Are you ready for Richard Armitage in November and December?

Omission made inexplicably from Legenda 102 yesterday — Armitage Agonistes is celebrating a Blogiversary! Give her some love.

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Ahoy, England, Wales, and Ireland, we hope you’ll be inside, safe, and dry.

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Source: Richard Armitage Confessions

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Guylty’s talked about it, this “confessor” talked about it, I’ve talked about it, briefly — that weird, edgy feeling I get when something’s happening in Richard Armitage’s career and the reports and news and pictures and comments and fan sighting accounts are flying fast and furious. It’s an interesting variation on or combination with this attitude — the perception that things used to be better or at least easier when the fandom was smaller. We look back to when things were under control.

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Source: Richard Armitage Confessions

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I’m sort of on both sides of this particular dilemma. I sympathize with the negative response to the “it’s too much” feeling, but I still remember “before The Hobbit” very clearly, and even then, although the information stream was smaller, and perhaps apportioned in more easily digestible pieces, so maybe it was quieter, there really was no control. Information still appeared suddenly and when it wanted to, though it was more likely to appear at certain points, and certain people had it first because they were awake or at their computer screen when it materialized, while others were disadvantaged. There was too much of it sometimes and not enough at others. Before the announcement of The Hobbit, that information always followed the schedule and needs of the UK television audience, because Armitage was on UK TV, and the UK was where he most likely to appear in the flesh, not least because he lived in London. We sat at our screens and hoped some UK fan was downloading or capturing or screencapping or listening or whatever and we praised those people effusively for the labor that went into the sharing. We still do; it’s a worldwide effort, following the guy’s media around. And, as the late Anna said, when one of us meets him, really, all of us meet him and when he smiles for a candid with one of us, he’s smiling at all of us. I’m pretty sure he is aware of how social media work.

Now the information stream seems to be following a decentered worldwide schedule that’s designed to meet the needs of Warner Bros., which is friendlier to US audiences, but much less convenient for the UK and still sometimes leaves Australia and New Zealand out of the loop. Then again, sometimes New Zealand knows something first because Jackson is there. And Richard Armitage lives at least some of the time in New York, which influences what happens when and where as well. The decentered schedule definitely increases the effect of the edginess, the feeling that information could come out of nowhere all of a sudden from an unanticipated direction. That’s what they want us to feel, and we feel it. And I’m definitely on the other side of the dilemma in that regard, because I am one of the people looking for that information and, however reluctantly, one of the people creating the buzz effect via rippling. I don’t scour the web aggressively every waking moment of my life, because I’m still working fifty hours a week, approximately, and I have appointments that can’t ever be moved, like class meetings, where my tech is firmly off. But I do have different information sources that alert me to new developments, and I look at them several times a day. I’m even sometimes looking for the new information in my dreams; I wake up suddenly and think, “Something’s happened!” That bugs me. When Richard Armitage follows me into my dreams, that’s wonderful, but when unfounded anxiety that I’m going to miss something … I mean, given the activities of my colleagues, how would I ever miss anything? … when unfounded anxiety that I’m going to miss something follows me into my dreams, that’s entirely another matter.

To be honest, I and several others think the media rush around Armitage will be comparably smaller this year, and that promotion will center more heavily on Orlando Bloom, Lee Pace, and Evangeline Lilly. I agree with that sentiment. But Thorin (like Bilbo) is still a major player in this film and as we saw from the Hobbit live event announced for next week, Richard Armitage is going to be on the stage in New York City, a central promoting location. Martin Freeman will not be anywhere. I don’t wish to jump to conclusions about the significance of that; perhaps Freeman has other obligations.

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If you’re looking for a list of the seven best tips about how to avoid the edgy feeling, like the ones published in US women’s magazines, this post will disappoint you. This problem — preoccupation with Armitage or the news about Armitage — has been known to us since early on, and we have speculated that the only way to get rid of it entirely would be to go cold turkey and turn off the computer. Doing that may be difficult or near impossible for those of us who have to work with a browser open, although software has been written to prevent one from self-destructive surfing or social media sites and enhance productivity (that link is an example, not an endorsement). I think a lot of us have developed techniques for dealing with this — deciding not to go on Twitter, for instance, or only engaging the tumblr stream at certain times of day.

So, no, I don’t have any list of best solutions to that problem, but I wanted to reflect on the source of the edginess, at least briefly. I understand the discomfort, because I feel it too. I just wonder where it’s coming from. What do you guys think?

There’s the wanting to know quickly, wanting to know first, issue. Not wanting to see something after everyone else has, and after every other thought about it has been expressed. This matter has occasionally motivated me to make judgments before I’m entirely ready. This might make you stay more tuned into media than you really want to be, and thus edgy if you can’t get away.

There’s the whole matter of liking the boutique or “best kept secret” fandom matter as opposed to a fandom that’s becoming more of a mass thing. You might feel uncomfortable with the fact that the media stream indicates a larger fandom and one with different tastes than you. I personally like the larger fandom, though it has its irritations (such as the fact that every generation of new fans has to go through particular stages on particular questions). Tumblr in particular causes one to have to sift through a lot of at times irritating repetition.

Perhaps a corollary — tumblr has its own culture, and the social media around Armitage apart from the BNFs are becoming more and more anonymous as he gets more and more fans. So there’s the whole thing of finding oneself in a sphere that’s ever more unpredictable, and in which one’s own speech is harder to make either heard, or to be universally intelligible. That could make one nervous.

There’s, of course, information overload. Just too much. As the confessor says, “too much happening at once.” And particularly, hype in advance of the actual product, something that turned Agzy way off last December.

And I was also thinking about the extent to which, if Armitage functions in one’s life as a stimulant, like caffeine or sugar, there’s the matter of crash afterwards when you don’t have it. Three hours of constant bombardment and then it wears off, and one’s sympathetic nervous system is simply shot.

Does anyone feel these things, or others?

Are we ready for the next rush of information? Got our filters in place? Gonna enjoy it? Gonna hide from it till it dies down? Wanna share your survival suggestions?

~ by Servetus on October 27, 2013.