239 posts
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Post by dizzieblonde on Jun 11, 2018 9:34:30 GMT
It's a fascinating topic, linking obsessive fans with the paps and gossip news. It really is an 'industry' all of its own, and is a treadmill that appears to be hard to get off, for those obsessive fans. It is a form of addictive behaviour, IMO, where the news cycles and internet feed the addiction, and the fans push harder and harder for more intimate access to the actors' (and other's) lives. I suspect you really could write a thesis on whether stage-dooring is some kind of gateway drug to the fans having excessive expectations about the availability of the stars and their private lives!
However, I think the kind of fandoms that surround stage actors are significantly more innocuous than those of TV or movie stars. Always 'fun times' when those two intersect, and the fans who are normally held back from any physical interaction by the remoteness of film and TV, find opportunities to see their obsessions in the flesh - literally sometimes. I've never seen worse audience behaviour than when Daniel Radcliffe was doing Equus at the Gielgud - that was years ago, but spoiled the play entirely with the awful fans that were there, and they then created utter mayhem at the stagedoor afterwards. I felt so sorry for Radcliffe, just imagining the problems he must have had to deal with, just to lead his life! Of course, some people think because they're paid vast sums of money to do their job, that all rights to living a trauma-free live are given up!
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 12:02:59 GMT
A lot of Pap shoots are set up especially as regarding reality stars. When a high profile performer is in theatre then Paps will naturally know approx. arrival and certainly departure times. Also if that person is in a high profile relationship they may follow them to try and get shots.
The Celeb hotspots will always have Paps hanging out there.
With Social Media, fans can find out a lot more where people will be especially if they are flying into airports etc. How much is deliberate and how much is unwanted attention I don't know.
Remember when the Beatles used to arrive back in the UK in the 1960's and there were thousands of screaming fans at the airport so it was all going on back then.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 13:02:06 GMT
Do you know what gossip blogs call it when a celeb has pap pics taken of them? A ‘pap walk’ - regardless of who it is or what they were doing, if they’re out in public it was ‘a pap walk’ - the implication being that they must have set it up deliberately. They literally train their audience to believe that *all* celebs are complicit - which of course means that their readers don’t have to feel guilty about infringing on their privacy and also flatters their egos. Because of course their interest is so important to these incredibly rich, talented and famous people that they have deliberately sought your attention by setting up these pictures of them getting coffee. They’re so concerned what you think of them that they want you to know about their morning coffee/ their trip to the gym, etc. When pictures of Tom Hiddleston with his new puppy were first published the headlines said things like, ‘As Taylor Swift release her new album, Tom Hiddleston wants you to know that he’s doing just fine’, ‘Tom Hiddleston spotted with a gorgeous brunette in his arms as Taylor Swift releases new album’, and the people commenting on them really were convinced that he had timed the outing and set up the pictures deliberately to coincide with her album release date. He was taking the puppy to the vet! The likelihood is that the photographers were on the lookout for him because they knew the gossip blogs would be love to write a story about him that they could link to the release date of his ex’s album. The Kardashians have built an empire out of ‘reality’ TV which is actually scripted to within an inch of its life. There’s nothing real about it and we all know it. That doesn’t mean that every celeb is staging their life for the cameras, but some people seem convinced that it is the case. There's a huge level of misundestanding about how the media operates and one big one is that everyone who is in the media about an aspect of their life wanted it (and got paid for it). For eg, a friend of mine got Mail Onlined a while ago – something she put on social media got picked up and reproduced with a screaming headline. Easy, cheap journalism – she didn’t ask for it, and when approached she said she didn’t want to speak to them and asked them not to cover it. Obviously they did anyway; she didn’t realise that anything you put on social media is fair game and you don’t own the rights to those images once published (she does now…) . What was really interesting were the comments on the piece – most of the people commenting assumed she had gone to the Mail with the “story”, and that her motivation for doing so was getting paid loads of money for it. |
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4,156 posts
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Post by kathryn on Jun 11, 2018 13:37:58 GMT
There's a reason why the newspapers spent so much time and effort deriding Media Studies as a subject - it's the one subject that actually teaches people how the media operate! And it's actually really flipping dangerous - and not just for celebrities; as the phone hacking scandal showed, what happens to celebrities can happen just as easily to ordinary people - but also because of the political influence the press have. Direct political influence on politicians - Leveson 2, the judge-led investigation into the relationship between journalists and the police, has been abandoned - and indirect political influence on public opinion. As for money, the bitter truth is that even the people who have been paid for their stories don't get what they were promised. In most cases they think they're going to get their side of a the story out and instead get completely misrepresented, and often they only get paid a fraction of what they thought they'd been promised. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 14:19:43 GMT
she didn’t realise that anything you put on social media is fair game and you don’t own the rights to those images once published (she does now…) That's not true. You retain copyright on anything you post online unless you explicitly state otherwise. However, some of the papers and associated websites have a strategy of taking whatever they find and using it without permission, and then if the copyright holder complains they get fobbed off with made-up claims that anything posted online is in the public domain. (If you read the Terms and Conditions of sites such as Facebook and Twitter they explicitly state that you do not lose any of your rights to your material by posting it.) What it comes down to is: They know the law. They know they are breaking the law. They know that if they're intimidating enough they can get away with breaking the law. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 14:32:13 GMT
If you take a photo of something reasonably newsworthy and the Mail (or any "news" outlet) uses it without your permission, there are websites dedicated to helping you work out the best way to send them an invoice. If you're irritating enough, it's easier for them to pay you as though you were a freelancer than to deal with your continued badgering or any legal fallout. Doesn't stop them being shady, but at least you can get some money out of it.
