Author: CarrieLynn D. Reinhard
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Online Relationships with Wrestlers
These are some thoughts I had in conversation with the students of my online fan studies course. We were looking at the impact of social media on fandom, and I reflected on my experience with my new fandom: professional wrestling. Source: Online Relationships with Wrestlers
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The Fractured Fandom Book
My project all started with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. In 2010 a new animated series was released based on the old toy line (I had these toys as a kid). What amazed everyone is that a toy line and series meant for girls started to develop a following of adult men, who took…
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Anti-Fans and Political Public Spheres
Let me start off by saying we are not discussing “guilty pleasures” here. A guilty pleasure is when someone engages with something they know to be “bad” but they get pleasure out of doing it. So a person may feel ashamed or embarrassed about the engaging, and may do it in secret so that others…
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Fans of Trump, Fans of Jesus
To start. I want to return to the original conceptionalization of fanaticism defining fandom. So, let’s do a dive back into what this word means. Merriam-Webster defines “fanaticism” as having a “fanatic outlook or behavior.” Well, that’s not helpful, because it defines the term with a different version of it; so, what is fanatic? The…
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Customer-Fans and the Happily Exploited
Time for another story (I appear to have a lot to tell!); this time, about the experiences I had at the biggest comic book convention in the world, San Diego Comic Con International. When I graduated college, I moved to Los Angeles and ended up working at an agency that represents writers, directors and producers.…
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Echo Chambers and Fandom
Okay, first, let’s talk about echo chambers. You may have heard this term, especially since the 2016 presidential election. In media studies, an echo chamber is a community, usually one that is online, where the members of that community all have the same interests, values, and beliefs. This group of like-minded individuals talk with one…
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Community at AAW
It takes a community to build a wrestling promotion. We have been going to AAW shows now for over a year. We have been to see them in the various venues they use in Chicago — Logan Square Auditorium, 115 Bourbon Street, the Berwyn Eagles Club, and Joe’s Live at Rosemont. We have watched some…
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Virtual World Television as Interactive Television Published
The work that Pooky Amsterdam and I have done on virtual world television has come to a close with the publication of the project’s second journal article in the latest issue of Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. The article is titled “A Community of Televised Avatars: Interactivities in virtual world television promoting and acknowledging…
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Power as Causing Fractured Fandoms
For the 2016 Midwest PCA/ACA conference, I presented a paper on my fractured fandom project titled “‘Power is an allusion’: Referencing power as causing fractures in fandom and fan communities.” What follows is that presentation. Nina (a pseudonym), a 16-year-old high school student in Connecticut, pondered on the following situation: “Why are people so cruel? Why…
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V for Vendetta and Resisting Fascism
In the thirty-ninth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I present a special episode as they compare and contrast the graphic novel V for Vendetta and its film adaptation. In this episode, we discussed how the two versions of the story reflected on the social, cultural, and historical periods in which…
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