of hand, and the fibber’s options started to look narrower and narrower. I can imagine that someone who initially didn’t intend to hurt anyone became more focused on self-protection and less concerned with staying harmless. Lots of bad things, crimes and non-crimes, happen that way.

As for me, I’ve definitely blurred details on this LJ, and certainly tried to present myself as nicer and saner than I am (please don’t tell me how badly I’ve failed). Here’s a true story: as I was walking to the subway on Friday, in the darkness of an early December night, wearing short sleeves in Washington DC because it was too warm for my sweater, I thought about how badly the US has squandered the last six years without doing anything about global environmental change, and how the next two years weren’t likely to be much better. Then I thought of Bloc Party’s Two More Years and nominated it the new Democratic anthem in my own mind. And then I realized that my beloved country is about to do the equivalent of the Fandom Flounce out of Iraq, except that “They didn’t appreciate my GENIUS” here has a body count in six figures and rising fast. That doesn’t make personal betrayals unimportant, but it does make me think again of Auden’s warning that we must love one another or die. (As he pointed out later, we must both love one another and die; but we can choose the former.)

So there’s a stream of consciousness, mediated by my tweaking for publication. Is it more real than other reactions? More helpful? I doubt it, but it’s all I’ve got.

Comments

[myownghost.livejournal.com]

>I thought about how badly the US has squandered the last six years without doing anything about global environmental change

that's so heavy and so true. i've felt depressed by this since 2000. actually, i've felt depressed about the environment since 1969, freshman year, IU, sociology class. we elected the wrong guy, for sure.

>And then I realized that my beloved country is about to do the equivalent of the Fandom Flounce out of Iraq

what a great analogy! i like the quote from auden. oh say, i remember that poem making the rounds after 9/11, had never seen it before then, but it was really a propos.

[astolat]

Ahaha, I expected it to be the Wiseguy people suing the guy for using his own name. Not quite as wonderful but still, hee!

More seriously, I think you are being excessively generous re: the SV thing. Not that I am in favor of the mob mentality that is produced when uninvolved people get their hate on in fandom_wank for someone they have no connection with, but there *are* people who scam, and I don't think it's as benign as lies that got out of hand. Someone who fakes a pregnancy and stages an accident and miscarriage to generate emotional pain in their friends and starts asking for presents for comfort is doing something extreme and deliberate and inhumane.

Also I don't know that I agree with you on putting this on a level with shading your words. We are not just our roiling ids with some sort of false filter between us and the world, we are what we choose to present to the world. What you're describing as mediation is part of you the person, and a sign of your *actual* sanity and niceness. :)

[giandujakiss.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll bite - what is this SV imbroglio, and can I read about it somewhere?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

There are people who scam, no doubt. I've been scammed (offline), and it has made me more resistant to helping someone who simply asserts a need. I just can also see someone getting caught up in the fantasy, and not thinking about the real people on the other end of the screen. Which is not to say that's harmless -- it harms the deceived people whether or not the lie falls apart. But the whole thing seems, I don't know, messy and more about ego-boo than material gain, which is why I can see it seeming harmless at first. I am also still confused about how many people were knowingly involved. Loyal Believers contributed to the explosion, and I can imagine someone who desperately wanted to believe a friend working to maintain the illusion of truth beyond all reason -- without any motive of material gain. The NYT just had a story last week about a pyramid scheme that defrauded a lot of people and found investors by asking early investors -- who were duped -- to reach out to friends at church, ethnic groups, etc. Those people were true believers, often lost a bunch of money themselves, and also found their honest enthusiasm manipulated to steal from their own friends and family. I just can't imagine how devastating that would be, and I guess I'm thinking of many people involved in the SV thing as being in a similar position.

I agree that we are what we present -- in that I'm "nice" if I always act nice even if I have a running bitchy commentary in my head (not that this has ever happened to me). At the same time, I agree that it's different to pretend to be nice in an online community than to pretend to be pregnant. But niceness also is subject to challenge for authenticity. And we might feel differently about the pregnancy thing, too, if a poster deliberately avoided any way that you could reward her and then told hilarious (or moving) and entirely false stories about her pregnancy. Now we're getting into the James Frey problem: how much of a self-presentation do you want to have objective correlates in the outside world? If you're sending a person items from her wish list, you probably want a pretty high correlation unless you are doing so as a reward for the wonderful prose she's written, in which case you might care less.

So: yes, the context here is pretty damning, but I would prefer to default to thoughtlessness over malice in most cases, while still condemning thoughtlessness.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Much is summarized here (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1029513.html). There's now a meme going around about "ways to prove one is real," or "people I've met who can attest I'm real," but I don't find that a particularly helpful response, though it is probably a lot of fun to do on its own merits if you've had funny fandom adventures.

[boji.livejournal.com]

And then I realized that my beloved country is about to do the equivalent of the Fandom Flounce out of Iraq,

GREATEST link ever written. Really.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I think you're probably right that a lot of this stuff happens near accidentally,or rather, that fewset out todothe things they end up doing. But Istillthink you or I presenting a certain image of ourselves, performing our identity in specific ways,is exactly the same as outright lies and scams...

And I think it's so important to us, because we rely on others to vehonest under their performances, to stick to the truth somehow, because that's all we have online like this...we *need* to trust!


did you let L.'s mail? We're about ready to go, so please let us know re title and info when you get a chance... Thanks!!!

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

a small lie got out of hand, and the fibber’s options started to look narrower and narrower
I think that's highly likely. And thank you for putting things in perspective.

