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Unexpected glee is unexpected August 25, 2009

Posted by Erin Ptah in Fandom, Meta, News Roundup.
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Reason #2501845 I love Dreamwidth: OpenID users can join communities. So if there are locked posts, or if the comm is set to “only members can comment”, you still don’t need an actual DW account to have a way in.

Reason #2501846 I love DW: It’s good for LJ. (Link includes a whole history of online journaling services. Inside views and all.)

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Just recently started listening to Pandora again. Had forgotten how much I love it.

The premise: you tell the program some music you like, and it goes out and finds similar-sounding songs to play for you. If you’re a music junkie, it’s addictive. And it’s added a ton of background info since I was last there, including lyrics, artist histories, and album reviews.

So a song by H.I.M. comes up on one of these stations (this one, which is how I got introduced to Plumb, Delain, Fireflight, and Leaves’ Eyes), and I click through to their artist page, and what do I see?

Spontaneous self-insert bandom RP!

(Newest comments on top. There’s more on the page itself, though old comments get deleted to make way for new ones, so it may all be gone soon.)

A lot of the time fandom (and RPF specifically) gets discussed as if it’s this insular thing. It’s a close-knit community of like-minded people, or it’s some aberrant phenomenon that is (/should be?) confined to specific corners of the Internet. Especially on LJ, people have a tendency to talk about fandom as if it’s the exclusive domain of a bunch of people on LJ.

But it isn’t. Fannishness can spring up anywhere. Take two random people, who likely as not have never even heard of LJ-based bandom, and give them a forum on which they can interact (even one like Pandora, which is not in any way designed to be fandom-friendly), and bam! Cracktastic RPF roleplaying ensues.

All of which fills me with glee. This impulse is universal, people.

(That doesn’t mean “everyone has it” – just that “it sure as hell isn’t about to be ‘confined’ anywhere”.)

So, in the interest of finding more glee, let me just throw this question out there: Where has this happened to you? What are some of the random, mundane, mainstream, or otherwise surprising places you’ve stopped short and thought, “O hai thar, unexpected!fandom”?

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Comments»

1. Seagullsong - August 25, 2009

Hmm…does this count? Someone was humming a They Might Be Giants song to himself in the middle of a crowd, and I started singing along. (“There’s a picture opposite me, of my primitive ancestry…”) He looked up all startled and smiled at me. It was awesome.

Also, Youtube comments may usually be inane, but sometimes you can get into (very non-fluent) conversations in Klingon there. XD

And I love it when someone has an article of clothing declaring their particular nerdy/FANtastic interest, but it’s kind of subtle. Then it’s like a secret signal that it’s ok to randomly come up to them and start geeking out about it. For instance, one of my friends has a sweatshirt that says “Gallifrey University” on it. Mostly she just gets people asking her where her school is, but occasionally…XD

Erin Ptah - August 26, 2009

Conversations in Klingon? That’s brilliant.

And lol@people asking where Gallifrey University is. “Well, nowhere in this timeline, but…”


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