I found it fascinating, so I wouldn't have considered it tl;dr even if it had broken the comment limit. Several times. Which I, for one, am totally prone to doing.
(Oh, and you mentioned you were on the fringes of fandom here, too. What fandoms, if I may ask?)
One, I think meta comments tend to be in video form because that's how people are used to communicating in AMV fandom.
I agree. I think that because live-action vidding sprung from fan fiction, there was a sort of precedent of writing not just fiction, but essays and posts and screeds and rants, and that persisted even though now a lot of live-action vidders are vidders first and only. Whereas AMV making - hmmm. I'm not sure where it came from, but I'm pretty sure the founders weren't writing Gundam Wing slash before they decided it was time to go audiovisual.
Two, there's some social pressure / geek shame here and there. When people start up meta discussions on the message board, there tends to be lively discussion mixed with "go outside, nerd" comments - from other editors.
Awww, that's just sad. I mean, we're all fans, yes? That means we all spend way more time than most folks would consider normal on stuff that doesn't interest the average person at all. So once we've got this far, well, it seems like owning the geekishness is a better route than playing the "I'm marginally less geeky than you! By a fraction so tiny as to be indistinguishable to anyone except people as geeky as we are!"
*waves banner of total Geek Pride*
Meta never really found a home here. It could possibly do so, but it hasn't happened yet.
As far as I can tell, AMV meta seems to take place mostly in discussions at cons (well, and in vids). Which depresses me, because I want to know what other people think, and how can I if they're just chatting amongst themselves? Unless someone took really good notes, I mean.
...That person is being kind of a jerk.
I entirely agree. But the thing is - that doesn't happen much, in my experience; my opinion may count for less to vidders of any kind, because I'm not a vidder, but none of them has ever said so to me, and no one has ever mocked me for not knowing the vocabulary.
But it is a really pervasive fear - for me, for other non-vidders trying to talk about vids. We'll say it wrong! We'll sound stupid! You (the collective you: vidders) will make fun! So I always try to cover that objection when I'm encouraging non-vidders to give vid feedback a shot.
I think it's a selection bias, if that's the right word - I look for videos that I think I'll like, usually, and I think most people are the same. They search within their fandoms or for songs they like or for descriptions that interest them. So the only people who wind up seeing a video are the ones who sought it out.
Very true. Plus, you know, the recommendations system tries to find vids you'll like (although for me it mostly doesn't do too well, especially method one, but still), and I'm assuming a lot of people download based on recs from folks within the community. (Where are the big AMV recs sources, by the way? Aside from the org-resident ones, like the top ten % list and the forums, because I've plundered those.) And, finally, if a vid has a really low star score or opinion score, I for one probably won't bother downloading it (unless it's Hikaru no Go - I'll give almost anything in that fandom a try). So, yeah, definite selection bias.
The problem is, the selection bias + the grade inflation => seriously inflated expectations. But, you know, I expected that to be more of a problem than it was - people were mostly very nice to me even when I gave them significantly lower scores than their average. (I am curious, though. In the AMV world, if someone was really angered by a score, would he reply to the opinion? Or would he be more likely to ignore it? For all I know, the folks who didn't reply were all biting their tongues.)
Re: This is tl;dr, sorry!
(Oh, and you mentioned you were on the fringes of fandom here, too. What fandoms, if I may ask?)
One, I think meta comments tend to be in video form because that's how people are used to communicating in AMV fandom.
I agree. I think that because live-action vidding sprung from fan fiction, there was a sort of precedent of writing not just fiction, but essays and posts and screeds and rants, and that persisted even though now a lot of live-action vidders are vidders first and only. Whereas AMV making - hmmm. I'm not sure where it came from, but I'm pretty sure the founders weren't writing Gundam Wing slash before they decided it was time to go audiovisual.
Two, there's some social pressure / geek shame here and there. When people start up meta discussions on the message board, there tends to be lively discussion mixed with "go outside, nerd" comments - from other editors.
Awww, that's just sad. I mean, we're all fans, yes? That means we all spend way more time than most folks would consider normal on stuff that doesn't interest the average person at all. So once we've got this far, well, it seems like owning the geekishness is a better route than playing the "I'm marginally less geeky than you! By a fraction so tiny as to be indistinguishable to anyone except people as geeky as we are!"
*waves banner of total Geek Pride*
Meta never really found a home here. It could possibly do so, but it hasn't happened yet.
As far as I can tell, AMV meta seems to take place mostly in discussions at cons (well, and in vids). Which depresses me, because I want to know what other people think, and how can I if they're just chatting amongst themselves? Unless someone took really good notes, I mean.
...That person is being kind of a jerk.
I entirely agree. But the thing is - that doesn't happen much, in my experience; my opinion may count for less to vidders of any kind, because I'm not a vidder, but none of them has ever said so to me, and no one has ever mocked me for not knowing the vocabulary.
But it is a really pervasive fear - for me, for other non-vidders trying to talk about vids. We'll say it wrong! We'll sound stupid! You (the collective you: vidders) will make fun! So I always try to cover that objection when I'm encouraging non-vidders to give vid feedback a shot.
I think it's a selection bias, if that's the right word - I look for videos that I think I'll like, usually, and I think most people are the same. They search within their fandoms or for songs they like or for descriptions that interest them. So the only people who wind up seeing a video are the ones who sought it out.
Very true. Plus, you know, the recommendations system tries to find vids you'll like (although for me it mostly doesn't do too well, especially method one, but still), and I'm assuming a lot of people download based on recs from folks within the community. (Where are the big AMV recs sources, by the way? Aside from the org-resident ones, like the top ten % list and the forums, because I've plundered those.) And, finally, if a vid has a really low star score or opinion score, I for one probably won't bother downloading it (unless it's Hikaru no Go - I'll give almost anything in that fandom a try). So, yeah, definite selection bias.
The problem is, the selection bias + the grade inflation => seriously inflated expectations. But, you know, I expected that to be more of a problem than it was - people were mostly very nice to me even when I gave them significantly lower scores than their average. (I am curious, though. In the AMV world, if someone was really angered by a score, would he reply to the opinion? Or would he be more likely to ignore it? For all I know, the folks who didn't reply were all biting their tongues.)