How Fandom Adds Urgency To Series

Real talk: I have moral unease about pirating movies, shows, music, and books. Not because the corporate distribution systems are perfect — they’re not, and they definitely have neither the consumers’ nor the artists’ best interests in mind — but because the collateral damage to individuals and institutions I do care about, like creators, niche stores, and libraries, outweighs any sense I have that piracy is an ethical way to combat outrageous DRM/copyright extensions/money grabs, etc.

I have to admit my bias, too. My gut feeling is that a lot of piracy stems from a sense of entitlement: I want to watch/read/listen to/play that. I don’t want to wait to get it from one of the sources I could use for free. I want it now.

Obviously, there are tons of reasons for pirating stuff, ranging from the ideologically selfless to the completely selfish, and heaven knows I’m in no position to judge others. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to buy or rent all the media I’m interested in, even if it’s not always the best budgeting choice. Nowadays, the temptation to download stuff because I’d otherwise have to wait months or even years for it is a test of my patience rather than my wallet.

What, am I too good to wait for the latest season of The Good Wife? Do I think I’m somehow better or more deserving than everyone else resigned to mark days until the DVD release?

I’m definitely not a patient person. But when there’s no alternative, of course I can handle a wait. I survived agonizing over season finales for the whole summer or re-reading previous books in preparation for the release of the next instalment in the trilogy. Waiting for my entertainment has never hurt me.

With the decline of people who want to subscribe to cable packages, there’s also an upsurge of people who’ve been asked to wait. Want to watch the latest episodes of über-popular shows like Game of Thrones? Sorry, you can either buy our whole cable package, pay a huge fee for a single channel that shows what you actually want only about 0.5% of the time, or chill until we release on DVD/BluRay and digital stores. (But you don’t have to take my word for it.)

Which, you know, is fine: networks are allowed to do that. It seems silly that they’re making it tough for people who want to give them money for their products, but, whatever, if that’s the hill they want to go bankrupt on, far be it from me to tell them they can’t. Consumers will just have to suck it up — accept that they can’t have what they want to buy right this minute — and move on. Otherwise they’re spoilt Veruca Salts. That simple, right?

Enh… not really. At least, not with popular properties, not for a lot of people.

See, part of the fun of liking a story is the social aspect. When I finish an episode of a TV show I like, I go online and google reviews. I love to check out essays about book series I read and movies I watched.

Sometimes I want to go to IMDB and see what else that performer’s been in or what I recognized them from. I want to take fun Buzzfeed quizzes that promise they can tell me which character should be my best friend and get in on Memebase jokes that make references to the show. I want to visit forums and see what other people think. I want to check out fanfic and fanart.

The Internet has made fandom an ever-evolving ubiquitous force. An important chunk of the experience of enjoying, say, Harry Potter is being part of the community of people who want to talk about it, analyse it, complain about it, joke about it.

Likewise, the web brings us closer to creators. We can use social media to connect with our favourite authors, producers, and actors to see what they’re up to and get insight into their creations. We can follow or like or friend to show our support and fandom, and maybe even get a chance to interact with someone whose work means a lot to us. At its best, both creator and fan get something worthwhile out of connection.

Even if you don’t go seeking out fandom, it will find you. Major mainstream news outlets run stories about plot twists and actors’ contracts being renewed. If Google catches on that you like a series, it’ll collect headlines and blog posts for you without you even asking. If you follow people you admire on Twitter, one of them will almost certainly join or start threads about movies, books, games, or TV shows you love.

So waiting isn’t just about patience. It’s also about being able to stay involved with communities that mean a lot to us, online and off.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve googled a TV show or movie or book in order to find some basic information about it — e.g., how many episodes I have left, whether the season I’m watching is out on DVD so I can give the creators additional money — and had major plot points spoiled for me. Similarly, I’ve unfollowed some interesting creators on Twitter because their tweets would spoil huge developments for anyone who isn’t able to watch their show as it airs on traditional cable.

I don’t dare search for anything Steven-Universe-related until Google Play posts the newest episodes from last month, episodes that almost definitely had major plot repercussions based on media hype.

Would it be the worst thing in the world if I learn some secret about Steven’s world before I get to see it for myself? No, of course not.

I’ve enjoyed murder mystery series even after IMDB straight-up told me who the murderer when I clicked on the show title. I used to hunt down X Files and House, M. D. spoilers like I could use them to pay my bills. And there’s no way I watched the original Star Wars trilogy before I learned who Luke’s father was.

Likewise, I had a lot of fun loving the Chronicles of Narnia before “fandom” was a common word. And it didn’t kill me to stay off content-aggregator and news sites for the weeks between the release of the final Harry Potter book and the day I got my hands on it.

So piracy is still not for me*, for that reason among many. But I think it’s worth considering that it’s not just about insatiable consumption of commodity-like art. It’s also about access to community and social spaces that thrive on creation and connection.

* “No longer for me” is probably more accurate. My teenaged and undergrad self saw piracy less as stealing and more as sharing. She also would never have bought any of the stuff she watched/listened to; unlike present me, she wasn’t making a choice between paying and not-paying. But she still felt wrong about it, which is why present-me deleted what she downloaded long ago.