Asyouwish/speaker 3/8/09

Thursday's class speaker made me aware of phenomena that I did not know even existed.  I had no idea that there were so many fan bases of all different types of things, nor how serious these fans took their website posts and fan communities.  I really learned a lot from this class and it in my opinion was a fun and great experience being able to hear from a Rollins' graduate and her life after Rollins.  I also greatly enjoyed watching the youtube clips.  I had never seen nor heard of a single one of the videos she showed us that were based on fandom culture.  Then this past Friday the strangest thing occurred.  I had taken the comic book class, American Graphic Media, my sophomore year of college. While in this class we read many comic books, and thus I was actually able to understand the youtube videos of the comic book characters arguing, whereas I otherwise would not have understood.  I actually really enjoyed the youtube videos by "justsomerandomguy" and after class I went back to my room to watch more of his video creations.  (Now back to what happened Friday).  On Friday I met up with Dr. Chambliss, Dr. S and a few other students who were in the graphic media class to attend to eat at Johnny Rockets and then go to see The Watchmen (which by the way, was amazing). It was during our meal at Johnny Rockets that Dr. Chambliss began discussing a video with Dr. S and a fellow student.  They were discussing a video which contained action figures who were arguing. It was at this point I looked at them and asked if they were talking about the youtube videos by "justsomerandomguy".  They nodded and looked at me shocked because out of the group I am by far the least knowledgeable when it comes to comic books and comic book fan culture and yet by some miracle (CMC 350) I knew what they were discussing.  This was among one of the only discussions during that dinner that I actually had the same amount of knowledge and input on the topic, and it was thanks to the random showing of these videos in our class by our presenter, Claire.  The idea that you learn something new everyday is true, had I not been shown these youtube clips in class I would not have realized I was missing out on some of the more popular fan-base videos on youtube.