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The Creation of "Fan" Sites
jmoore writes "Nothing new that movie makers will do anything to make money from their movies. However, what about making false fan sites to boost a movies image? I couldn't belive it, but sadly it dosen't suprise me much. how depressing." The hype Blair Witch got, as the article points out made the movie industry understand how powerful "grass roots" really is. Reminds me of the Levi jeans pages modeled on the "I kiss you!" guy that people thought were real as well. Ah, marketing.
From what I understood, the MPAA is going apeshit trying to get people to take down real fan sites. Why are they wasting their time doing this, while wasting even more time putting up obviously fake ones that nobody really cares about? Sounds like some stupid ideas dreamed up by some clueless 65 year old executive.
Fake "fan" sites might used to artificially create a Grass Roots campaign because they know a real one will never happen again. Soon, the people will come to realize this, the studios will stop and try something new...and go on suing everybody in site for "Intellectual" property when intelligence wasn't even remotely used to make the crap they shove down our throats in the first place.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
What? You're telling me that "Hollywood marketers" are lying to me???
But seriously, according to the article, it really does help to have Internet hype:
The success of the 1999 horror movie "The Blair Witch Project" is testament to the Internet's hype potential. The film industry was blindsided by the appearance of block-long lines of ticket-holders who had gotten hooked on the film through its Web site. The movie was made for about $1 million and became one of the most successful independent films in history, grossing $128 million in its first five weeks.
And I thought everyone saw that movie for the artistry!
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
The Church of Scientology made fake fan sites for "Battlefield Earth"? (man that was a funny movie)
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Je t'aime Stéphanie
In the members section, $4.99 per month for unlimited downloads.
Deal of the day: e-meters, two for the price of one, while stocks last.
..Fake your fans.. The thing is though, if this works, isn't it because there is a fan base out there? or potential for one?
I mean is a movie like the Mexican really going to make money just on marketing hype alone? I mean, this wouldn't work right? People dont like to go see crap..
Oh.. Wait.. Nevermind..
air and light and time and space
My question is how do you explain Steve Gutenberg, he happened before the Internet....
I finally understand why there are so many Linux sites on the internet. Think about it people: If programmers are working for FREE then where does all your donation money go??
If you mod me down I'll become more powerful than you can ever imagine.
The Levi jeans websites Hemos refers to were these sites that Levi Jeans did for some reason... I think they're still up: http://www.rubberburner.com and http://www.supergreg.com... I'm sure there were more.
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Username taken, please choose another one.
>The I Kiss You guy was real. Asswipe.
I believe the story was referring to stuff like Rubber Burner and Super Greg.
I don't think these were the Levis spots in particular, but these DID turn out to be fakes to promote something or another. Very subtle, since there are no products mentioned...
-l
although i agree, dont single out the movies on this one. mandy moores management created some, as im sure did a lot of other bands. did you guys ever see the one pud from fuckedcompany made for himself? it used to be at pud.com but he took it down. kind of making fun of the whole thing im going to start making fansites for websites. "this page keeps you up to date on what is up to date on my site"
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
So that's how that movie "Star Wars" got so popular!
J:P
--- Worst tagline ever.
You mean the I Kiss You guy wasn't real?
Damn. And I was hoping to go visit him and stay his house.
Hasn't this been going on for a while? I seem to recall a fan site for American Pie before it came out that was proven to be marketing. I also think I remember a DiVX(the watch-once DVDs, not the codec) fansite that was also faked.
In this vein, we should create a goase .cx website to hype up the simplistic beauty of this enlightening masterpiece.
Then the proprietor could grant free adverizing space on goatse, to the MPAA
Seripusly, though. as cynical as this sounds, it is nothing new. Somewhere, way inside the lesat obsure link on the site, you might find a statement that "this is an ad" But if not, so what?! IT'S A FAN SITE
What artca$heer isn't a fan of his work?
How many dustcovers on how many novels, have high critical praise from critics that you may not have heard of? How many of those are verifiably unsolicited?
