brimtoast (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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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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