"Fangirl" here is a neutral term for someone who squees, squicks, and Was There. General fandom posts encouraged!
New Media Fans?
Just curious if we have people who are fannish about podcasters, youtubers, twitch streamers, let's players, etc.
I feel like some of these formats have been around forever, so it's kinda funny to me to call things like YouTube a New Media format.
I have a few creators I follow closely, though I don't think I am fannish about most of them. Those fandoms definitely exist tho. The main creators I follow are Jim F. Sterling Son, Pacific Northwest Stories, Actual Copyright Attorney Leonard French and Extra Credits.
Edits to add: Oops, almost forgot Woodenpotatoes!




"Some of these formats have been around forever"?
Boy, do you folks make me feel old.
I have no idea who any of those people/entities are that you mention.
:-)
You don't know what YouTube is? New Media is just any content platform that was built around the internet as a means of distribution. Blogs, like Wordpress and LiveJournal, definitely count. Most of the excitement is around audio/video formats tho.
And yeah, most of the actual creators are niche. Woodenpotatoes built his audience by reading patchnotes for games in a pleasant voice so you could get them while you played instead of reading them. That is pretty darn niche.
The most well know is likely Welcome to Nightvale. Think of it as an on-demand radio show.
Oh, sorry. Yes, I do know YouTube. I know what a podcast is and have listened to one now and again. "Twitch streamers" and "let's players"--I have no idea. The list of creators are unknown to me.
:-)
Ah, okay. Let's Plays are when people post their play throughs of games for people who don't have the time, skill, capacity or desire to play themselves. Those are often up on YouTube. Twitch is a service for people streaming themselves playing a game. The audience for video game playing is amazingly huge. The top people filming themselves playing sames well can afford stuff like this. If that breaks your brain it's okay, it breaks mine, too :)
They stream video of themselves playing a game . . . and other people actually watch this?
<blink> <blink>Yes, and it's huge. It's bigger than huge. The top earners in the 'people like to watch me play games' field make jaw dropping amounts of dough.
I didn't even know this was a thing until you told me. And I have a squick reflex for RPF so i still manage to be surprised that there's a ton of that out there.
💜 Thank God for Jim Sterling.
Where would we be without Jim Sterling?
Don't ask me why BoglinWatch is one of my favorite things because I can't explain.
Thank God for Jim Sterling indeed!
i don't keep up with any of it super actively, but one of my friends writes fic based on the RP personas of some minecraft let's players-- i've seen some really good fic come from that fannish corner.
my spouse really likes twitch streams, especially anything associated with AGDQ. i don't think i'd feel comfortable participating in fic fandom for that unless it was okayed by the streamer/runner in question and/or i thought they'd get a kick out of it, though.
OH and i don't keep up with podcasts (hearing issues), but most of my friends have at least one podcast fandom.
wtnv was one of the earlier big podcast fandom booms, i think? and right now the adventure zone is pretty popular.
Right now all I hear about is fandoms based on podcasted / videoed D&D sessions. Suddenly I know people who never tried the pen and paper stuff that forms the basis of so much nerdy culture and so many forms of videos want me to GM >.>
I can't follow podcasts because of attention issues - audio only things can't keep my attention so I miss what is happening, but I've recently realised that apparently everyone has at least a couple of podcasts they follow.
I remember when wtnv suddenly took off on Tumblr and I couldn't get anyone to tell me what it even was, when I found out it was a podcast I did try to listen but as ever failed.
Do you have something else you can do while listening? I can't really pay attention to JUST listening, but listening while driving works like a dream.
Hmm, I might be able to listen to a podcast while driving, I certainly can't do it while sitting in front of the computer cos I end up reading articles and social media and realise I've not actually listened to any of it (to be fair I do this with TV shows sometimes too, oops!)
It'd probably have to be a podcast with fairly short episodes though cos interrupted listening might be annoying!
I imagine if you could knit or something that might work too. Something just enough to keep your attention so you don't get bored while listening. I definitely have the same issue, so I mostly save my audiobooks for drives.
haha, I've tried knitting because my mum does it and I can't get the hang of it - I used to do cross stitch though!
That sucks when fans wont say what a thing is. I thought were over fandoms have 'If you don't know we wont tell you' BS. I listen to podcasts while I do other things. I listen both to serialized fiction and also to news/discussion ones. I also use some YouTubers like podcasts. Woodenpotatoes is a Guild Wars 2 'tuber and I listen to his videos while I play.
I'm not sure it was entirely intentional it was just that none of the posts I was seeing made it clear what it was and when I asked an old friend she replied with a description of what it was about and I was like, great, but what is it XD