When all my friends went and saw the Blair Witch project, and were trying to convince me that it was a true story, and that the movie was true footage. This really did put a more "scary" spin on the movie for my friends.. but oh well.. they were doped by lying marketers, and I shove it in their faces everyday hehe :)
~Marshall
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arcane for life
I don't know about anyone else but I didn't see the Blair Witch because of fan sites, I saw it because of the SiFi "Documentary" on it. Which I still think is the best marketing scheme I've ever seen.
Looks like this is old news.
Hmmmm... Anyone else think that we are getting closer and closer to EVERYTHING being about marketing? We aren't allowed to make up our own minds any more. We can't have opinions. If we do, we are obviously not the 'target audience' they're going for. Movies are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. TV shows are only concerned about their 'share'. Niche markets are a thing of the past. Even on the web. Content sites are going down the tubes... or they are bought/run by huge companies posing as fans.
*sigh*
Doesn't anyone else with a brain in their head find this disappointing?
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
...is a good one. But it's more of a tribute to Star Trek fan pages; it wasn't ever intended to appear genuine. Same way the movie was kind of a tribute to Trek fans.
--
Assume that there are valid arguments against your position.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
I love the fact that this article keeps describing the web page designer as a "computer whiz". It really does wonders for the credibility of the author...
Anyone have links or more info?
OK,
- B
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http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Wired News did an article on this a while back.
-Christian
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
I don't know about the rest of you but for $10,000.00 a week to deliberately make a poor looking site....
I don't care how bad the movie is... It's not like they have to make you watch it!
LR
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
I couldn't belive it, but sadly it dosen't suprise me much.
Why's this? Easy. These guys do simple statistics to model situations. If you've a million fan sites, each claiming to have a million hits/day, then that's a million times a million people who should have paid, right?
Since the cinema intake is going to only be slightly more (if there's any change at all), the ratio of ticket sales to potential customers is going to drop faster than Mir on Penguin Mints.
Result? The guys with money are going to invest in other companies. They're not going to put money in what they see as a looser.
In the end, the best way to capitalize on the movie market is to make decent movies with scripts that require in excess of double-digit IQs and hormone levels below the toxic threshold.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Unless that company paying you pulls its IPO and gets sucked under NASDAQ's nasty grip of things this year. Wonderous how for some instances media is one stop short of saying the Internet is dead.
Last time I did a search on any one particular star, I had to sift through about 1gajillion porn links
This isn't neccessarily news though, maybe since someone actually wrote up an article about it. Fact of the matter is, most advertising agencies have marketers who profile when, where, and how to market to people by ethnicity, social status, etc. When was the last time you saw an ad for Malt Liquor or Birth Control on Rodeo Drive? Theres nothing new to what the studios are doing. Sure its immoral in a sense, but its no better than some marketer chosing one neighborhood because more "bruthas" live there.
Sil the movie
360 degrees of Karma
The earliest related thing that I can think of is the hiring of people to shout (agreement) at a speech. Or sending people out into a town to promote a play (without admiting that they were hired to do so) This is just an application of an old technique to the internet.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
In the case of the Blair Witch, this was a clever tactic - it was part of a marketing campaign specifically intended to build up intrigue. Many people went into the theater unsure of whether the movie was based on a true story. It was a creative way to draw attention to a small, independant film. To use this sort of misdircection on a regular basis is just sort of scummy though. With BW, it was expected that everyone would be let in on the joke at the end - the movie makers came right out and told everyone what they had done by the time the film hit big. If they did that here, it would ruin their credibility, and they don't want that.
I worked for a company called Full Moon Interactive Group and I remember that before I started working there, they were hired to do a bunch of fake websites for Sega. This was stated openly on the old fmig.com portfolio pages (anyone with archive.org access find their old pages?), but they don't seem to be up any more. This was around early '98 or so. Could've been Saturn fan sites or something ... I can't remember exactly and I apologize for that.
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
do I know you?
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Je t'aime Stéphanie
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Regardless of whether it's a fan site or the New York Times, too many folks accept information without question. Having been on the journalist side of things, it's scary to know just how easy it is to mold the facts to support just about any view. Just find an expert or two that agree with your supposition and suddenly you have news. Of course that's only when you aren't regurgitating the endless stream of PR/marketing crapola that gets thrown at you to 'inform' you of what's newsworthy.
