Here’s a roundup of fan focus stories that might be of interest to fans:
- The Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, Ohio is hosting Spectacle: The Music Video. “This is the first time a contemporary art museum has examined the music video format through a diverse exhibition—employing immersive environments, photography, video screenings, objects and interactive installations.” The exhibit will include the contribution of fan vidders Luminosity, Killa, and T. Jonesy.
- The MLB Network is launching MLB Fan Cave in which contestants will “spend most or all of the 2012 baseball season in a 15,000-square-foot loft in the heart of Greenwich Village.” The fans chosen will “watch every MLB game, chronicle their experience via social media and conduct video interviews with players and celebrities that will be broadcast online.” Contestants were chosen from an online vote of their application videos, and then narrowed down at spring training in Arizona where they “were chosen based on the number of votes their videos received as well as how much social media buzz they were able to generate.”
- More than one college newspaper focused on sightings of Sherlock related fan graffiti. San Francisco State University’s Golden Gate Express reported that “Along with the fliers, fans have been doodling their messages on the blackboards in the campus bathrooms and on hallway walls.” As photos of the content moved online it allowed fans to gather together while leaving the clueless in the dark. “‘I had no idea what it was,’ said SF State sociology major Mandy Kerr, who recalled spotting ‘Believe in Sherlock’ signs in the Creative Arts building. ‘I pictured a little old man with a cane. Is that what he looks like?'” UC Berkeley’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Californian, took note of this divide and suggested “Where the fans have won, I feel the casual TV viewer may have been lost. Fan fiction is now mainstream, fan art is now cultivated and an immediate intimacy has been forged between fan and show by social media forums like Twitter and YouTube. The world of fandom has intensified with participants being more active and the television industry being more receptive than ever. I’m afraid the passive fans of the world are being gradually phased out.”
- Perhaps inspired by news stories about plans for a fan-centered brothel in Nevada there have been several porn-related scams targeting Doctor Who fans. One used a Twitter account to start posting photos taken from escort sites claiming they were Doctor Who fangirls and sending those who clicked to a porn site. A second hoax offered sex tapes by Doctor Who actresses. “Instead of getting to see what they wanted, the links instead took them to hardcore Asian porn sites.”
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