What's terrible for me is that your country may Fandom Flounce out of Iraq, but mine may stay insisting they're the only 'true' fan left. Apparently sometimes it's good to know when to flounce...

[miss-pryss.livejournal.com]

I don't get it. Why is the landlord liable for trademark infringement carried out by his tenants? It's nothing to do with him, even if he knew it was going on.

...right?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I agree that ordinary performance of the self is very far from (indeed, often opposed to) scamming or lying. I just think the lines can blur, especially in contexts where we aren't organzing ourselves by "true identities." I mean, to take a different identity controversy, suppose I had presented myself falsely, as someone with a graduate degree I didn't have, and talked with you through LJ about fandom a lot. Maybe I did it to make myself seem more important; maybe I thought that I deserved a degree; maybe I just wanted to be someone different than I really was, to have people react to me differently. That would be fine -- and then one day you invite me to participate in a conference, or with a book. Now things have escalated. If I say yes, I've suddenly put your credibility at risk; I might do you real harm. But it's hard for me to think about that -- I've been saying one thing for so long, acting like I believe it, that when I'm in LJ-land I sort of do believe it. And I didn't mean to do you harm, certainly not when I started, so I may say yes. I may justify it to myself by telling myself you like me on my merits, you like me for the things I've done in fandom, so it's not like I'm doing you a real wrong.

All this is still a far cry from a request for presents -- but there's a spectrum. And each day of living the lie online, I think, takes people further along that spectrum, so they don't necessarily notice when they cross real ethical lines.

I'm not sure how much I rely on others to be honest in their performances. If I were going to send money to save someone from eviction, I'd want to be sure, but I've definitely sent gifts to people who have written things I love in fandom, people I'm unlikely to meet, and I don't actually mind if they're misrepresenting their personal circumstances (unless they're secretly George W. Bush, which seems unlikely). So it really depends on specific context.

I am totally blanking on a title. Something with fandom, fair use and technology, the uneasy relationship?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

The general rule is that a landlord can be liable for infringement by defendants if it had the right and ability to control and directly profited from the infringement, or if it knew or should have known about the infringement and still continued to assist the infringement by not kicking the infringers out. Essentially, you can't hide your head in the sand, collect the rent that is obviously paid with the profits from counterfeits, and say "it's got nothing to do with me." This is a helpful rule for trademark owners because the people selling the counterfeits may not have much money -- may disappear into the woodwork as soon as the law shows up, in fact. Making landlords responsible for what's going on is a way of ensuring that someone with more to lose and less to gain will be helping monitor for infringement.

[giandujakiss.livejournal.com]

Is that true of all crime, or just IP?

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Nono, I totally get how a small oversight/exaggeration/seemingly white lie can become bigger. i've been thinking about this a lot, b/c concurrent with these two things,i had someone IRL tellme that they have an LJ and lied about a central aspect...on purpose.And it makesme so uncomfortable; and I think the reason is that you're already going in underfalse pretenses...

I am pretty uncomfortable with the entire gift giving.I give to people I know first or secondhand (i.e., you arereal to me, because you're real to people who're real to me;plus, after tracking down your info stuff, Ithink that'd be very hard to fake :-)

But yes,I can see how things escalate, how lies that seemed innocuous become not so, how people that were unimportant are suddenly friends whom you've betrayed... Which is why Itend to be quite honest...it's easier :D

Fandom, Fair Use, and Technology: An Uneasy Relationship? Also, info correct???

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I believe it's a general principle of tort liability, but I'd have to look that up to be sure. (A quick Google produced this article, which agrees that there's a broad common law background.) The doctrines are known as contributory and vicarious liability. They aren't unique to IP but have received a lot more play there than in other fields, so at this point IP is probably driving the doctrines, whatever the original source. (http://www.law.berkeley.edu%2Finstitutes%2Fbclt%2Fipsc%2Fpapers2%2Fadams.rtf)

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Last question: Sure -- I sent an email.

But you also post under FL most of the time, which gives you a bit more leeway. We both edit out a lot of family stuff, I think -- in my case it's because I mostly conceive of this LJ as a place to be my fan/book-reader self. If I believed I were a really good writer of the mundane, I might post more about my daily life, but that's not something I am interested in right now, and I would still try to conceal details, and I'd probably edit for dramatic interest. That is, I would probably make stuff up, at least in the details.

When I did have a family disaster, I posted about it -- but really, there's no reason that most people who read this journal should be interested, or feel worse than they'd feel upon reading about the tragedy in the newspaper. (There's a related thing here about the semiotics of prohibiting comments, and how that isn't really a "don't talk to me about this" signal as much as a "only talk to me if you know me well enough to email me" signal.)

We just face such mixed audiences in these public/quasi-public spaces, and I don't think we've figured out the appropriate rules of self-presentation yet, which leaves lots of room for resume-padding and little white lies to do grave damage.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

see, of course we edit...we make ourselves more interesting, more appealing by picking and choosing what we reveal. i think of cathexys as this more interesting and, toadegree, nicer version of myself :-)

and yes, flock makes things quite a bit easier.

i love your reading of the comment prohibition; when i deleted my LJ earlier this year, it was a bit similar...I had a lot of reasons for doing so,but in a way,I knew there were enough people who could call that I hadn't lost contact with LJ entirely...

i'm fascinated with the quasi-public space of LJ at the moment and am actually writing a paper on that...but i might want todiscuss that in a less public space*bg*