As someone theat trying to build a fansite for new TV show i have to say it sounds like it was probably a bad investment on the studio's part.
Even though my site is dedicated to a show with an extremely high geek quotient, I haven't been able to get my daily hit count above the low double digits. The only way I see this working is if they paid the major search engines and web directories for preferred placement, or if they got links to the site planted in online media with the (also likely paid) cooperation of the media outlet (which we know happens).
Alternatively, they could draw people in (as was aparently the case with American Pie) by using material supposedly obtained surrepticiously from insiders, but that in fact was provided directly by the film's marketing Dept.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
It seems to me that many times fan sites gets left alone until a certain point when the show(or whatever) takes off. Until then, they don't seem to mind too much about fan sites providing pictures, video/audio clips. But once it hits the big bucks fortune and fame, the fan sites gets shut down faster than you can say /.
So in my mind, the "companies" are already playing on this, which I think, sucks.
We have seen it a lot of times where faithful fans were treated as criminals as soon as the "company" don't need their free advertising and trolling.
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Seems like it worked pretty well.
How pityfull of you to pretend to be my friend, if you are so depressed to have friend, go see cyborg_monkey, he'll talk to anybody.
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Je t'aime Stéphanie
Create pupet-socket fan sites just works for tv series, a movie stay around for some time then just loose momentum. It's so much more intelligent use fake fans in a chat room or forum, where people go to talk about "what's going on". Can we assume o'reilly mantain a room full of monkeys to type citations from their books?
Stewart Copeland (of later "Police" Fame) used to write anomynous letters to London music mags bragging about the incredible talent of this new up and coming drummer (himself)
A good chunk of promotion is tooting your own horn, whether you like to admit it or not. Why should it be any different in the modern day. It's all grand and ideal to assume every grassroots movement you see is done by selfless volunteers, but it's almost never that way. Deal with it.
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
If you can't trust a stranger on the internet, who can you trust?
human://billy.j.mabray/
human://billy.j.mabray/
"Every good system has a backup." -- Dale Hanchey
The fact that it's fake doesn't make it any less hilarious. It makes it all the more brilliant. The other one they did about the guy who breaks stuff busted my shit up (and I knew it was fake at the time)...
I heard it wasn't Levis but some other company... the name slips my mind, but it was big in the 80s... Lee? Someone like that.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm really surprised everybody missed out on Travis Latke's Galaxy Quest.
I'm not slow, but when I went back and found it'd been co-opted by Amazon for awhile, I started thinking "Saaaaay, Travis musta turned pro!"
Reminds me of the Levi jeans pages...
Those pages were from Lee Jeans.
Has Hemos been receiving "favors" from Levi's in exchange for advertising?
The thing to remember is, dishonesty is not new :)
Real fan sites depress me. Why would a rational human being devote dozens of hours to fawning over a piece of commercial entertainment? Does knowing what the stars ate from the craft-services table make the movie better? No. Does Jennifer Lopez sound better when you know who she's dating? No. Will knowing the exact date and hour of the premiere of the next Star Wars movie make it suck any less? No.
A plea to the fawning fanboys - get a life! Direct your energies to something useful. If your skill is in documenting minutia, apply it to an educational or reference site. If you like writing fan-fiction, try creating your own characters and settings for once. If you're good with image/video editing, or with 3d software, work on an original indie creation (or go pro), instead of reenacting the Phantom Menace with South Park characters.
There's a place for sampling existing works and distorting them, but the final product should be original. Think Negativland instead of Pat Boone or Puff Daddy.
Enough ranting for now,
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
let's look at this statement...
...the meaning of the sentence comes out to play!
;-)
Reminds me of the Levi jeans pages modeled on the "I kiss you!" guy that people thought were real as well.
If we remove a few words...
Reminds me of the Levi jeans pages that people thought were real as well.
The sentence should read:
Reminds me of the Levi jeans pages, modeled on the "I kiss you!" guy, that people thought were real as well.
I love commas
Silly slashdot, sigs are for kids!
