TorrentFreak: The World’s Oldest Active Torrent Turns 20 Years Old. “Twenty years ago, a group of friends shot a Matrix fan film on a limited budget. Sharing their creation with the rest of the word initially appeared to be too expensive, but then they discovered a new technology called BitTorrent. Fast forward two decades and their ‘Fanimatrix’ release is the oldest active torrent that’s still widely shared today.”
WIRED: Sexy AI Chatbots Are Creating Thorny Issues for Fandom. “Even if Character.AI might want you to get emotionally attached to its coding bots (your fellow ‘pair programmer’) or its grammar bots (your ‘English teacher’), it’s the characters you’ve heard of, real or fictional, that have sparked the most interest across the social web. ‘Billie Eilish’ currently has six times the amount of interaction of ‘Joe Biden’; both of them eclipse ‘Alan Turing.’”
CBR: Comics Twitter Has Created A Fandom That Doesn’t Understand Comics . “Twitter, or X as it’s now called, has become the most important advertising tool for the comic industry. Companies like DC Comics and Image use the site to get the news about new books out. A whole ecosystem of fan accounts and podcasts has sprung up around Twitter, where indie creators peddle their wares, and fans and creators interact like never before. However, Comics Twitter is often a cesspool of toxicity and bad takes. In fact, the very nature of Comic Twitter has often been its downfall, and the fans Comic Twitter created have run into some huge problems.”
Bounding Into Comics: Disgruntled CBR Employee Hijacks Official Twitter Account, Publicly Accuses Outlet Of Becoming “An AI-Driven, Clickbait-Focused Content Mill”. “In a move that speaks volumes to the present state of the entertainment media ecosystem, a disgruntled Comic Book Resources employee recently used their access to the outlet’s official Twitter account to deliver a scathing condemnation of its current leadership direction.”
Mashable: ‘Zepotha’: The horror movie going viral on TikTok that doesn’t exist. “What is this Zepotha film people can’t stop talking about? It’s a horror movie from the ’80s with one very important twist: it’s not actually real. It is, in fact, a creation of 18-year-old musician and Tiktokker Emily Jeffri, who shared a post over the weekend suggesting the idea of creating a fake horror movie to try and convince people that it’s real — and all the fan culture that goes with it.”
The Verge: The massive fanfic archive AO3 is back after a wave of DDoS attacks. “The popular fanfiction platform Archive of Our Own (AO3) has been restored after a wave of distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks forced the website offline for over a day.”
Engadget: YouTube fan accounts will soon need a disclosure in the channel name or handle. “Those who run fan accounts on YouTube will soon have to make it clear to viewers their channels are not affiliated with the original artist, creator or brand. If it’s not already evident from the channel name or handle that they’re running a fan account, they’ll have to update that information. Adding ‘fan account’ to the channel description alone won’t cut it.”
BBC: French Open 2023: Grand Slam using AI to protect players from online abuse. “The Bodyguard technology aims to filter out abusive comments on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok and Discord. Players can scan a QR code to connect their social media accounts to its system, with the company stating it analyses every real-time comment in under 200 milliseconds and blocks abusive remarks.”
TechCrunch: SoundCloud debuts a fan engagement tool for artists. “Music streaming platform SoundCloud is today launching a new tool to let artists engage with their fans better. The new product, conveniently called Fans, lets artists direct message their followers and sort their listeners through different engagement measures.”
Rolling Stone: Why Some Taylor Swift Stans Are Ganging Up On ‘Gaylors’: Report. “Researchers from the social media firm Graphika found that harassment runs amok in the fan community — and it can teach us a lot about how people behave online.”
WIRED: What Web3 Can Learn From Archive of Our Own . “[Fannish Next-of-Kin] arrangements allow users of the popular fan-fiction website Archive of Our Own to designate another fan to take control of their works—things like fan fiction, fan art, essays, and videos—after they die. Carpenter had heard of the policy before, but it was XT’s death—and the suggestion from a fellow server member that they all consider naming a FNOK—that spurred her into action.”
We Rave You: New website launches with live and rare unreleased music from The Prodigy. “… a new website has been published that documents the group’s career while presenting a massive collection of audio and information for consumption. The new website, The Prodigy: All Souvenirs Are Here! site is an encyclopedia of sorts that offers a deep dive into the electronic group from England.”
Mashable: What is subtle merch? Cracking the coded messages of fandom that are all over TikTok . “Far from the mass-produced concert tee or branded figurine, ‘subtle merch’ or your fave ‘coded’ items are deeply personal to fans, often homemade, and signal a fan’s knowledge or insider status within a given fandom.”
34th Street: Explore and Transform: A Look into the World of Fanfiction. “Fanfiction has often been stigmatized for its focus on erotica and romance. It’s time to rewrite that narrative.”
Ghost Cult: Metallica Adds More Content to “The Art of Metallica” Virtual Exhibition to the Metallica Black Box. “It’s been one year since The Metallica Black Box opened its doors with the first exhibition taking a deep dive into The Black Album, followed with 40 Years of Metallica. This latest exhibition digs into the band’s personal collection of artwork and includes rarely-seen drafts of album art, classic t-shirt images, gig posters, fan tributes, video storyboards, Hetfield sketches, and much more.”
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