The public image of fans

[rivkat]

The NYT says:

Still, the Romney campaign had not expected its banners to appear on FanFiction.net,whose users have seen thousands of “Romney for President” ads while using the site to write their own plots about their favorite fictional characters — or read the work of others, including pornographic scenes between Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.

So either FF.net has changed its policies, or once again the "pervy hobbit fancier" meme has taken over reality. ( I could do the whole "I do not think that word means what you think it means," but I doubt the NYT writer actually thinks that FF.net stories are pornographic; rather, the NYT writer likely has not read FF.net stories.) It's like saying "Mitt Romney's book appeared in a bookstore that also carries steamy romances!" except that the combination of fans + internet (+ crazy politics) precludes rational analysis. I'm not surprised the Romney campaign perceives this as an error, but I wish the NYT didn't propagate this nonsense.

Comments

[mindyfromohio.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of Romney as a robo-politician, so that sort of fits fandom, right?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

You think anyone requested him for Yuletide?

[nestra.livejournal.com]

Also, it's interesting that people apparently use ff.net to "write" stories, rather than "publish" stories. If there's a website out there that will write my fanfic, I would like the address, please (provided all feedback comes directly to me).

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Well, it's just fans. Why try for precision or accuracy?

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I'm... a little curious as to who in the Romney campaign thinks that votes are to be garnered via the Pit of Voles in the first place. I'm sure some posters at ff.net are actually somewhat conservative IRL, and some posters are of voting age, but the Venn diagram of the two qualities together, just there, might be a bit small.

Mitt, is that you?? Mitt, please quit spamming my television. We already know we hate you, thanks to 4 years of governor action.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

It's not like he's going to win Massachusetts, is it?

The "problem" was that the campaign contracted with a network, which puts ads lots of places, including ff.net, so they didn't specifically target the place. I agree, the chance that the ads would win voting-age hearts and minds seems low. But then again, I've been reading a bunch of really disturbing ad research about how mere exposure makes you like something more, unless you're thinking hard about it; so all those ads we ignore can make the products or candidates seem more acceptable, at least if we don't have firm preexisting beliefs. So you never know.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I saw those irritating sexist Fanlib ads starring Clenchy McLockjaw, and seriously had a flashback to Mitt Romney's governor campaign. He was all about the frightening grille of white teeth and the Hair of Steel. So, familiarity can backfire? I hope?

Mitt is spamming my TV on the off-chance that all the New Hampster resident who work in Massachusetts just never noticed how much we hate him, or are willing to vote for him just to spite us.

[tahariel.livejournal.com]

It annoys me because it's this sort of drip-by-drip bad image of fans that makes people have such negative views about fandom as a whole. It doesn't have to be a big comment in any one place, but collectively...

It's like when I was first getting into anime, wanted to go to a convention, and The Sunday Times here in the UK had just published an article about how all anime was porn. It didn't make my parents keen to let me go, let's put it that way. (I was in my teens at the time.)

[zeldadestry.livejournal.com]

My hunch is that corporate media may get a little freaked out by fanfic because it's a source of entertainment from which they don't yet have a way to profit directly -silly fanlib attempt aside.
Moving forward from that assumption, I suspect that even if the popular perception was that fandom spent their time writing non-sexually-explicit gen about Dimitri Karamazov and Anna Karenina (insert yr own personal bulletproof emblem of "high culture" here) rather than Harry/Hermione, we'd still see a belittling attitude from some. Oy. Their loss, I say! :)

[elements.livejournal.com]

Sad, but you may be right. I also think there's a certain amount of belittling - a "well, they *waste* their time on this, because it's not *real* art, just copying" mentality, with all the misconceptions that entails. I find that when I'm explaining fic to non-fen, one of the first things they want me to do is justify why fannish needs should "matter."

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

Romney himself is nothing if not a work of fiction.