The Fall Season is pretty much over and, if you are anything like me, you are probably feeling a little lost without your beloved shows. If you are a hardcore, really dedicated fan of one of the Fall Season shows, the summer hiatus is most likely four months of torture.
Trust me, I know the feeling.
However, there is something you can do in those excruciating months between May and September. If you think that just because your show is off the air for the summer there won’t be anything going on in the fandom that you are part of, you are sorely mistaken. This is probably the time when Fan Culture is more active than any other time in the year because the fans must keep everything going.
I am not sure a lot of people are familiar with this particular term, but Fan Culture is actually the academic term for all the activities fans around the world take part in inspired by their favorite TV show, book, movie, video game and so on. A few decades ago, when Fan Culture became a phenomenon that caught the attention of Cultural Studies academics, the interaction between those fans was nothing like the fandom we know today. For one, they didn’t have internet yet so every interaction was made by actual mail, which made it harder to interact with other fans.
The popularization of the internet was what took Fan Culture and expanded it a million times over. The concept of fandom grew exponentially with the internet, which allowed fans around the world to share their love for a certain media product with a lot more people.
Today, the fandom participation reaches new levels every day and those fans get to interact with millions of people in message boards and fan sites, sharing different kinds of fan art, writing fan fiction, attending conventions and several other activities their creative minds can think of.
So here is what we want to know: How do you cope with the Summer hiatus? Do you actively participate in any fandom related activities? If so, which one?
Cast your votes in our polls below and don't forget to tell us your favorite shows in the comments.
Mainly reading blogs
listening to podcasts
I watch enough TV shows it takes me most of the summer to catch back up on all of them. Just in time to get behind on all of them again.
i agree with daniel. i usually have sooooo much stuff backed up on the ol' tivo that it takes me the whole summer to get caught up on all of my favorite fall/winter TV. also, summer TV is getting better & better so i have some shows that i still look forward to during summer hiatus.