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podficmeta2010-10-20 08:22 am
brimtoast) wrote in podficmeta2010-10-20 08:22 am
Fear of discovery
I feel like we should talk about this, in the light of yesterday's Last.fm scare and aftermath
I've thought a lot about fear of discovery, since one of my very earliest experiences in the world of podfic was seeing my favorite reader take down all her work because she was feeling too much anxiety at the thought of it being found.
My opinion, which seems not to be shared by many people, is that voices are not distinct enough for this to be a genuinely scary prospect (although if some people have extremely uncommon accents or voices, this would apply less to them). I feel like someone could discover my podfic, listen to it, bring it to me saying "IS THIS YOU?" (Actually, I have a lot of trouble imagining that step. I'm guessing they'd be too uncertain and embarrassed-if-they-were-wrong to actually ask) and I could say, "Nope, definitely not me. They do sound a lot like me, though! Weird." And nobody would argue or push the matter further.
And so I think that even though podfic feels more personally identifying because it's my voice, the fear of discovery is more a paranoia than a reasonable fear. I've heard people say podfic readers sounded "just like" their best friend, high school librarian, another reader they heard on a different site (this one was directed to me, and I never read for that site, so I know the person I sound "just like" was not actually myself). For most of us, there are people out there in the world with voices similar enough to ours to give us plenty of plausible deniability.
What do other people think?
I've thought a lot about fear of discovery, since one of my very earliest experiences in the world of podfic was seeing my favorite reader take down all her work because she was feeling too much anxiety at the thought of it being found.
My opinion, which seems not to be shared by many people, is that voices are not distinct enough for this to be a genuinely scary prospect (although if some people have extremely uncommon accents or voices, this would apply less to them). I feel like someone could discover my podfic, listen to it, bring it to me saying "IS THIS YOU?" (Actually, I have a lot of trouble imagining that step. I'm guessing they'd be too uncertain and embarrassed-if-they-were-wrong to actually ask) and I could say, "Nope, definitely not me. They do sound a lot like me, though! Weird." And nobody would argue or push the matter further.
And so I think that even though podfic feels more personally identifying because it's my voice, the fear of discovery is more a paranoia than a reasonable fear. I've heard people say podfic readers sounded "just like" their best friend, high school librarian, another reader they heard on a different site (this one was directed to me, and I never read for that site, so I know the person I sound "just like" was not actually myself). For most of us, there are people out there in the world with voices similar enough to ours to give us plenty of plausible deniability.
What do other people think?
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And even though metadata "is always out there" and the internet is googlable, I don't think it's completely unwarranted for people to get worried when they realize that some data is hanging about in places that are not fandom spaces. To google "pandarus", you have to know her name. If the discourse about her podficcing is constrained to fandom spaces, people not-in-fandom have less chances to come across her name to begin with. But if her name is something you can stumble onto in places that have nothing to do with fandom, then it's a piece of data (added to track /titles/ on last.fm, it seems? which are possibly even more 'damning') that anyone can now find /and/ consequently use to google more.
As always, the fact that something is already possible theoretically in a small measure is not enough to dismiss, imo, the worries of people who don't want to see this measure grow exponentially. A multiplied risk is a greater risk, after all (odds are measure in percentages for a reason), and not everyone wants to be at increased risk of being discovered, not when they live in countries where fictional underage sex or the depiction of homosexual relationships is illegal, and not when they might well be kindergarten teachers in Minnesota.
Like I said, personally I'm not really worried (but sometimes I think my not being worried is more a symptom of my blitheness than of my realism). But I don't think it's silly to be worried in some way.
Even if you think 'it was already like that, you just didn't know it' - well, it's okay for people to become worried when they come into possession/awareness of more information about a situation. Perhaps some of them will change the way they weigh the risk of podficcing, who knows. In which case, despite my own opinions on the issue, I'll be glad that they were able to make a more informed decision. *shrugs*
I think people generally have a tendency to want to control information in unrealistic ways, and I think it makes them do all sorts of unreasonable things sometimes, either because they get overwrought about new knowledge or because they keep having to balance their expectations of privacy against reality.
Fandom is sadly very good at pretending (and making people believe) that it's possible to be out there, out here, and never have any data about your very existence and activity make it out into the world at large. I wish fandom in general was different about it because it strikes me as a dangerous belief.
