Fannish dollars
Apr. 2nd, 2004 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI was thinking about this fannish expenditure vs. benefit thing today after a strange experience online with a vid. I've finished a Firefly vid that I wanted to share with friends and see if they had any comments, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
morgandawn set me up with space on her free account at a web hosting place that offered 20MB free space. Since the vid was 17, I figured it would be a good place to at least have my friends outside the area look at it, only after a long period of uploading it, I went to check it and they'd deleted the account for violating their terms of service. Apparently, they don't allow .mov files. Which, you know, whatever, but it changes my options.
In the past, I've made vids and then accepted that they wouldn't be seen for a long time either because they were for a con, or I would only be able to give out DVDs/tapes at cons to people who were interested. Now that online has become an option, it means my mind sort of goes, hmm, well, this isn't for a con, so maybe I should find a way to put it up. But that means forking over money so I don't run into the problem I ran into today.
With stories, it's relatively easy and financially painless to stick stuff up -- if you have a basic service with an ISP, you most likely will have web space, and if you don't, you can often put things at archives or places like FF.net. Even photos and icons, if you're not doing something like screen caps of whole eps, etc., are fairly low disk space and low bandwidth. But vids are a whole different ball o' wax. They're high-bandwidth, high disk space, and fairly risky in that while there have been purges of fanfiction and photographs off and on over the history of the Web, it's really vids that call down the wrath of the copyright infringement gods. TV show folks often don't care that people are using their clips in vids, but the production studios can; mostly, though, the music companies are pretty scary and have no qualms about going after people. So you've got this product that takes up an enormous amount of space and calls attention to itself in some ways, and it costs most folks a lot of money to make and distribute.
Now, the argument for art is always that you do it because, you know, you're an artist. You write the stories, you make the vids, you do the icons, etc. And in fandom, you share them without financial gain. But for marginally expensive or cost-free art, that's one thing; with vids, you get into a territory where the artists are forking out money to share with other fans, to make their art, but get next to nothing in return. I'm not one of those folks who necessarily believe feedback is the be-all and end-all of fandom, and that only feedback from strangers counts, or that you have to cultivate BNF status in order to consider yourself rewarded. But it is a win-lose proposition in some respects -- some folks have a ton of money and they have their own bigass servers and can upload and download vids with aplomb, but most regular people will have to fork over some money for hosting. Then, they'll also have to fork over money for the products used to make the vids. In the olden days, you could make some of that investment back through selling your tape collections at cost, and then plow it again into the creation of more product.
But today, that's not true. Everyone expects things to be free on the web, and if they're not online, they don't count to most folks. I've made offers many times that people can have nice shiny DVDs for free of my two recent vid collections (one finished, one in progress) for the cost of a postage-paid envelope, yet few people ever take me up on the offer because first, money for the postage, and second, it's apparently beyond the ability of most fans to do something like postage paid (I say this as someone who is surrounded by beloved friends with post office phobia, so that's okay). In a few short years, though, we went from a culture where people leapt at the chance to get vid collections to an "I want it now, for free" mentality that leaves those of us who don't/can't fork over the bucks for web hosting kinda outside the vidding community once again.
To me, that's an interesting, and frustrating, conundrum. Because now that I've experienced the immediacy of being able to share a few vids with friends fairly quickly, rather than maybe once or twice a year, there's a sense of fun and community. But if you're spending a lot of money, time, and meticulous effort on these artisitc creations, and you get nothing in return for your considerable expense -- not even feedback, which should be the most basic level of currency used in fandom, I think -- then is the expense worth it? I'm not sure. It's hard to decide, and possibly because of my situation employment-wise, something I'm thinking about harder and harder. My friends who have tons of web space and don't use make me grind my teeth; I know they don't realize how spoiled they seem to me, but it's one of those things that kind of reminds me how have and have not fandom can sometimes be. Not that this is anything new; it's not, but it seems to come into sharper relief these days with the instant gratification of the web.