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3,040 posts
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Post by crowblack on Jun 11, 2018 14:37:17 GMT
it was all going on back then. Earlier than that - my grandmother laddered her stockings climbing on Ivor Novello's car, Beatlemania style (well, he was very pretty!). Celebrity culture in the modern sense seems to go back at least as far as the 18thc - pretty much once cheap presses, pamphlets, decent transport and gossip hubs like coffee houses were established. |
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4,156 posts
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Post by kathryn on Jun 11, 2018 14:50:25 GMT
she didn’t realise that anything you put on social media is fair game and you don’t own the rights to those images once published (she does now…) That's not true. You retain copyright on anything you post online unless you explicitly state otherwise. However, some of the papers and associated websites have a strategy of taking whatever they find and using it without permission, and then if the copyright holder complains they get fobbed off with made-up claims that anything posted online is in the public domain. (If you read the Terms and Conditions of sites such as Facebook and Twitter they explicitly state that you do not lose any of your rights to your material by posting it.) What it comes down to is: They know the law. They know they are breaking the law. They know that if they're intimidating enough they can get away with breaking the law. At one stage all the social media companies had you agree to T&Cs when you signed up saying you gave up copyright to anything you published on their platform, but that changed - can't remember if the pushback was just public outcry or someone actually lost a court case. So the belief doesn't come from nowhere. Now they *should* ask for permission before using any photo you have published - which leads to some funny refusals, especially when it's The Sun asking Liverpudlians. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 14:55:00 GMT
I thought that was a misunderstanding of the T&Cs? People were reading "if you post a photo on [Social Network], you give [Social Network] the right to use the photo" and hearing "too bad, sucker, [Social Network] owns your photo now!" when what it actually meant was "although you are choosing to post it on [Social Network], you still need to agree that [Social Network] is allowed to show it if you want it to be visible".
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3,040 posts
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Post by crowblack on Jun 11, 2018 15:32:24 GMT
I've stopped tweeting any negative thoughts about BBC drama programmes (usually only stuff about picture or sound quality or 'needs speeding up a bit') after seeing my Tweets used for tabloid articles bashing the BBC!
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4,156 posts
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Post by kathryn on Jun 11, 2018 16:05:31 GMT
I thought that was a misunderstanding of the T&Cs? People were reading "if you post a photo on [Social Network], you give [Social Network] the right to use the photo" and hearing "too bad, sucker, [Social Network] owns your photo now!" when what it actually meant was "although you are choosing to post it on [Social Network], you still need to agree that [Social Network] is allowed to show it if you want it to be visible". It would have depended on the precise wording and how it would have been interpreted in various legal jurisdictions. It's quite possible that poorly-worded T&Cs would have had unintended consequences - especially as a lot of the existing copyright laws, pre-DMCA, were just not drafted with digital reproduction in mind. Standard practice has changed everywhere - we used to have authors sign over copyright to us, now they grant us an exclusive license to publish. There's no practical difference between the two but it makes people feel better. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 16:13:42 GMT
The 'what are you going to do' approach is very common, I agree. In a previous job, I worked with a reasonably high profile researcher and got a call from a tabloid late on Friday afternoon that on Saturday they would be publishing a story about something his son had posted on Facebook. The paper was totally out of line and they knew it but it was too late for us to do anything before they published. By Sunday they had had their knuckles wrapped by the regulator and been told to take the story off their website, but obviously they didn't care because they got their story in the paper. Highly distressing for the family, par for the course for them. There's really bugger all you can do against the media, unfortunately - whatever you do or say, they have the power and the broadcast ability. My advice to the researcher was to say absolutely nothing to the journalist on Friday because once you give them your words they can do anything with them - they own the narrative.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 17:29:41 GMT
Someone I know goes to as many performances of whatever touring musical she's into at the moment as she can, and stage doors every time, getting a photo of her with whatever actor it is she's into. She posts on instagram with repeated almost identical photos of herself with the poor bloke, tagging him in every time. Recently she's been following a touring musical and has seen it say 4 times a week almost every week, and has posted at least 20 photos of her with the same poor bloke on at least 20 separate occasions. The other day she posted about taking him presents. The bloke is looking more and more desperate in every progressing photo, smiling in a *please rescue me now* kind of plea. I imagine that this is nothing on the scale of some of the obsessions mentioned in this thread, but I still find it utterly mind boggling. I feel that I may know who this is, I won’t say her name just to be safe but did she happen to make accounts for multiple Wicked tour cast members?
