One of my friends recently brought up something that's relevant to our class. She was saying that her favorite thing about social media is that you can "'watch' things without actually having to sit and watch things." She was referring to the Oscars but I think it can definitely refer to lot of other media.
For those with tumblrs, I'm sure we've had the experience of understanding the plotlines of countless shows without even watching a second of it. We see posts (gifs, graphics, text posts, pretty much anything) and unless you block out posts in that show, it’s likely that you will get spoiled about the plotlines and characters of the story. Usually this happens with a bigger fandom (Supernatural, Doctor Who, Teen Wolf, etc.) If you’re on tumblr for an extended amount of time, you probably will get exposed to a popular show, whether you want to or not.
Going back to the Oscars, twitter was blowing up with updates throughout the night about who won what (sidenote: I’m team Lupita Nyong’o forever), along with updates about the speeches, jokes, skits, attire, and more. At one point during the night, Ellen Degeneres (who hosted) challenged viewers to break the record of retweets (which was the first thing Obama tweeted after this past presidential election) and instead make a selfie with her and a slew of different actors the most retweeted. This CRASHED twitter. And broke the record before the night was over.
There’s no doubt that this passing of information so quickly would have been possible without the internet. I believe we’ve spoken about this topic before in class but I wanted to give an example of this phenomenon in action.
You're exactly right, Laura. Social media paired with fandom, even more than the internet itself, has given us the ability to absorb and take part in other peoples fandoms without every making a conscious decision to do so. I think that this phenomena, more than others, is one of the best things about social media and is a definite plus. Even though I may never actually read Homestuck, I know enough about it to appreciate what it is the fans are doing with it; the fics, the artwork, the graphics, the meta; everything about this aspect of social media, tumblr in particular, is so inviting without the edge of force. Join our fandom if you wish but even if you don;t, we'll still be here, reblogging, retweeting and creating original content to go along with our current obsession.
ReplyDeleteThat is a really interesting point on social media and how it reaches people. You can even think that because of the exposure to shows you have never seen, but see on social media, people might become interested in shows. Social media might be a tool that promotes popular shows and movies.
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