New Media (blah blah blah)
So zeborahnz and I were chatting - er, I was rambling and she was humoring me, more like - on her blog about the whole Criminal Minds mess. More specifically how this all came out.
One of the things that is getting lost in all this (deservedly so, as it's hardly the point) is they way in which not only fans but also apparently the cast themselves have heard about the news.
People have been talking about it, of course. And ranting about it - as we should be. But I haven't seen anyone stop and ask how the fuck it even happened. I am so very not happy with CBS right now, and I don't trust the suits as a general rule, but I'm pretty certain Nina Tassler wasn't all "oh, somebody else should tell the rest of the cast. Why do we need to do it?"
I have no idea how they expected it would be handled, and I don't know for certain how and why the story broke when it did (although I have ideas) but I am 99% certain that the suits did not expect Joe fucking Mantegna to find out that his co-workers had been fired/downsized by fans - essentially random strangers he has never met - coming up to him and asking him what the hell was up. Not to say that CBS isn't to blame for the shitty way the rest of the cast learned the news, just that there seems to be a new dynamic here that they didn't expect.
I'm sure they expected the current internet campaign. It's not as if they haven't dealt with it before. It's also been a decade and half since the first movie website, so I'm sure it's been at least several decades since fans first began organizing online.
But all of that was fans talking to fans. If fans wanted to talk to cast and crew, they pretty much still needed to go through official channels.* If cast and crew wanted a platform to speak to fans, they generally needed the help of big/old media. (Which, keep in mind, is owned by the same people that employ them.) Or, at the very least, they would be using the internet as a loudspeaker, not as a tool for conversing.
Twitter has partly broken down that last barrier. Like most new toys, that is hardly it's purpose, but it certainly hasn't became a popular platform for celebrities by coincidence: When MGG wants fans to come to his show, all he has to do it tweet it. When Will Wheaton cracks a joke, everyone is there to hear it. Thanks to the popularity of the RT - even more people hear the joke it than follow him to begin with.
That, though, is still a loudspeaker. That's not a conversation with fans. It's not as if either @wilw or @GUBLERNATION have the time to read every single reply sent to them. So we don't generally think of twitter as a way for fans to speak to celebrities.** Which means there is a certain logic to the fact that CBS did not anticipate the possibility of the cast finding out the fate of their co-workers through random strangers questions.
The other side of the social currency market, however, is the power of large groups. A celebrity reading a particular fan's comment is a long shot, but get everybody talking about the same thing and they are sure to hear the sentiment, if not the exact words.
Also, because of the casual nature of twitter, information (such as it is) can move fast. Faster than TV execs are used to. From a technical standpoint, it doesn't take any longer for new articles to be published and forwarded than it does for a tweet to be posted. From a behavioral perspective, though...someone who was just on vacation for several weeks is generally going to say hello to their friends long before they sit down to read the paper. So they generally learn that their friend had "sushi tonight - yum!" long before they hear anything that could be even remotely considered news.
Which may be what the execs were expecting. Not that Joe fucking Mantegna would hear about the news from twitter or even from an internet news article, but that someone close to him would see the article and ask the question - or call him up to explain the sitch before he has a chance to hear about it elsewhere. A scenario that is still heartbreaking, but not nearly as obnoxious - or public.
Which means they probably also expected the news to get to the fans in a similar way - by people posting about it on dedicated fan blogs or even on news sites.
But*** I know that, for example,I heard about it first from matociquala . Whether it was her tweet or her post, I don't remember. Either way, though, it was through a socially oriented feed, not a dedicated webpage.
And that shit went viral through the fandom like nobody's business. In the process of doing so, it circled back to the players themselves, in this case the cast, because now the internet is not just a platform for speaking, it's a tool for conversation. Even when it comes to celebrities and their fans - so long as the fans are all asking the same question.
And and can't help but think that there's a way that we can use this to our advantage - in a way that's more sophisticated than just trying to get an on topic phrase trending in twitter.
*This is after all, one of the advantages that we Criminal Minds fans have going for us - someone with access to the official channels
**she sez, btw, as she tweets a CM writer re: crappy refs - and he tweets back!
***this is the part where I realize that I have to think about when I first heard the news, and remember that twitter is so very bad for archiving shit
ETA - omg, how did I not realize this before: WE NEED A WIKI
we need to centralize shit so that all the info is in one place, but we still need to take advantage of all the different networks out there and use them to spread the word and gather info
so what we need is a page that lots of ppl can add to - A WIKI
this is the frinkin idea that has been eluding me all day. goddamit, why couldn't i have figured it out sooner? I need sleep :( if somebody else wants to get working on it - AWESOME, otherwise, I'll do it when i wake up
One of the things that is getting lost in all this (deservedly so, as it's hardly the point) is they way in which not only fans but also apparently the cast themselves have heard about the news.