Back in 1997, we made fan sites and protest sites, for and against "Cyberdiversion" for Heat.net. The fact that we were doing it got more press than the sites themselves ever did...
The funny thing is that one of the sites, "Mothers Against Cyberdiversion" has since been quoted and incorporated into culture several years later by people who had no idea that it was nothing more than a reverse-psychology guerilla marketing effort.
A few years later I was the webmaster for levi.com and its associated domains. While at that time we didn't do any direct misdirection, we would create one-off rough-cut promo sites, including one for redline, designed by the folks at superbad. I left before the age of Mahir, and so didn't have anything to do with those...
Kevin Fox
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Kevin Fox
Provided by the Simpson's folks to be an actual site that Lisa went to one evening to find out what badgers eat. I think it was episode BABF20, but there's no capsule at snpp.com.
While it's not exactly the same thing, as it's pretty obvious that this one is in cahoots with the Simpson's creators, it is still the same kind of guerrila marketing plan. I found it pretty entertaining.
You just enter in some default values:
- Name of the thing you are promoting
- some images, sound clips, other content
Then the engine out generate meaningless babble and fake postings, and all kinds of other BSSomeone you trust is one of us.
put up their own fake fan sites, and then sue the real ones out of existence?
sulli
RTFJ.
I mean it has happened before and it will happen again. And I'm sure this practise is not unheard of outside film making. I mean I think a lot of fan sites for games are sponsered by game companies.
It's not because everyone considers themselves as my friend that I have to be friendly to them, I hate people anyway.
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Je t'aime Stéphanie
I was expecting this to happen years ago. Sheesh.
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Not a typewriter
My mom is fine, how are your two daddies?
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Je t'aime Stéphanie
Has been doing this for some time now. Harry has whored himself out so often that he's even getting cameos in movies now.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Well, I do know that the BWP people were out in force at MediaWest*Con, which, if you missed it, is sort of like the Comdex of SF fans. That was before the movie was released.
;)
Actually, that was a very smooth move. Anybody who's anybody and quite a few who aren't in the SF "media fen" (media here meaning movies/tv/games more so than "books" or "journalism") goes to that con, so they were sure to reach lots of interested people.
I even have an original MediaWest BWP swag logo pin on my jacket!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
One of my freinds once had a personal web site. It had some images copyrighted by Nintendo. Nintendo's lawyers sent him a bark letter. He was allowed to continue, but only if he put up a bunch of stuff promoting Pokemon. What else could he do but comply?
Nintendo basicly got advertising for the cost of a bark letter.
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Not a typewriter
For $150,000 on the side? Where do I sign up. I don't feel bad about taking MPAA monies.
this sig is deprecated
Did anyone else think it was a mite suspicious how all those perfect 'satires' of the Budweiser wassup commercial spontaneously appeared on the net more or less simultanously with the advertising campaign? Here in the UK there were at least 3 or 4 versions in different regional accents. What's the betting that in every target market different clever 'piss takes' of the originals appeared timed perfectly to coincide with the campaign.
I used to have a fansite (which still exists, to some extent, but I will not link to, as that's in pretty poor taste...) which, at its peak, got several hundreds of hits a day on the main page, and far, far more on some pages within the site. I wouldn't blame your site's lack of an audience on the audience...
This is a self-referential sig
A collection of marketing tools and world wide hype sites, with spam filling the spaces in between.
If we are not careful, that is all that will be left.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You are correct. It was Lee Jeans, during their Buddy Lee campaign. Buddy Lee challenged Super Greg to a DJ-off. Buddy Lee won.
Who the hell cares? Advertising is advertising. Take it all with a grain of salt. If you goto a movie/buy this/sell that/move to russia because of a website...you are the one who needs help.
It's my understanding that the Beatles used to pay high school girls to scream and faint in the crowd at concerts and other public appearances. What's the big difference?
. . .
I don't know about everyone else, but I'd love to have a job where i could just sit around and make a few dozen crappy looking "fan pages" on sites like geocities for a larger movie company. No need for web design skills! A couple of broken links here... a few dozen webrings over there... and lots of annoying animated gifs and flashing text!
EASY MONEY!