I don't think so, not that I know of. I don't think I've ever heard her mention Wicked.
I agree though that she's harmless, I've never heard her being horrid to anyone, quite the contrary. I just don't understand the mentality in the slightest.
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19,803 posts
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jun 11, 2018 18:03:35 GMT
Social Media 101.
Restrict your activity only to those people you wish to observe the inner machinations of your (probaby rather dreary) life.
If you leave your Facebook profile open to everyone and their auntie I have no sympathy if some third party uses your stuff.
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1,127 posts
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 11, 2018 18:22:55 GMT
Cumberbitches are among the very very very worst people on this planet. Popbitch ran a story a couple of years back about the Cumberbitches and their attempts to prove Mrs C was cheating on him - the problem being that they were following round a totally different woman. Someone who just happens to be the spit of Mrs C but who has no link at all to either of them - and somewhere the Bitches were noting all of this. For example - Wednesday, dinner and snogging in restaurant. Friday, spent the night at Mr X house. Utter madness. I know the bloke who got accused of being Sophie Cumberbatch's secret boyfriend (some crazy fan took photos of him and his wife, who does look a bit like Mrs C, at the National Theatre, and spun it into a whole "Sophie on a secret date with her lover at her husband's former workplace"). He went through two years of having his social media accounts hacked and falsely reported as fake, and work and phone records stalked. Total nutters. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 20:07:15 GMT
People's reactions to a Celeb's tweets or actions can often be quoted by news organizations.
It's ironic that Little England Daily Mail's online section is very celeb gossip based and lots of comments about people looking tonned etc or showing a bit of flesh. It is always a fun read but very different from their printed version.
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19,803 posts
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jun 11, 2018 20:29:05 GMT
The press are watching us here. We’ve been quoted many times. I know people like to think this is some little niche forum but seriously... you have no idea how many page hits we get.
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3,040 posts
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Post by crowblack on Jun 11, 2018 20:33:37 GMT
Regarding my previous comment, I've just seen on Twitter someone pointing out that when the Mail (or, I presume, any other paper) use your Tweets without asking, you can change your Twitter name to 'F- the Daily Mail' and, if they're embedded, that's how it'll appear on their website.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2018 7:49:28 GMT
The press are watching us here. We’ve been quoted many times. I know people like to think this is some little niche forum but seriously... you have no idea how many page hits we get. Ye Gods! No wonder Alexzzzzandra Burke has been trolling me lately. It all becomes clear. |
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Post by kathryn on Jun 12, 2018 8:35:43 GMT
I know the bloke who got accused of being Sophie Cumberbatch's secret boyfriend (some crazy fan took photos of him and his wife, who does look a bit like Mrs C, at the National Theatre, and spun it into a whole "Sophie on a secret date with her lover at her husband's former workplace"). He went through two years of having his social media accounts hacked and falsely reported as fake, and work and phone records stalked. Total nutters.  I didn't know they'd gone that far! |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2018 12:38:08 GMT
I know the bloke who got accused of being Sophie Cumberbatch's secret boyfriend (some crazy fan took photos of him and his wife, who does look a bit like Mrs C, at the National Theatre, and spun it into a whole "Sophie on a secret date with her lover at her husband's former workplace"). He went through two years of having his social media accounts hacked and falsely reported as fake, and work and phone records stalked. Total nutters. I didn't know they'd gone that far! Christ alive I’m glad I checked out of following that fan group long before that. They are that scary that I don’t dare even tweet an opinion on his work anymore |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2018 14:22:03 GMT
Popbitch ran a story a couple of years back about the Cumberbitches and their attempts to prove Mrs C was cheating on him - the problem being that they were following round a totally different woman. Someone who just happens to be the spit of Mrs C but who has no link at all to either of them - and somewhere the Bitches were noting all of this. For example - Wednesday, dinner and snogging in restaurant. Friday, spent the night at Mr X house. Utter madness. I know the bloke who got accused of being Sophie Cumberbatch's secret boyfriend (some crazy fan took photos of him and his wife, who does look a bit like Mrs C, at the National Theatre, and spun it into a whole "Sophie on a secret date with her lover at her husband's former workplace"). He went through two years of having his social media accounts hacked and falsely reported as fake, and work and phone records stalked. Total nutters. I hope those responsible were prosecuted or put in prison. Or perhaps hanged. We're still allowed to hang people nowadays aren't we? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2018 15:51:25 GMT
I didn't know they'd gone that far! Christ alive I’m glad I checked out of following that fan group long before that. They are that scary that I don’t dare even tweet an opinion on his work anymore Good point there was already apparently graffiti written about you in a theatre toilet according to Ryan! |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2018 16:14:15 GMT
Does it really count when said graffiti is clearly in Ryan's own handwriting though?
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Post by waybeyondblue on Jun 12, 2018 18:05:27 GMT
Does it really count when said graffiti is clearly in Ryan's own handwriting though? I understand it was where his hand had just been that caused the public health inspection and subsequent court case. That law hadn’t been used since Cromwell and never for two simultaneous offences. |
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