People have been talking about it, of course. And ranting about it - as we should be. But I haven't seen anyone stop and ask how the fuck it even happened. I am so very not happy with CBS right now, and I don't trust the suits as a general rule, but I'm pretty certain Nina Tassler wasn't all "oh, somebody else should tell the rest of the cast. Why do we need to do it?"
I have no idea how they expected it would be handled, and I don't know for certain how and why the story broke when it did (although I have ideas) but I am 99% certain that the suits did not expect Joe fucking Mantegna to find out that his co-workers had been fired/downsized by fans - essentially random strangers he has never met - coming up to him and asking him what the hell was up. Not to say that CBS isn't to blame for the shitty way the rest of the cast learned the news, just that there seems to be a new dynamic here that they didn't expect.
I'm sure they expected the current internet campaign. It's not as if they haven't dealt with it before. It's also been a decade and half since the first movie website, so I'm sure it's been at least several decades since fans first began organizing online.
But all of that was fans talking to fans. If fans wanted to talk to cast and crew, they pretty much still needed to go through official channels.* If cast and crew wanted a platform to speak to fans, they generally needed the help of big/old media. (Which, keep in mind, is owned by the same people that employ them.) Or, at the very least, they would be using the internet as a loudspeaker, not as a tool for conversing.
Twitter has partly broken down that last barrier. Like most new toys, that is hardly it's purpose, but it certainly hasn't became a popular platform for celebrities by coincidence: When MGG wants fans to come to his show, all he has to do it tweet it. When Will Wheaton cracks a joke, everyone is there to hear it. Thanks to the popularity of the RT - even more people hear the joke it than follow him to begin with.
That, though, is still a loudspeaker. That's not a conversation with fans. It's not as if either @wilw or @GUBLERNATION have the time to read every single reply sent to them. So we don't generally think of twitter as a way for fans to speak to celebrities.** Which means there is a certain logic to the fact that CBS did not anticipate the possibility of the cast finding out the fate of their co-workers through random strangers questions.
The other side of the social currency market, however, is the power of large groups. A celebrity reading a particular fan's comment is a long shot, but get everybody talking about the same thing and they are sure to hear the sentiment, if not the exact words.
Also, because of the casual nature of twitter, information (such as it is) can move fast. Faster than TV execs are used to. From a technical standpoint, it doesn't take any longer for new articles to be published and forwarded than it does for a tweet to be posted. From a behavioral perspective, though...someone who was just on vacation for several weeks is generally going to say hello to their friends long before they sit down to read the paper. So they generally learn that their friend had "sushi tonight - yum!" long before they hear anything that could be even remotely considered news.
Which may be what the execs were expecting. Not that Joe fucking Mantegna would hear about the news from twitter or even from an internet news article, but that someone close to him would see the article and ask the question - or call him up to explain the sitch before he has a chance to hear about it elsewhere. A scenario that is still heartbreaking, but not nearly as obnoxious - or public.
Which means they probably also expected the news to get to the fans in a similar way - by people posting about it on dedicated fan blogs or even on news sites.
But*** I know that, for example,I heard about it first from matociquala . Whether it was her tweet or her post, I don't remember. Either way, though, it was through a socially oriented feed, not a dedicated webpage.
And that shit went viral through the fandom like nobody's business. In the process of doing so, it circled back to the players themselves, in this case the cast, because now the internet is not just a platform for speaking, it's a tool for conversation. Even when it comes to celebrities and their fans - so long as the fans are all asking the same question.
And and can't help but think that there's a way that we can use this to our advantage - in a way that's more sophisticated than just trying to get an on topic phrase trending in twitter.
*This is after all, one of the advantages that we Criminal Minds fans have going for us - someone with access to the official channels
**she sez, btw, as she tweets a CM writer re: crappy refs - and he tweets back!
***this is the part where I realize that I have to think about when I first heard the news, and remember that twitter is so very bad for archiving shit
ETA - omg, how did I not realize this before: WE NEED A WIKI
we need to centralize shit so that all the info is in one place, but we still need to take advantage of all the different networks out there and use them to spread the word and gather info
so what we need is a page that lots of ppl can add to - A WIKI
this is the frinkin idea that has been eluding me all day. goddamit, why couldn't i have figured it out sooner? I need sleep :( if somebody else wants to get working on it - AWESOME, otherwise, I'll do it when i wake up