Meet Ogi Ogas.

A self-titled “cognitive neuroscientist and game show contestant”, Dr. Ogas has managed to cause a considerable wankstorm throughout LiveJournal media fandom. The kerfluffle primarily surrounds a survey he posted and promoted on LiveJournal, claiming to be studying “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Fan Fiction”. A full timeline of the details can be found in FanHistory’s article on Ogi, but for here, let me summarize where he went so wrong in fannish eyes. These mistakes should be noted by other researchers outside of fandom who may wish to “study” fen communities, if they want to have any chance of obtaining willing participants and useful information in their research.

Continued…

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This post was submitted by fanhistory.

On January 15, 2009, CSI had one of its highest rated episodes all season. On that day, people published 26 new pieces of fan fiction, the most stories posted on the same day as an episode had aired. On September 25, 2008, CSI had it third lowest ratings day all season and people posted zero new stories on that date.

Fan fiction is a really popular outlet for fan expression of interest in television shows. The stories are creative, explore plot lines in the show and, according to many fans, help market a series in a positive way. Fans often argue that their activities mirror larger interest in a show, and that producers should pay more attention to them and cater to their fannish interests as the example provided seems to demonstrate. Fan Fiction’s Predictive Value for Nielsen Ratings tests this fan theory and answers the question: Does the volume of fan fiction published in the period around when an episode airs correlate to Nielsen Ratings?

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This post was submitted by fanhistory.

It is a fairly common thing to see the following online: free Ipod, free laptop, free digital camera, free money. What person does not like something that is free?

The dictionary says that the word ‘free’ is the following:
a. Costing nothing; gratuitous
b. Publicly supported

Many of these ‘free’ items that are offered can be seen in emails, pop ups, or banner ads on a multitude of websites. Of course, the word ‘free’ has always been an infamous buzz word in advertisements for many years, perhaps many milennia as well. When a person is approached with a product under the pretense that it is free, naturally that person would be happy to accept the item. Many of the items offered for free online are for items that are expensive luxuries.

The disturbing part of this situation is that it is a gimic.

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This post was submitted by mommy-blogger.

One thing that most people don’t know about me is that I’m a huge casual sports fan. I read books about sport. I will watch a lot of sport on television. I own one or two shirts, a couple of caps. I was reading a book about football: Love & Blood, At the World Cup with the footballers, fans and freaks by Jamie Trecker. As you could probably guess from the title, it discusses fans. The following quote really stood out for me:

The so-called casual fans actually make up the most important group for every American sport; without them, no league or sport can really succeed. Why? Because there are a lot of them. These folks are the people who drive the ratings during the World Series. They turn the NBA from a little-watched TV sport into a big deal come the playoffs in June. And they make the Super Bowl the most-watched one-day sporting event in the world. (pg. 45)

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This post was submitted by fanhistory.