I Am Not A Fanboy - Page 6

Is anyone here surprised that a thread about fanboys has degenerated into an argument about a black Captain America?

There's a reason the paparazzi don't hound Brent Spiner, Stan Lee and Matt Groening. And why John Ritter's death was front page news for a week, while Frank Zappa's obit was buried on page 7. Even the guy who was in Three's Company (30 years ago) is more important to the general populace than Zappa was.


You might think you're cool (and you might be Fonzie for all I know) but the rest of the world doesn't share that opinion about fandom. Most of the world is more worried about where its next meal is coming from ... and doesn't have the time to argue the merits of race in comicbooks.

Whether you or Devin want to admit it, only a fanboy would participate in this kind of discussion, or write the kind of column that started it.

I think Devin's criticisms in his column are a reflection of his own fears, as well as our own. None of us want to think we've got anything in common with Duke Fleed*, but how would we know? Fleed thinks he's normal, too. I suspect Devin worries he's got more in common with Fleed than not (which he does.). Why else would he plead for confirmation from total strangers?

The fanboy culture is the whole reason for this site's existence. You won't find a "publication" (for lack of a better word) like this anywhere else in the world that doesn't revolve around fanboy culture. You won't see this kind of behavior anywhere else, whether its Newsweek, The National Enquirer or The Weekly World News. If an employee for any of these publications behaved like Devin, that employee would find themselves unemployed pretty goddamn fast. You don't run a business by letting your staff insult your readers.

Ego is the guiding force at Chud, though. Front page "news" at Chud is frequently a sample of someone else's writing (copied from another site) followed by commentary. The "news" at Chud isn't the event, it's what the editors think of the event. Which is fine, because that's why people visit this site. It's part of Chud's personality.

I'm not saying "copy, paste and respond" is all Chud does ... but I don't especially care what the editors think about the latest leaked photo from Movie X. There's an abundance of opinions waiting on the message boards ... just show me the photos and move on.

Does that get this thread back on track?

(* Not that I think Fleed is a real person. It's just an example.)

I'd rather eat my own intestines than watch another Tony Scott movie.

And you're a plagiarist. But if everyone else is doing it, that makes it okay.

I'd rather watch that than watch another Tony Scott movie.

I'd rather eat a new Tony Scott movie than watch it. No, wait, that's not it...

You're not a plagiarist if you cite.

You're not a plagiarist if you cite.*

That's a bit like saying "You're not a thief if you admit you're a thief." Every publication has to cite an a rival at one time or another, but too many movie-based websites use it as a crutch. Nobody would read a magazine that did nothing but cite other publications (and not only because that magazine would get sued out of existence.)

No, actually it's not at all. Try turning in an academic paper or publishing a piece of non-fiction without any citations and see how well it goes over.

That's asinine. Should all newspapers quit because they relay on the AP and Reuters to do their reporting for them?

CHUD doesn't have the multi-millions required to get the access granted to Variety. But, they take publicly available news (thus open to citation) and perform two valuable services: (1) they filter the movie news down to the stories that the readership will care about and (2) they provide insight and opinion unavailable anywhere else.

Moreover, why should we be encouraging other sources to compete for widely available factual information? It's ridiculously inefficient to suggest that CHUD not talk about GI Joe casting unless they are an original source of the news. That news only needs to be obtained once.

I'm actually fairly sure you must be a troll, because you can't be this stupid.

I left that point aside, but it was in the front of my mind.

And more than anything, aside from citing sources, it's common courtesy to link back to the site that originally broke the story. There's nothing wrong with it at all.

I also think it's a little unfair to criticize the site for being 'ego-driven' when, say, Cinematical and Collider also do the same thing. I don't necessarily think that's being ego-driven so much as offering something more beyond a simple news story. It's commentary. I like reading commentary the writers. It gives the website a 'voice'. Why should this site have to be like Variety or the Hollywood Reporter?

No, this thread was made for derailment.

Newspapers pay for AP and other wire services, and have contracts explaining how they can and cannot be used. They aren't free. Depending on the rate of service, many of these prohibit newspaper from repeating information on the Internet. That's something you have to pay for additionally depending on the tier of service you select.