Shameless Self Promotion : Webhosting at Blender Networks.
. . .
Mod this up. . .This is good. You have to read his "resume" as well. This is really funny
this sig is deprecated
belive : -5 pts. Incorrect. Proper spelling: believe
dosen't : -5 pts. Incorrect. Proper spelling: doesn't
suprise : -5 pts. Incorrect. Proper spelling: surprise
There's nothing wrong with with proper spelling. You should try it sometime. It's really quite impressive when you do.
You've never enjoyed something so much you wished you could be a part of it?
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Astro-Turf galore. Why not, they wrote letters to the editor, fan mail etc.
This is the same thing and just as sickning.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
It was pathetic when Microsoft tried it, and it's even more pathetic now. The real problem is, with so many astroturf campaigns coming how is anyone supposed to find other real fans instead of the paid shills? Hollywood will drown the communities of interest in the noise of their paid promotions.
It's just like what happened to Usenet, where the spammers have made most newsgroups absolutely useless. What a loss.
--
spam spam spam spam spam spam
No one expects the Spammish Repetition!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Before the TV show "Seven Days" premiered, I found a web site (long since taken down) that appeared to be a fan site, complete with enthusiastic ravings about how cool the show was going to be, and video previews that "a friend" who worked for the studio had allegedly smuggled out. My first clue that it was not a legitimate fan site was that there was not a misspelled word to be found. My second clue was when "whois" informed me that the owner of the domain was actually Paramount.
Got Apathy?
No competition for this will stand in my way! I've already begun work on my bad-web-design portfolio and resume! MUAH HA HA HA!!!!
Shameless Self Promotion : Webhosting at Blender Networks.
Yes, it really stinks that some studios are out there trying to promote their movies with fake fan sites. Still, haven't you ever made a shameless plug about something you've made? *glances pointedly at her URL to a fanfic* What got my goat, however, was the suggestion to force the site to be marked about the creator's financial interest. That hacks me off because that is a direct violation of our First Amendment rights. We are allowed to make shameless plugs about potential financial profits for ourselves. It goes with Free Speech and Free Market. We like things to be free because we want to make a profit. So let them be scuzzy and money makers, that's what we all are at some point anyway.
~ Sera
"People who play with hazardous materials often die." Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The galaxy quest has a parody fan site that really captured the whole star trek geek kind of site. galaxyquest.com/galaxyquest I think.
-- "[The] NSA can eat shit and die until they stop listening to my phone calls" - TastyWheat
I'm speechless.
This guy's a loony.
Just keep it simple.
I do not think fan sites really work.
;-)) I recall that they had quite a few prefabricated fan sites. And what did it do for them? Obviously not enough to win over public and investor support of their product.
Remember DivX? (not DivX
Salon had an article on astro-turf fan sites, with a particular focus on Blair Witch. It was here. It talks about web buzz and Ain't it Cool News and how that stuff impacts movies.
In part it reads:
"The "Blair Witch Project" fan sites deploy similarly suspicious language. The creators of The Blair Witch Project Fanatic's Guide, for example, tell site visitors, "We're just very dedicated fans," and until recently offered suggestions on how other fans might help promote the movie: "Buy TBWP Stock at the Hollywood Stock Exchange! Rank TBWP at the Internet Movie Database! Rank TBWP at Ain't It Cool News!"
But the creators of the site, Abigail Marceluk and Eric Alan Ivins, seem to be more than average fans. They appeared in the Sci-Fi Channel special "Curse of the Blair Witch," and the Rough Cut site links them to the film's back story: "A bit of trivia: Abigail and Eric are the two anthropology students who discover the three film students' 'lost' footage."
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
But what about the people who make the actually DECENT fan sites? they are rare, but you can't deny their existence. Animefu, a 2nd or 3rd project by slashdot hosts, is a anime fan site. the sites listing 200+ diff mods/skins/soundtracks are fan sites. In the vaguest sense, Slashdot is a Linux fansite. and sure enough, most of them are abandoned 1-2 years later, but there still worth visiting.