I wonder, too, if people get worn down by the constant cost over time. I'm thinking that one of the places morgan told me about, which has some pretty cheap space, might be a good deal to at least try it out for a bit and see how it feels. But after spending the money for a length of time, would it lose its appeal, especially if there's no real benefit? (And again, benefit is a difficult term to define, because for some it would be feedback, for some, recs, and for others, nothing less than goddess-hood and worship everywhere would be benefit enough -- everyone has a different standard). I'm not sure I know what my answer will be even in a few months. I'm not even that fond of watching vids online in many respects -- the colors are washed out, stuff pixelates, transitions can be awkward, music sounds bad when it's compressed... and the size often gives me a headache. But that immediacy and ability to share has great appeal. I'd still rather show vids at cons and make my DVDs available (since I really do make vids with TV screens in mind, and my esthetic choices are always targeted to that kind of situation), but these days that's not enough to really truly be part of the community.
Anyways, it's something I'm thinking about. I guess life depression always turns me into a fannish navel-gazer, for some reason.
morgandawn set me up with space on her free account at a web hosting place that offered 20MB free space. Since the vid was 17, I figured it would be a good place to at least have my friends outside the area look at it, only after a long period of uploading it, I went to check it and they'd deleted the account for violating their terms of service. Apparently, they don't allow .mov files. Which, you know, whatever, but it changes my options.In the past, I've made vids and then accepted that they wouldn't be seen for a long time either because they were for a con, or I would only be able to give out DVDs/tapes at cons to people who were interested. Now that online has become an option, it means my mind sort of goes, hmm, well, this isn't for a con, so maybe I should find a way to put it up. But that means forking over money so I don't run into the problem I ran into today.
With stories, it's relatively easy and financially painless to stick stuff up -- if you have a basic service with an ISP, you most likely will have web space, and if you don't, you can often put things at archives or places like FF.net. Even photos and icons, if you're not doing something like screen caps of whole eps, etc., are fairly low disk space and low bandwidth. But vids are a whole different ball o' wax. They're high-bandwidth, high disk space, and fairly risky in that while there have been purges of fanfiction and photographs off and on over the history of the Web, it's really vids that call down the wrath of the copyright infringement gods. TV show folks often don't care that people are using their clips in vids, but the production studios can; mostly, though, the music companies are pretty scary and have no qualms about going after people. So you've got this product that takes up an enormous amount of space and calls attention to itself in some ways, and it costs most folks a lot of money to make and distribute.
Now, the argument for art is always that you do it because, you know, you're an artist. You write the stories, you make the vids, you do the icons, etc. And in fandom, you share them without financial gain. But for marginally expensive or cost-free art, that's one thing; with vids, you get into a territory where the artists are forking out money to share with other fans, to make their art, but get next to nothing in return. I'm not one of those folks who necessarily believe feedback is the be-all and end-all of fandom, and that only feedback from strangers counts, or that you have to cultivate BNF status in order to consider yourself rewarded. But it is a win-lose proposition in some respects -- some folks have a ton of money and they have their own bigass servers and can upload and download vids with aplomb, but most regular people will have to fork over some money for hosting. Then, they'll also have to fork over money for the products used to make the vids. In the olden days, you could make some of that investment back through selling your tape collections at cost, and then plow it again into the creation of more product.
But today, that's not true. Everyone expects things to be free on the web, and if they're not online, they don't count to most folks. I've made offers many times that people can have nice shiny DVDs for free of my two recent vid collections (one finished, one in progress) for the cost of a postage-paid envelope, yet few people ever take me up on the offer because first, money for the postage, and second, it's apparently beyond the ability of most fans to do something like postage paid (I say this as someone who is surrounded by beloved friends with post office phobia, so that's okay). In a few short years, though, we went from a culture where people leapt at the chance to get vid collections to an "I want it now, for free" mentality that leaves those of us who don't/can't fork over the bucks for web hosting kinda outside the vidding community once again.
To me, that's an interesting, and frustrating, conundrum. Because now that I've experienced the immediacy of being able to share a few vids with friends fairly quickly, rather than maybe once or twice a year, there's a sense of fun and community. But if you're spending a lot of money, time, and meticulous effort on these artisitc creations, and you get nothing in return for your considerable expense -- not even feedback, which should be the most basic level of currency used in fandom, I think -- then is the expense worth it? I'm not sure. It's hard to decide, and possibly because of my situation employment-wise, something I'm thinking about harder and harder. My friends who have tons of web space and don't use make me grind my teeth; I know they don't realize how spoiled they seem to me, but it's one of those things that kind of reminds me how have and have not fandom can sometimes be. Not that this is anything new; it's not, but it seems to come into sharper relief these days with the instant gratification of the web.
