Another Geek Fallacy?

[roseembolism]

It's not quite a social fallacy, but it's one that I've seen often enough. Some fan sees something he doesn't like in an upcoming movie, and taking inspiration from by the old Trek fan campaign that kept the original series on TV for a season, he believes that the power of fans opinions can make or break a major production. I've seen it time and time again, in fan reactions to films ranging from Star Trek, to Star Wars, to Lord of the Rings: it usually involves some statement about how no true fan will go to see the movie, and they will get all of their friends to boycott it as well.

In fact, they usually resemble statements like this one I saw today:

Paramount should want there to be a RPG based on the new movie, not because some game company pays them a lot of money, but because it will help them out in the long run. Roleplayers are a disproportionate portion of the traditional Star Trek fan-base. There's a lot of Trekkies who hate the very idea of a new movie and can't imagine anything worthwhile coming out of revisiting the license. They're not just going to boycott the movie, they're going to flood the fora and convince all their friends to skip it to.

Oddly enough, I've never seen one of these threats of mass action have an effect. But these fans never seem to stop believing that they have a power of numbers that just doesn't exist.

Comments

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

Happily, in most fandoms I've touched, "fanatic fans" is a non-majority subset, and "asshole fanatic fans" is an order of magnitude smaller again. IMHO, if I had to pick a majority subset, it would probably be "fans who are fairly enthused but cannot be arsed".

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

Besides, if any fandom really, truly had the Power of Greyskull, Firefly would still be running. Proof positive that it just ain't so.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Similarly, the campaign to save Farscape was fairly large, and also largely had no effect.

[yuusada.livejournal.com]

And yet, the peanuts campaign got Jericho another season on CBS, although it did die in the long run.

[seawasp]

The original Trek letter-writing campaign certainly had an effect. There were also some campaigns to save particular characters which had an effect -- although this also hinged on the other people involved in the production being interested as well.

In general, though, it's not going to have any effect on things unless some of the people involved in the targeted movie/show/etc. feel the same way as the fans. If none of them care, then you have no lever to work with. Your letters and actions have to have someone in the target area who listens... and who can then use your outrage to effect.

[ghilledhu.livejournal.com]

Trek fen love to complain. They will complain to high heaven about the new movie...as they're standing in line to see it for the fourth time.

Me, I was ready to give it a chance until I saw the trailer with whiny Kirk-brat. I'm still probably going to see it, but that's mainly because of Simon Pegg as Scotty. So there you have it.

[random-girl.livejournal.com]

Um, we got the Serenity movie.

Oh, oh, and the sixth season of La Femme Nikita was because USA got so many fan responses that they couldn't actually end the story until it was finished.

Very little, I think, gets done for boycotting, but people will move the stars for you if it will make them a buck, and there's a lot of you saying it will.