IIRC there's this theory that all humor eventually comes down to schadenfreude—laughter as a gesture of relief that bad thing x happened to somebody else. Maybe the weird fixation on lolcows hurting themselves is another form of this behavior, offering histrionic people a »great« opportunity to get attention in turn, all amplified into outer space by our current media.
So what would you call people obsessively writing & arguing about niche topics like Orthodox Jewish theology or the pros and cons or various forms of puppetry or Yiddish linguistics (to name three just niche communities within my online communities)?
There is minimal intellectual property at stake, but I'd call them all Fans.
There is a pronounced tension between how storytelling works on a popular level, as well as historically and how the intellectual property model treats it. It seems to me to be irreconcilable, dooming the model.
Merely buying an IP, Lord of the Rings for instance is supposed to grant the power of authorship. A story needs two legs however to move, the author and audience, and the audience can reject that the work shows any continuity with the existing story. We see this with rings of power.
If we look at how settings used to develop in folk contexts, like the Arthurian Cycles, we get to see how a setting is born more organically in response to the audience. We even have artifacts of vying characterizations, like Gawain of Gawain and the Green Knight and Gawain of Le Morte de Arthur.
Stories get accepted not per legal authority but by obeying rules of continuity. The current dissonance is becoming strong enough to be noticed by a public that lacks much of the language to express this.
This is a favorite topic of mine to consider. I appreciate the discussion, and struggle to restrain myself from dropping a term paper in the comments.
“Biblical paintings weren’t “fanwork” because fandom is defined by its proximity to intellectual property. It’s intellectual property that distinguishes fandom from a cult or a religion. It should go without saying that church law isn’t the same as the corporate and legal protections IP has.”
I disagree. One of the reasons the Normans were able to maintain racial minority rule over England for so long was that they put most of the affairs of domestic government, including civil court, in the hands of the church. By placing bishops in charge of divorce court, they guaranteed the loyalty of many fighting men who might otherwise have turned against their rule. This must have been a great relief as the Normans took power after a period of civil strife and female empowerment (Empress Mathilda). The Normans themselves concentrated almost exclusively on foreign policy, war, and taxation.
It cannot be said enough: American IP law is an anomaly and symptomatic of a dying economy that is in the hands of very few, and which is structured increasingly around rent-seeking behaviors such as IP protection rather than production.
I would further argue that religious art played a similar role to fanfic in some respects, as it often reinforced a particular patron’s interpretation of scripture for their own political ends, or as you put it, to control the narrative. The ceiling mosaics depicting Justinian in The Hagia Sophia are a good example of this. Ahistorical depictions of biblical religious figures as certain (non-Jewish) ethnicities is another.
This impulse to expand the scope of religious art to shape narratives can also be found in the United States. Particularly prominent examples include the South Solon meeting house in Maine, and the Manti LDS Temple in Utah:
Harlen Ellison's predictions of digital torture seem to mirror the progression in Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control. We've moved beyond the Christian concept of hellfire as a place of physical torment, and reverted to the Greek concept of Hades as a place of wandering loneliness, confusion, and haunting loss of identity.
OHNOES! Poor Chris-Chan! Yeah whatevs. Forgive for not feeling an ounce of sympathy for a man who raped his 80 year old mother.
And Harlan
Harlan says we're not alone
IIRC there's this theory that all humor eventually comes down to schadenfreude—laughter as a gesture of relief that bad thing x happened to somebody else. Maybe the weird fixation on lolcows hurting themselves is another form of this behavior, offering histrionic people a »great« opportunity to get attention in turn, all amplified into outer space by our current media.
So what would you call people obsessively writing & arguing about niche topics like Orthodox Jewish theology or the pros and cons or various forms of puppetry or Yiddish linguistics (to name three just niche communities within my online communities)?
There is minimal intellectual property at stake, but I'd call them all Fans.
“‘We are the media now,‘ not ‘we’re the government now,‘ or ‘we’re the president now,‘ or ‘we’re the military now.‘”
Well, yes. Because the media has no formal powers and cannot take the blame when things go wrong. We want to have influence without responsibility.
There is a pronounced tension between how storytelling works on a popular level, as well as historically and how the intellectual property model treats it. It seems to me to be irreconcilable, dooming the model.
Merely buying an IP, Lord of the Rings for instance is supposed to grant the power of authorship. A story needs two legs however to move, the author and audience, and the audience can reject that the work shows any continuity with the existing story. We see this with rings of power.
If we look at how settings used to develop in folk contexts, like the Arthurian Cycles, we get to see how a setting is born more organically in response to the audience. We even have artifacts of vying characterizations, like Gawain of Gawain and the Green Knight and Gawain of Le Morte de Arthur.
Stories get accepted not per legal authority but by obeying rules of continuity. The current dissonance is becoming strong enough to be noticed by a public that lacks much of the language to express this.
This is a favorite topic of mine to consider. I appreciate the discussion, and struggle to restrain myself from dropping a term paper in the comments.
“Biblical paintings weren’t “fanwork” because fandom is defined by its proximity to intellectual property. It’s intellectual property that distinguishes fandom from a cult or a religion. It should go without saying that church law isn’t the same as the corporate and legal protections IP has.”
I disagree. One of the reasons the Normans were able to maintain racial minority rule over England for so long was that they put most of the affairs of domestic government, including civil court, in the hands of the church. By placing bishops in charge of divorce court, they guaranteed the loyalty of many fighting men who might otherwise have turned against their rule. This must have been a great relief as the Normans took power after a period of civil strife and female empowerment (Empress Mathilda). The Normans themselves concentrated almost exclusively on foreign policy, war, and taxation.
It cannot be said enough: American IP law is an anomaly and symptomatic of a dying economy that is in the hands of very few, and which is structured increasingly around rent-seeking behaviors such as IP protection rather than production.
I would further argue that religious art played a similar role to fanfic in some respects, as it often reinforced a particular patron’s interpretation of scripture for their own political ends, or as you put it, to control the narrative. The ceiling mosaics depicting Justinian in The Hagia Sophia are a good example of this. Ahistorical depictions of biblical religious figures as certain (non-Jewish) ethnicities is another.
This impulse to expand the scope of religious art to shape narratives can also be found in the United States. Particularly prominent examples include the South Solon meeting house in Maine, and the Manti LDS Temple in Utah:
https://visitmaine.com/things-to-do/arts-culture/south-solon-meeting-house
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2024/03/11/manti-utah-temple-renovation-includes-preserved-minverva-teichert-murals/
These works of art attract a following not necessarily bounded by the doctrines of the church from which they sprung.
So while maybe it isn’t exactly the same I think there are strong parallels, and the IP thing can’t last in its present form.
Harlen Ellison's predictions of digital torture seem to mirror the progression in Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control. We've moved beyond the Christian concept of hellfire as a place of physical torment, and reverted to the Greek concept of Hades as a place of wandering loneliness, confusion, and haunting loss of identity.
I miss the something awful forums. Reading “WTF, D&D?” used to be the highlight of my workday.
Wow....back to back fire from Katherine and Prester! Much to think about.