further feedback regarding my wave making machine..

well i have recieved some quite strong feedback since yesterday in response to my stalkee/stalker script..

response three and my reply..

@tabithasims "talk to me later" means "STFU I'm trying to watch hockey" it doesn't mean "you have my permission to make creepy comments".

slow down there tiger. i'm sure mr.douglas can fight his own battles. if indeed there is one. which clearly there isnt.

i felt that 'shut the fuck up' was a bit harsh so i decided to have a look at this guy's profile (yep. it was a guy this time, make of that what you will) and i learnt that this guy had made only the one tweet - to me. had no followers and only followed this one particular actor. i was curious about this and it lead me to take a look at the other commentators' profiles too. again commentator one had only the tweet to me, no followers and followed just this one actor... i wondered if this was a coincidence, and noted that perhaps this was more of an example of stalker activity then any of my attempts at observational comedy but i digress.. commentator two broke the pattern as she followed several people and appeared to have a few followers also. but interestingly her page was racked with @ comments to this actor.. i'd say a good 60% or more of her tweets were replies to his.. had i stumbled across a collection of uber-fans? or had they unwittingly revealed themselves to me in their protestations of my activities.. it raised the famous question 'perhaps the lady (or gentleman) protests too much?' (though the use of the male title is perhaps somewhat questionable considering his defence of the actor seemed more like an offensive to me, and hardly gentleman-like..) was it more a case that these uber-fans did not like what they saw me write, not so much because they truly felt the perceived pain and suffering of their idol, but because they blanched at a redition of themselves?

it was interesting that they had felt slighted enough to reply to my tweets, clearly it must have bothered them to read my words and they felt compelled to let me know that was the case.. in an analysis of what they wrote i realised that commentator two seemed concerned that the actor would leave twitter as a result of my actions.. not something she would appreciate if she chose to keep abreast of this person's activities through his tweets. no 'celeb' to follow on twitter - no insights and information to be had. this made sense to me from their perspective, as their page demonstrated they liked to interact with the actor and replied to them regularly. it struck a chord with something i'd written recently regarding the space on twitter as posssibly serving a function of connectivity between people in differing world spaces. clearly if this was taken away from this person, by the actor leaving, she would no longer have that connection. something perhaps would be lost for her?

however the two people who chose not to interact with their idol, simply follow them, maybe fell into the catagory of voyeur. in their own individual ways their comments to me paralleled an assumption, on their part, of personal slight on behalf of the actor. telling me what the actor meant when he replied to me wasn't the actual words the actor had written, showed an arrogance on behalf of this fan. they assumed to know their idol so much they actually knew what he was thinking at the time of his tweet. the female who asked me had i thought about what i was writing and how it could be received wrote that she felt the tweets to be 'scary as hell' and labeled the actor a 'poor guy', by proxy revealing that she knew he would perceive the tweets as intimidating and in some way feel victimised by them. this clear transference of the commentators own emotions on to that of their idol struck me as most interesting. one of my hypothese so far identified has been that the fan assumes an intimacy with the object of their fanaticism, which goes beyond the realms of actuality. in a way the comments from this particular actor's fans confirmed this. by feeling and thinking on behalf of their idol, and acting upon their personal responses, the fans were showing me that they felt they had the authority to do so. in fact one fan went so far as to use the actor's first name, an act of familiarity unsupported by a genuine relationship between these people.

all this seemed to me to be most indicative of a proposed hypothesis i was developing, that a fan's perceived status in the life of their idol may be greater than was in reality the case. had i now potentially struck research gold in that my findings were matching up with my initial speculations? and, if so, how may i mine this seam further? was it now time to approach the fans of this actor direct and get some of their views on what made them follow this actor, and to what extent they felt they could be called a fan?