I wonder, too, if people get worn down by the constant cost over time. I'm thinking that one of the places morgan told me about, which has some pretty cheap space, might be a good deal to at least try it out for a bit and see how it feels. But after spending the money for a length of time, would it lose its appeal, especially if there's no real benefit? (And again, benefit is a difficult term to define, because for some it would be feedback, for some, recs, and for others, nothing less than goddess-hood and worship everywhere would be benefit enough -- everyone has a different standard). I'm not sure I know what my answer will be even in a few months. I'm not even that fond of watching vids online in many respects -- the colors are washed out, stuff pixelates, transitions can be awkward, music sounds bad when it's compressed... and the size often gives me a headache. But that immediacy and ability to share has great appeal. I'd still rather show vids at cons and make my DVDs available (since I really do make vids with TV screens in mind, and my esthetic choices are always targeted to that kind of situation), but these days that's not enough to really truly be part of the community.
Anyways, it's something I'm thinking about. I guess life depression always turns me into a fannish navel-gazer, for some reason.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 07:21 pm (UTC)As for feedback -- this is tougher. I've responded to only around 600 password requests. And had around 200 people send us feedback. Sometimes only few lines. Sometimes whole pages. Most a few paragraphs.
The immediacy of in person sharing is not there. You sometimes wonder -- who are those fans who start reading your online novel and drop off after chapter 3? Or download every SH vid but send no feedback.
So I am happy to have my own web space. But before that, other fans helped me out, hosted my vids and generally boosted me up. And I'll keep returning the favor, because not everyone has the means to share. But I like your comment that we do take the web spaces for granted -- forget that not only time but money went into them.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 09:09 pm (UTC)*adores all vidders*
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 09:34 pm (UTC)Your friends with all this excess web space? Do you ask them if you can use some of it? Because that seems like a solution. I know for myself when I realized I was going to have a lot of bandwidth left over every month I made it available to folks who I knew had stuff to share. But sometimes it really takes you to ask instead of waiting for someone to offer.
Also, I'm surprised about the money thing re DVDs. I'm in pop fandom so maybe we're just a lot more used to buying swag, but I occasionally will offer DVDs of concerts or shows that I know people want to see for a price that is actually over my own costs and I never fail to get a bunch of Paypal payments even when I offer to burn discs that people send me in postage-paid envelopes. I think people dont' like waiting in line at the post office. So maybe you could try the Paypal approach. And give your stuff a value over it's strict cost. If you value it, they will to.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 11:15 pm (UTC)The PayPal thing always seemed like overkill to me, because I wasn't asking people to pay for the discs (though many kind people have offered), so PPing for $1.06? Arg. With the money they'll charge for taking a fee, that seems so not worth it. Plus, as I said, I think most people just want it for free, right now, no commitment. That's okay. It's just different from how I came up in fandom.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 11:20 pm (UTC)And stick a bunch of stamps or cash or something in it... and mail it to you. And then you'd stick a label over my writing or something and it would magically arrive back to me stuffed full of a CD of vids?
Really?
Yes, I am this clueless about these things.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 11:27 pm (UTC)I have no idea how typical I am, but I've bought every VHS and DVD I've stumbled across of vids, unless the collections are entirely fandoms I'm utterly unfamiliar with or don't have any interest in... and I have a lot of interests. And I bought a new hard drive for my computer to support my downloading habits. I can, because I'm in a stable job right now.
Hi, my name is Elke and I am a vid addict. :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 11:33 pm (UTC)Not directly, because they've always made it really, really clear that they're not interested in helping. I often use the term friends loosely. :-D OTOH, I have had the luxury of having a bunch of vids hosted at
So maybe you could try the Paypal approach. And give your stuff a value over it's strict cost. If you value it, they will to.
I think one of the main reasons I've stayed away from PP is that I'm talking about, maximum, $1.06 in postage, and I've never charged for the discs themselves, so with the fee PP would take, that seems not worth it. That's always seemed like a reasonable enough thing, too, that you wouldn't have to stand in line at the PO! Now, back in the olden days of tape, another story entirely...
re the value thing -- I guess I'm not sure about that. I mean, I've always thought I did a pretty fair job on vids. Before there were five million vidders, most folks knew the work I did and the group I often vidded with. But now in the online world it's not quite the same, and so whatever value I place on my own work doesn't really get communicated to others - they don't know the work. At a con, I've made the discs available for a nominal fee, and that has worked well, but I think when it's mail order for a fee, it's less interesting or... necessary maybe? than when it's free. At least, I've had fewer people take me up on it if the discs were MO priced. Of course, I could be totally wrong and people would pay huge sums, but... so far that hasn't been the experience.
