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This last week has brought an epic level of fandom monster-shouting.* The short version is that the Tolkien Estate updated their website (and their FAQ, as one does, not wanting dusty outdated documents on a shiny new site), and someone realized that the FAQs were there and freaked out because the Tolkien Estate doesn't like fanworks. Which, to anyone even vaguely familiar with the Tolkien Estate--or Tolkien, since he didn't like fanworks either--it is rather laughable to consider that anyone might have thought otherwise, seeing as the Tolkien Estate has played the role of that purse-lipped parent who talks sternly in the company of other parents about how strict and old-school they are, and then lets their kid do whatever the fuck they want, within reason. In other words, the Tolkien Estate has wagged their finger about fanworks for a long time and yet there are millions of them around and very easy to find.
*I didn't invent the term. In Stephen King's The Stand, there is a minor character referred to as "the Monster Shouter" whose entire role is shouting that the end of the world is coming. I coopted the term years ago for people in fandom who use an incident--minor or not--to shout about how the end of fandom or fanworks or whatever is coming. (Apparently I am not the only one to use it.)
Anyway, I've heard from multiple people now that this frightened them enough that they were considering taking their Tolkien fanworks down, and at least one person did. And this is on the basis of a social media post from someone most of them didn't even know. This is the power of misinformation, folks. Lest we think it is susceptibility only of "those people," whom we like to imagine as less educated and less enlightened than we are, or old and out of touch (okay, Boomer), let me state directly what just happened: We had an incident of viral social media misinformation in the Tolkien fanworks fandom that not only distressed hundreds, if not thousands, of people but caused some of them to consider--or even make--disastrous decisions concerning their own creative work.
I don't want to judge or shame anyone who panicked because of the original post (including the OP). I'd wager everyone reading here has jumped on misinformation at least once before. What always bothers me about monster shouting, though, and misinformation more generally isn't that people mess up, which people are wont to do, but that people who mess up then become very "eh" about correcting the record that they helped perpetuate. I get that it's difficult and sometimes embarrassing to say "I was wrong," but people are deleting their work over this; a reblog without comment ain't a big endeavor. The SWG wrote an article (here on Tumblr) in response to this incident, to explain why there was no reason to panic. As of this writing, the original post has well over 16K notes; the SWG post has 83. I realize there are reasons why something goes viral that has nothing to do with the content itself, and I didn't expect this post to--I even remarked cynically to my comods when I posted the article yesterday that I was interested to see how few people willing to spread misinformation were willing to reblog the correct information--but I find myself less aggrieved by the sharing of misinformation than the unwillingness to correct it.
This admittedly makes it harder to generate the sympathy I want to have for monster shouters: that they made a mistake and were sincere in sharing information they thought would help. It comes off instead as enjoying the emotional tumult of a situation and wanting to crank the outrage machine absent anything constructive.
Which, again, is not a surprise--we all live in the era of Facebook--but I find value in saying it outright. Food for thought.
It even started to devolve into conspiracy theory-making, my personal favorite that this is all because of Christopher Tolkien's death because he was a real champion of fanworks.
I always struggle personally with how to respond to monster shouting. I am not a media specialist, but I do teach media literacy, so I teach young adults how to identify and avoid misinformation, and I want to monster shout exactly what I tell them: that anytime something you read online makes you feel a strong emotion, STOP. Stop and think about it and make sure it is correct before responding or (especially) sharing because misinformation works (and is sometimes engineered, though I don't think that was anyone's intention here) to create a strong emotional response and literally the fate of a free and democratic society depends on you making the right choice. Seriously? The world might actually end if you share the wrong piece of misinformation./s
But then it feels patronizing to say to adults what I say to middle-school kids and in fact have on a Google Slide at the ready at all times to use when discussing current events in class. Stop. Take a break. Think. Research. Then respond.
Nor do I know it will make a difference because, as I said earlier, cranking the outrage machine is super satisfying and becomes almost a form of community bonding. Again, I'd bet most if not all of us have done it at one time or another. But it comes at a price.
*I didn't invent the term. In Stephen King's The Stand, there is a minor character referred to as "the Monster Shouter" whose entire role is shouting that the end of the world is coming. I coopted the term years ago for people in fandom who use an incident--minor or not--to shout about how the end of fandom or fanworks or whatever is coming. (Apparently I am not the only one to use it.)
Anyway, I've heard from multiple people now that this frightened them enough that they were considering taking their Tolkien fanworks down, and at least one person did. And this is on the basis of a social media post from someone most of them didn't even know. This is the power of misinformation, folks. Lest we think it is susceptibility only of "those people," whom we like to imagine as less educated and less enlightened than we are, or old and out of touch (okay, Boomer), let me state directly what just happened: We had an incident of viral social media misinformation in the Tolkien fanworks fandom that not only distressed hundreds, if not thousands, of people but caused some of them to consider--or even make--disastrous decisions concerning their own creative work.
I don't want to judge or shame anyone who panicked because of the original post (including the OP). I'd wager everyone reading here has jumped on misinformation at least once before. What always bothers me about monster shouting, though, and misinformation more generally isn't that people mess up, which people are wont to do, but that people who mess up then become very "eh" about correcting the record that they helped perpetuate. I get that it's difficult and sometimes embarrassing to say "I was wrong," but people are deleting their work over this; a reblog without comment ain't a big endeavor. The SWG wrote an article (here on Tumblr) in response to this incident, to explain why there was no reason to panic. As of this writing, the original post has well over 16K notes; the SWG post has 83. I realize there are reasons why something goes viral that has nothing to do with the content itself, and I didn't expect this post to--I even remarked cynically to my comods when I posted the article yesterday that I was interested to see how few people willing to spread misinformation were willing to reblog the correct information--but I find myself less aggrieved by the sharing of misinformation than the unwillingness to correct it.
This admittedly makes it harder to generate the sympathy I want to have for monster shouters: that they made a mistake and were sincere in sharing information they thought would help. It comes off instead as enjoying the emotional tumult of a situation and wanting to crank the outrage machine absent anything constructive.
Which, again, is not a surprise--we all live in the era of Facebook--but I find value in saying it outright. Food for thought.
It even started to devolve into conspiracy theory-making, my personal favorite that this is all because of Christopher Tolkien's death because he was a real champion of fanworks.
I always struggle personally with how to respond to monster shouting. I am not a media specialist, but I do teach media literacy, so I teach young adults how to identify and avoid misinformation, and I want to monster shout exactly what I tell them: that anytime something you read online makes you feel a strong emotion, STOP. Stop and think about it and make sure it is correct before responding or (especially) sharing because misinformation works (and is sometimes engineered, though I don't think that was anyone's intention here) to create a strong emotional response and literally the fate of a free and democratic society depends on you making the right choice. Seriously? The world might actually end if you share the wrong piece of misinformation./s
But then it feels patronizing to say to adults what I say to middle-school kids and in fact have on a Google Slide at the ready at all times to use when discussing current events in class. Stop. Take a break. Think. Research. Then respond.
Nor do I know it will make a difference because, as I said earlier, cranking the outrage machine is super satisfying and becomes almost a form of community bonding. Again, I'd bet most if not all of us have done it at one time or another. But it comes at a price.