"insert witty trekkie quote here"
__________________
This really is nothing new, phony grassroots activity has been a basic practice of marketing and PR companies for decades
Browse around the prwatch site, they have tons of examples of phony community action being used by corporations. It goes much deeper than generating buzz for a new movie, many of the public action groups that influence government policy are funded by corporate money
Fake fan pages is one of the more benign manifestations of this sort of thing. There is much much more sinister stuff going on all around us.
Don't be surprised by this, it happens all the time
"Me and my girl named bimbo . . . limbo . . . spam" - Captain Beefheart.
In conclusion: Who cares? How could anyone feel ripped off about a fake fan site? The home page for Galaxy Quest was done in the style of a fan site and was truly hilarious.
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crazy dynamite monkey
Lee.
So I guess it didn't remind you as much as you thought...
Anyone remember the Wendy's commercial from a few months back where Dave Thomas was posing as a customer in a chat room gushing about the Wendy's chicken sandwich (or whatever it was they were pushing at the time)? I guess it was supposed to be clever but I remember being creeped out by it. The fact that the marketing people thought that sort of deception was cute shows you their mindset.
What's really sad is that while movie companies are hiring website designers for fake fan sites. Some, like Warner Brothers, are threating real fans with litigation over their sites. Warner Brothers reportedly sent letters to fan site owners (mostly kids) of the popular "Harry Potter" series of books. The letters basically said that Warner Brothers owns the rights to the use of all names, places, etc. used in the Harry Potter books. Therefore, the fans must surrender their registered domain names and take down their sites or else be sued! In response, many of the Harry Potter fans are boycotting the merchandising for the upcoming movie...
Don't forget Loggerboots.com©
If a fan site has a name with a trademark/copyright in it and isn't asking for free legal help to fight off movie company attempts to take the name, then it is obviously a fake.
Hence, they've made All Your Brand Are Belong to Us which mostly has a repeating theme, but some are still quite interesting...
You always have to wonder why grass roots always turns into cash roots.. *cough*woodstock*cough*
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Nobody's making you visit these sites... Don't succumb to such blatant marketing attempts and you don't have to worry.
its pretty sorry if you ask me that ppl are making fake fan sites.
Hey ppls, do you thing you could visit my website? I've been wanting more ppl to go there so i thought i might try here
A fake fan site is no sleazier or inherently evil than cartoons marketing a lottery to children, actors equating products to love, or companies pushing drugs on TV. I know people who wish these things would go away and perhaps do not allow themselves or their children to participate in the grand conversation that is our current mass media circus. This is too bad. As we have learned on slashdot the important thing is encourage critical conversation, or at least critical analysis of presented information. If people are look for random entertainment and factoids, it matter little where these items originate. If a person communicates critically, the wheat and chaff can be identified quickly.
Ironically, the official Galaxy Quest website is intended to look like a fansite, down to the inane directory ordering. It's one of the few official movie sites I've found worth visitng.
I have never seen an industry that behaves with such stupidity as the entertainment industry!
When I started my project, I had someone call all movie studios requesting promotional materials for their movies, audio video, images, whatever they would spare. The idea was to give each movie we would sell on DVD its own page with cool stuff, related links, etc.. ie: to make it a resource to people interested in that movie and the topic the movie deals with, and a database with stuff related to the people who worked on the movie, actors directors, special FX guys, etc...
The only ones that actually TALKED to us were Paramount and Columbia, however all they could give us was cover art, not even movie descriptions like you see on the back of a DVD or VHS. We spent around a year in trying to open an dialogue with the studios!
And now I read this shit, thay are actually spending big bucks on stuff we would have done for free in order to sell THEIR DVD's! go figure
Now having my own expirience with the US entertainment industry, ask me what I think about the Napster thing... I believe that the guys at Napster tried to do the same as we tryied, somehow come up with a pay per use, or a fee based thing (long before they started to get sued). I bet you they tried talking to the studios many times and no one listened, until Napster became bigger and bigger, then the studios sayd: Why should we go along with them? We sue them out of existence and then we do it ourselves.
Not that I like Microsoft, but I think that the US goverment needs to take a look at the MPAA and RIAA instead of BIll G.
Do you Jones?
We've got your flix!
