I have
been participating in online interaction with Casey Neistat’s daily vlogs (video logs) on YouTube for about a
year. My online interaction is limited to simply watching Casey Neistat’s videos, and liking his photographs on Instagram. I
think that my personality type limits my fan practice, as I would never produce
online fan materials or talk to other fans over the internet. It’s not in my
nature.
As Casey Neistat’s videos are only available
online, on YouTube, I think that it easily facilitates others producing fan materials,
in comparison to if his videos were shown on TV, for example. GIFs can easily
be created of his videos and shared on Tumblr, fan videos can easily be made, and
montages of Casey’s videos can be
made easily due to technology and accessibility for fans.
Jenkins
(2006:2) describes convergence culture as “the flow of content across multiple
media platforms”. With this definition in mind, I do not think that there is
any convergence when it comes to Casey’s media
texts – all of them are on new media. However, Casey did have a HBO show in 2008, 7 years before he started
uploading vlogs to YouTube, and as Jenkins (2006:16) argues “convergence is a process,
not an endpoint” then there is indeed convergence within Casey’s media texts.
Casey has
also had a few videos go viral, and this means that they have been broadcast on
TV and wrote about in newspapers. This again, is convergence. Because of the
internet, it means that audiences who view Casey’s
videos on traditional media because they have gone viral, can easily find
it online. From there they can comment on his videos, Instagrams, or tweet him,
and as Bennett (2014) argues, this is seemingly a more direct and instantaneous
connection between the object of fandom and fans.
Casey’s videos
even encourage more traditional based fan materials to be produced. Once every
week Casey will do a ‘mail time’
episode, where he opens mail that has been sent to him from companies and by
fans. This encourages fans to create something good so that it can be shown in
the vlog.
In
terms of offline relationships with other fans, my boyfriend and I like to talk
about Casey’s vlogs face to face and
we enjoy watching them together. What we like about Casey can be summed up in three points:
1.
We like New York, and Casey lives in New York. He represents New York in a way that we
have never seen before
2.
He has an inspirational work ethic – he produces
vlogs every day and also runs a new technology start-up business
3.
His cinematography is incredible, and above par
on what other vlogs are like by other YouTube content creators.
Interestingly,
my boyfriend enjoys the vlogs more when Casey
is out and about doing things, rather than sitting in his office telling a
story – I enjoy both, however.
I
cannot compare my offline relationship or identities with my online ones, as I don’t
have an online identity relating to my affiliation with Casey, and I do not interact with other fans of Casey online. If I did, I would like to
think that my offline and online practices would be the same.
References
Bennett,
L. (2014) ‘Tracing textual poachers: Reflections on the development of fan
studies and digital fandom’, The Journal of Fandom Studies, 2(1), pp.
5–20. doi: 10.1386/jfs.2.1.5_1.
Jenkins,
H. (2006) Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New
York, NY: New York University Press.
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