Ok, and CHUD either (1) pays for Variety, (2) pays for a subscription to Digital Variety, or (3) views the free stories on Variety's website, which are subsidized by advertising. Once you take one of these three routes, you're free to cite as you wish.

So, the agreement with Variety (or E!, etc.) works as such. Having a less restrictive agreement than newspapers doesn't alter the fundamental workings.

MCLUHAN
(To the man in line)
I hear-I heard what you were saying.
You-you know nothing of my work. You
mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you
ever got to teach a course in anything is
totally amazing.

The Utne Reader disagrees.

If you steal a TV set during a riot, it doesn't mean it's not theft.

The nature of the Internet automatically creates undue weight to anyone's post. You can't make a point without coming off as single-minded to a fault. I didn't mean to imply that Chud offers nothing but unnecessary criticism to news items written by others. That's obviously not the case. Nick has reason to be proud of this website and the varied content it provides. But I have no respect for "copy and paste" journalism.

But the snark can be overwhelming at times. Saying a costume "sucks" (or even finding a more clever way of phrasing that same message) does not qualify as "insight." It's just ego stroking ... the editors showing off their ability to publish an otherwise inane bulletin board post in the news section.

Variety's stories are only free to read, not to reproduce. One service does not oblige the other. Why do you think Major League Baseball includes those baffling legal notices during their games? Or those FBI notices at the start of DVDs? You can purchase a movie but not own the copyright. Buying a subscription to website content also does not give you ownership of it, either.

Just because this service is free to readers does not make the content public domain.

If you're citing to something, you're not claiming it's public domain.

Also, can you distinguish what you mean by copy-and-paste journalism? It's a bizarre distinction. I mean, if the point of journalism is solely to report facts gathered from first person sources, we're dealing with a very, very limited world of respectable journalism.

MSO Major Domo, please stop. The way news works is that news is news. Variety doesn't own the news of Johnny Depp playing role x. Variety owns the words that present that information. If sixteen people die in Iraq or the Browns win fourteen straight, anyone can write about that and not fear that they are stealing exclusive content, though it should be noted if one site has a scoop, Chud tends to be good about acknowledging where it came from.

Good thing the entire country was reading The Washington Post during the early 1970s.

Where has CHUD reproduced without citation?

Damn it, Phil....

i wuz robbed

And you take a lot for granted when you reprint someone else's work without verifying it for yourself (I've seen Chud verify stories from time to time.) Newspapers primarily use wire stories to provide information they can't cover thoroughly, such as international news. You can't expect some podunk newspaper to send a reporter to Iraq ... but that same newspaper does not exist to provide international news. Those stories are nothing but supplemental content, and are the first items to get cut when laying out a newspaper.

If that same newspaper has reporters routinely covering news like state government, you won't find a newsroom anywhere that would choose to run a wire story rather that create their own. That kind of content is at the heart of their product and you don't surrender that to strangers - even well qualified ones.

Apples and oranges. The Washington Post was part of that particular story The staff was routinely quoted in the coverage of that event ... the rest of the newspaper world didn't reprint Woodward and Bernstein's story and go home.

If Chud discovered Roman Polanski had been living in Eugene, Oregon, for the last 5 years, they would certainly be referenced in news coverage. But nobody would allow them to provide that coverage for them.

Just because a newspaper says it's true doesn't make it so. And nobody is more suspicious of newspapers than other newspapers.

What happened to the Black Captain America sidebar? That was a lot more entertaining.

And when did CHUD reprint an entire story and go home? I have never seen an article on CHUD that was a complete reprint of an article that could be found elsewhere. It always contains their thoughts on the story.

The whole thread was a lot more entertaining before you launched your extended campaign of assholery. Whether your points are valid (they're not) is irrelevant. You're just tiresome and annoying. Shut the fuck up. Please.

Well, of course he is. He starred in Hero at Large, one of the great superhero comedies, as Captain Avenger. Everyone knows that HAL's "burning building" sequence is the direct inspiration for the similar sequence in Spider-Man.

Five bucks says its JohnShade again.

While I am admittedly a big enough geek to visit this site daily, I have to say I found this article incredibly mean-spirited. It's like a paraplegic writing an article to explain why they're superior to quadriplegics. The pot calling the kettle blacker. Devin, do you really feel that you've set yourself above the people you have so meticulously torn down?