ITL.tv - Your Resource for financial news.
It would explain all those Cmdr Taco fanclub sites.
In fact, I read about that on Slashdot. Hmm.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Penalties for this sort of thing may be severe. Now, IANAL, but it occurs to me that movie producers and studios may have deeper than average pockets, and that if you could set some law students to tracking these things down, gathering evidence, and then present it to a law firm, you might be able to find grounds for damages or a class action lawsuit.
It's the American dream in action. Besides, who believes anything they read on the internet, anyways?
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Nope. I find it empowering. Look at it this way: if you didn't matter, why would companies spend so much time and money trying to sucker you into buying their stuff?
zo.
That article suggests these sites tend not to have any links to contact the author (among other clues). Anyone spotted any dodgy sites yet?
This site was a deliberate joke - it apparently wasn't intended to fool anyone into believing that it was fake buzz (check out his resume linked to the site if you want evidence of this contention - he supposedly works at some fast food place but he's got experience with like three dozen OSes.)
"Travis Latke" is actually someone who was associated with production of Galaxy Quest, who volunteered to be the personna of this guy who got his web site "kicked off the Cal Poly servers".
That site is one of the funnier things I've seen on the internet in the last several years...
The makers of Galaxy Quest put up a fake fan site, which I still think is just part of the fun. But who knows, maybe they were actually trying to fool people.
I suppose we've all seen the energizer commerical with the guy shopping for underwear in his underwear... well http://www.inmyunderwear.com/main.html and not surpisingly you can actually buy duracell underwear.
in political science lingo, this is called an "astroturf" movement, for obvious reasons.
perhaps one of the more interesting cases in recent history is Microsofts' infamous attempt (this was circa 1998 or so) at astroturfing...they sent out documents to partners across the usa urging that they (and their employees) send letters of support to their congressmen for "freedom, the american way and microsoft" and that "all care should be taken such that the letters appear to be spontaneous messages of support from disinterested parties".
naturally, word leaked out and the "great innovator" had egg on their face again.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/11/12/0844228.shtm l is a link to Slashdot's original piece on the "I kiss you" guy.
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"Here to discuss how the AOL merger will affect consumers is the CEO of AOL."
grep -ri 'should work'
I have been a victim of "fake fan sites". Someone told me I should put my processor cooling fan on the front of my tower case, just below the CD drive.
But when I ran my computer the BIOS said the processor was 98 degrees Celsius!
Another time someone told me my case fan should actually go on the back of my monitor, connected with a very long lead to the motherboard (for the power). I was initially sceptical, and with good reason! The inside of my case is *no cooler*!!!
Graspee
Don't mod me up, it only encourages me...
Remember when Circuit City was doing this back in the good ol' DVD vs. DivX days?? Fun fun.
-=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
Well, take this line for example:
:)
Anyone else think that we are getting closer and closer to EVERYTHING being about marketing?
Does it occur to anyone else that even "legitimate" fansites -- sites built and run by people unaffilliated with the movie studios etc -- are themselves " about marketing"?
Just because you're not getting paid to hype a product doesn't mean you aren't marketing it.
You hit the nail right on it's head. Everything is going to be about the market. The market and commerce are likely to be officially above everything in a few years.
Ant it's all going to change this summer when WTO will rule on Brazil's ability to manufacture cheap AIDS drugs for it's patients.
That will realy be the turning point, if WTO will rule in favour of the drug companies, then we will have it "officially" that the companies ability to make profit comes first, absolutely first. Even before human lives.
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Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Yeah, except he seemed to like both Unix and NT. Seemed anachnoroistic to me.
Quick post without reading, as I read it in this mornings paper...
To me, it seems to underline the Advantage advertisers have that essentially corrupts the free discourse of information between netizens. I argued this with 'loyal opposition' co-workers today. My point: this represents (and you gotta read the article to understand how sleazy this tactic really is) a total rip-off of people's creativity in a deceptful marketing scheme by the big corporations. On Charlie Rose last night, Michael Eisner claimed that the service he provided (he is an ardent hands-on-the-creative-process man) was the aggregate of directors, writers, actors, etc, and that if people on the internet were allowed to trade movies unchecked they would destroy that gathering of talent. "There would be talent, but it would be [dissonant crap]." But if Disney were to imitate Joe Blow's fan website, aren't they denying the creative capacity inherent in all those marketeers?
