OTW Fannews: When fandoms hit the big time

  • As the World Cup kicked off, an American fan talked about the changes he’s seen in his fandom. “Now, I will be able to stream the games on my phone at work. I can choose from multiple public parties showing the games I want to see. I can bring up the US team in casual conversation without worrying that people will think I’m weird.” Back in 2002 “I watched alone in my house, careful not to wake up anyone else and sporadically running upstairs to post on a message board.”
  • Re/Code.net talked about the fandom that launched the success of The Fault in Our Stars. “Judging from more than 100,000 responses, it appears that most Nerdfighters are female, especially the most active Nerdfighters (60 percent of the Vlogbrothers video watchers; 72 percent of survey responders). Some 85 percent of this year’s respondents are non-Hispanic white. Most Nerdfighters are American, and between the ages of 13 and 30. More than 87,000 respondents have read a John Green novel; 28,000 people have purchased something from DFTBA.com, the merchandising arm of Nerdfighteria.”
  • The Washington Post cited Wattpad’s statistic about how often the fanfic ‘After’ has been read. “For perspective, that is: (1) almost twice the number of Harry Potter books that have ever been sold, (2) roughly 1.5 times the number of Apple iPhones in existence and (3) two and a half times the population of the United States.”
  • A new French documentary on fanwork creations, Citizen Fan launched on July 5. French Public Broadcaster France Télévisons’ Online Services, provided it without any territory limits and with English subtitles. Citizen Fan will also be an open “museum” with 400 fan works from 32 countries in it. The documentary was a 2 year long project by filmmaker Emmanuelle Wielezynski-Debats.

What fandoms have you seen hit the big time? Write about their history on Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

2014-07-04 admin
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  1. Rebecca Tushnet commented: Any suggestions for a direct link to the English subtitled version for English speaking non-Francophones like me? I managed to find a general site, but I don't see the subtitles. Or is this going to be released later?
    • Claudia Rebaza commented: The release is due out tomorrow and there will be subtitled versions within a week from what we've heard.
  2. Tony commented: I'd love to see you guys do an article on project m. It's a fan mod for super smash bros brawl that has actually surpassed it in terms of popularity at tournaments.
    • Janita Burgess commented: Hi, there! Thanks for the comment, and sorry for the insane delay in replying. /o\ That sounds like a really interesting project. Fannews posts use existing articles, rather than writing original ones, but if you have a link to an online article about project m, please feel free to leave it in a comment so that we can add it to our list for future posts. If not, you can also write an entry for it on Fanlore.