But I don't let my wish blind me to the legitimate worries and shocks that people sometimes receive when things like this happen - I'm not without empathy for that situation. Maybe you don't feel it partly because you don't podfic, but like Jinjur explains so well in the post of hers I linked to yesterday, podficcing is an activity from the body, it feels even more closely related to who you are in real space than writing does. It feels more intimate, more exposing, more fraught. So to be more sensitive about it? Doesn't seem so odd to me. So. Yeah. Perhaps I'll be upset if people are disproportionately hysterical about it in a week, but in the meantime, the shocked reaction doesn't faze me much.
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I started to get a few more downloads than I was expecting on one of my podfics, and I figured out that they were coming from filestube.com. Turns out that the name of my podfic (I mean, the title of the story the author had written) was the same as the name of an album that people were searching for, so I'm pretty sure what was happening is that people were searching for the album, finding a link to an mp3 file with that name, and downloading it. So I imagine they *did* listen to the beginning and were quite surprised!
It made me uncomfortable briefly, but I just ended up renaming the file to put PODFIC right there in the name, and even though people still sometimes DL it from there and probably still get a shock when they listen, I figure that they'll figure out pretty fast that it's not what they want, and either turn it off or continue listening by choice. And as long as they're listening by choice, I don't mind if they found it by accident or what.
It helps, though, that the podfic in question isn't NC-17. I think readers always feel more vulnerable about their NC-17 work getting out. Even though that's sometimes some of your best work that you're most proud of, it's also the stuff that lots of people outside fandom wouldn't understand and would be very unpleasantly judgmental of if they knew.
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Well, I'm assuming that this:
Oh my god, the stupidity. DDD: And no, I am not talking about the scrobblers. Even after they're told that no one has been reuploading their podfic, they're still throwing a shitfit that their usernames are on last.fm!? I mean, wtaf? It's not their real name, it's their usernames.
wasn't actually about me, despite the fact that you stuck my name in there for your example, because I didn't throw a shitfit about my username being there once I knew that the file itself wasn't uploaded. I pretty much said 'Oh thank fuck for that' and told those people who offered that it was okay, they didn't need to unscrobble the metadata, or whatever, so long as the actual files weren't being uploaded.
As to why someone not in fandom would randomly happen across podfic if it were uploaded to Last.fm: the way that I've used Last.fm in the past (on the simple free trial basis) is that you type in the name of a musician you like, eg Ella Fitzgerald, and then it creates "Ella Fitzgerald Radio" for you via some elaborate system of algorithms. PRECISELY IN ORDER to introduce you to new performers you've never heard of, and hadn't explicitly sought out.
So I would be merrily working away, whilst Last.fm created its own continuous playlist of musicians I'd never heard of, but which it thought I might like because it felt that they were measurably similar to something I'd listened to before. It worked very well at piquing my interest in new artists, and sending me off to download things from iTunes. (Since I've only used Last.fm in this capacity, using my work computer, all this scrobbling-data-from-your-iTunes business had never cropped up. That, along with the button that says "download for free" implied that there was an actual file there. Sorry that this makes me stupid in your eyes, but there we are, such is life.)
So, no, one wouldn't have to go actively looking for podfic on Last.fm; if these podfic files themselves had actually been uploaded one would simply have to have selected 'Disney Highschool Musical' in the expectation of hearing stuff that was similar to the artist one likes already, and after a long enough interval of appropriately cheesy songs, one would be entirely likely to suddenly find the computer playing an Eos Rose podfic - as Highschool Musical is currently listed as having a Very High Similarity to Eos Rose's podfics. FayJay podfics apparently have a medium similarity to Kris Allen, whoever the hell he is, according to the Last.fm elves. Go figure.
THAT'S why this was scary for me. Because if the files had been uploaded to this mainstream, non-fannish space, they wouldn't be sitting gathering dust until a fannish person sought them out; they'd be at risk of being added into somebody's playlist on the whim of the computer.
That strikes me as considerably less discreet or discrete than having one's podfic archived at a fannish website that only people in fandom are going to be seeking out.
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Kris is the guy that won American Idol the year Adam Lambert was on it. He's also the "Kr" part of "Kradam". You probably have a similarity to him because we've podficed some of the same authors (or have authors in common with high similarity) and my podfics are over there.
With things like Last.fm, people who are in RPF probably have a much higher risk of being added to something since the people in question are probably on there. At least if you're in musical RPF like bandom or AI. Hell, even a lot of movies and TV shows have sound tracks so if someone searches for those they'd be more likely to stumble on podfic.
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Just because this isn't something you would be freaked out over (and this doesn't actually affect you personally anyway) doesn't mean you should dismiss other people's concerns.