But the net result of this is a further reduction in the credibility of websites. There is a reason that magazines put the word "Advertisement" on top and bottom of those ads that read like articles. They want to retain credibility. So if this continues, the internet, already a place of dubious ancestry, will suffer a little more as people will have to decide further (just like in their spam mail) whether to believe the source or not.
I think this degrades the value of the entire internet experience. But then again, I don't visit movie fan sites much.
More to the point. Big business wants to have its cake and eat it, too. You can't link to their site, or comment on their 'content', but they can spend big bux and totally copy your fan site and prey on all your potential visitors.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I've actually been contracted to do Geocities sites in the past to promote a movie dealing with cloning. The funny thing about it is, Art Bell spoke about the movie background very soon after I was contracted to do the extra sites.
Unfortunately, it was for a movie called Doppleganger224 and it tanked due to financial reasons about 2 months before filming was to start.
Kind of sucks, since Rena Mero (Sable) was to be in it.
But the sites? They were conspiracy theory sites. You know - the kind that are already all over Geocities. Seeded with exactly the kind of information that was spoken of in the article.
It happens more often than we think...
What about the recent article here about Warner Bros cracking down on Harry Potter fan sites. There was another one about a 14 year-old girl who they let slide. How considerate.
"It's the very fact that people build obsessive communities around pop entertainment that I find distressing"
pop=popular=whatever most people like.
entertainment=that which is enjoyable.
You don't like the fact that people build communities around what most people enjoy? Just because it's what is enjoyed by most people?
That seems elitist for the sake of it.
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My Journal
http://www.battlefieldearth.net/ links to the Warner Bros site;
http://www.battlefieldearth.com/ was written by Author Services, Inc which we all know is merely another of the corporate identities of Co$. In fact, it has been written that:
The "news" page is particularly amusing. The top news item claims that BE is "#2 BEST SELLING DVD" (among which audience?). It's accompanied by a frothing review from a Dr. John L Flynn ...
I wonder who he is trying to kid? Isn't there supposed to be some kernel of truth in marketing?So, in a sense, we all here are marketing Linux? I mean, most of us praise the benefits of Linux but we don't get paid for doing that. ;-)
The core difference between marketing people and fans is that marketing people coudn't care less for the quality of the product they sell. Fans on the other hand are convinced of the "quality" of the pruducts they praise. (Note with products I mean anything: an actor/actress can be a product too) I marked quality between quotes, because that is (just like beauty) in the eye of the beholder...otherwhise, please explain me all those Britney Spears fansites! Oh, they just might be fake of course
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Movies are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator
Dumbing down of movies and TV shows seems to mainly be an American phenomenon. I think it's probably easier to make text-book formula movies than to be creative. There is a still a lot of innovation and creativity though in European movies.
To be fair ... the impression I get is that although the USA produces by far the MOST movies, the number of good US movies is probably about equivalent to the number of good European movies.
Comics went through a VERY lousy phase of being victims of overcommercialization the last few decades, but the Net seems to be assisting in revitalizing creativity in this art. IMHO, music is currently the art that is suffering the most from corporate strangulation.
In short though, the answer is yes. You aren't the only one!
In a way I feel sorry for the studios. Their movies suck so much that they can't even get people to create genuine fan sites. Their movies are so crap that they have to pay people (and big bucks too) to pretend to be fans. How desparate can you get? Its a little like those small-time band members who pay schoolgirls to clamour around them and pretend to like them.
I have this mental image of a group of aging execs in expensive suits gathered around in a large boardroom of a big company, all with very worried and frustrated expressions wondering "why don't people watch our movies any more!?!?" (theater sales have dwindled in recent years), and desparately trying to come up with every possible idea they can to get people interested in their movies - but not one of them ever even thinks to suggest the most obvious one: make better movies.
Whatever did happen to that 'I Kiss You' guy?
welcome to my message. I kiss you!
~- Llah -~