Some fandoms, too, like yours, seem to support sharing and support and reparations better than others. I'm in a couple fandoms where the concept of anything like discs or a zine... fuhgeddaboudit!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 11:50 pm (UTC)You know, now it's my turn to sound goofy, but it never occurred to me that there might be non-friend folks who'd help pay for media or bandwidth. Seriously -- I know some incredibly generous people, just amazingly giving, but then I also know a lot of very... well, that would never be something they'd do, there's not a lot of support in some of my networks. So clueless as it might sound, I've never heard this disccussed. That's really very interesting. That would be where I'd get to say, "I've always relied on the kindness of strangers"? ;-)
I think you are very atypical -- just because you are very kind and sweet and supportive. There aren't enough people like you in regular life, period.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-02 11:53 pm (UTC)That's really it in a nutshell, what I was thinking about today. You can't really put a price tag on sharing and participation, but it's hard because of that nebulous quality, the not knowing. But you said it succinctly and better than I could! So thank you.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 01:23 am (UTC)I do think you could ask a couple of dollars for your discs to cover all of your costs, not just postage and some people would happily pay and word would get around that your stuff was worth having. You could always have some vids online with an offer that you have more available on disc if they like your work. But maybe I'm just from an extremely optimistic fandom. I think you're right about that because in popslash you don't even really have to know people for them to do you a favor. Your friends suck LOL
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 06:56 am (UTC)General ignorance + sense of entitlement = Jainie wondering why the hell she even bothers to share her work with anyone or even have a site at all. *grump*
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 07:04 am (UTC)Apropos of nothing, do you know the Richard Shindell song "Are You Happy Now?"
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 09:05 am (UTC)I've also adopted the DVD pre-paid postage mailer approach -- as much as I love my vids, I do not have the time (or on some days even the physical ability) to dash back and forth buying envelopes and making trips to the post office. So having people send the pre-paid mailer (I give them info on how much it postage on my web site) makes it feasible for me to be able to distribute them.
For those who cannot or do not have the time/money, there are the online vids.
I do the same with my fan fiction -- I first publish it in zines for those fans who prefer written format or don't have online access. A year later the fiction goes online for the rest of fans.
Bottom line: I try to strike a balance between my and their convenience. Some people may nudge me to tip it either direction, but ultimately I have to make my own judgments. And hope that it works for more people than it does not.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 09:09 am (UTC)http://www.morgandawn.com/dvd_copies.htm
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 12:28 pm (UTC)A long time ago, back in the early days of net fandom, i wrote an essay about people talking stories for archives (why I've had archive phobia until recently) without permission -- and I mentioned the bandwidth stupidity and suggested that people who don't understand the bandwidth concept go get a copy of Internet for Dummies and beat themselves about the head with it.
This sounds like a really exasperating experience for you, and something that i think a lot of us angst about regularly. I know that things existed in the days of zines with stealing, etc., but the instantness and ease of the net seems to have increased it dramatically.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 12:41 pm (UTC)That's happened to me, as well. Forgot to include that. lol
This sounds like a really exasperating experience for you, and something that i think a lot of us angst about regularly. I know that things existed in the days of zines with stealing, etc., but the instantness and ease of the net seems to have increased it dramatically.
Yes, exactly! When I went off on the cow that was direct-linking to one of my backgrounds, when she whined 'I didn't know', I said, "People like you never do though. You think the net is like a fricking supermarket where you can just help yourself to anything that you see without even considering the consequences. I pay for my space, I pay for my tools, I put time and effort into my work and you just toddle along and help yourself and don't think even for a second about the work that might have gone into it."
Then she said I was 'mean' and deleted her journal. *eyeroll*
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 07:53 pm (UTC)Oh, I love anything Richard Shindell does. That's such a great little song - are you guys going to make the vid? It sounds like a wonderful idea. Or are you throwing it out for possible pickup? ;-)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-04 07:11 am (UTC)Re: the Shindell vid idea -- I'm so glad you like him and know the song! Alas,