You can hide under a rock, but I guarantee they're already waiting for you there.
Looks like there's another round of OTW criticism with Rebecca Tushnet's recent interview on NPR, and once again one of the main themes of the criticism I'm seeing is that OTW is taking fandom and fanfic public, making visible a subversive and underground community.
And to that I say, since when have fandom and fanfic been subversive and underground? More and more television shows, more and more media creators are actively engaging fans in a very fannish way, FanLib actively and openly sponsors fanfic contests with prizes awarded, Dragon*Con is getting more massive every year, Comic Con has become a media industry powerhouse, and Harry Potter has pretty much made fanfic a household name.
Here's a good example of just how not underground or subversive fanfic is: Two years ago a candidate for a faculty position where I work said to me, "So, I noticed you write fanfic." He'd googled my name before he came for his campus interview and found my old Trek fanfic. As I tried not to freak out, he went on to tell me, quite casually, "I thought that was cool. My wife reads Gilmore Girls fanfic."
We're not under the radar people, and haven't been for a while.
Google, and more recently, del.icio.us, have done far more damage to making fanfic fandom easily accessible than the OTW will ever manage doing interviews in newspapers or on NPR. Kids today are growing up in a media-saturated environment and with immediate access to anything about that environment just a wireless connection away. It took me all of two minutes to find Iron Man fic when I got home from the movie - a Google search, a del.ici.ous search and an lj interests search. To hijack a piece of synecdochic's discussion on Web 2.0., social networking and advertising for a moment, "'Web 2.0', as an institution, is built on the fundamental notion of user-generated content. A service isn't selling their own content; they're selling you a home for your content, and selling other people the ability to look at your content."
Whether or not it's a tenable economic model, the internet as we know it is designed to get people content that they're interested in, including fandom's content, and it doesn't recognize fandom's claims as a sovereign or subversive nation.
And to that I say, since when have fandom and fanfic been subversive and underground? More and more television shows, more and more media creators are actively engaging fans in a very fannish way, FanLib actively and openly sponsors fanfic contests with prizes awarded, Dragon*Con is getting more massive every year, Comic Con has become a media industry powerhouse, and Harry Potter has pretty much made fanfic a household name.
Here's a good example of just how not underground or subversive fanfic is: Two years ago a candidate for a faculty position where I work said to me, "So, I noticed you write fanfic." He'd googled my name before he came for his campus interview and found my old Trek fanfic. As I tried not to freak out, he went on to tell me, quite casually, "I thought that was cool. My wife reads Gilmore Girls fanfic."
We're not under the radar people, and haven't been for a while.
Google, and more recently, del.icio.us, have done far more damage to making fanfic fandom easily accessible than the OTW will ever manage doing interviews in newspapers or on NPR. Kids today are growing up in a media-saturated environment and with immediate access to anything about that environment just a wireless connection away. It took me all of two minutes to find Iron Man fic when I got home from the movie - a Google search, a del.ici.ous search and an lj interests search. To hijack a piece of synecdochic's discussion on Web 2.0., social networking and advertising for a moment, "'Web 2.0', as an institution, is built on the fundamental notion of user-generated content. A service isn't selling their own content; they're selling you a home for your content, and selling other people the ability to look at your content."
Whether or not it's a tenable economic model, the internet as we know it is designed to get people content that they're interested in, including fandom's content, and it doesn't recognize fandom's claims as a sovereign or subversive nation.