In the mid 2000's, I was in high school. And to be honest, I don't really remember what I watched on television. I had watched Nickelodeon in the 90s, during their "glory" years. But by 2003-4 I wasn't really in tune with them. They were experiencing the major challenge from the Disney Channel and their young factory of stars. But anyway I digress....
The show "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide" was a show aimed at my demographic or at least a year orso before my status at that time. But again, I was not really into Nickelodeon by that time. So I knew the show existed but I knew very little about it. I knew there was a boy and a girl and a spunky friend and that the boy and the girl had feelings for each other and that was about it. But this is where my "talent" for finding rabbit holes comes into play.
So a few days ago, Nick Rewind posted a video about and it made its way to my attention and I looked at it, again not really going into much nostalgia. But it did make me curious for the classic question of "Where are they now?" And this is where the rabbit hole begins.
Lindsey Shaw played the female role on the program, but that is just the jumping off point. She is probably more famous to the younger generation (aka my three nieces) as playing a recurring character on the show "Pretty Little Liars". On the show she has a lesbian relationship with one of the main characters and this lead to my fascination.
Apparently, Shaw had alcohol and drug problems (she's a child star, surprise surprise) But more than that, she was allegedly chased off of social media by fans of a ship involving her love interest and another character, including fans of said ship sending a petition around asking her to kill herself This is the main crux of the issue that I wanted to speak about.
I think fans in general have gotten way too much power through the use of social media. And along with that power comes entitlement. Fans feel that they deserve what they want to see, which is an aspect of fandom in general. The character or show belongs to them, in their eyes, because the show is so familiar to them and the fans are the ones that make it successful. Kind of like buying a stock.
And social media has allowed people to make these views public and go to war with other fanbases and even fans of the same show over these opinions. A show that seems to have that hold right now is Riverdale However I don't wish to go into that, because trying to demystify Riverdale would be akin to taking on the task of how to launch a rocket or how to make flying cars work etc.
One of the main reasons I cooled off my love of Doctor Who was this infighting over quality and characters and their arcs amongst the fans. I have written an earlier blog post decrying modern fandom aspects and to me, the story of Lindsey Shaw seems to prove it even further and drives the point further home.
There were more things that came up including behind the scenes drama on PLL (yawn) and the fact that she dated the actor who played "Ned" in that old series for a year orso after the show ended, which kind of makes sense because if you are around somebody in that working environment at that time of hormones, it's not surprising that you would feel an attraction to them
But at the end of the day, this whole digging shows the evil power of fandom and the positive power of curiosity. I would not have known about this whole thing if I didn't have a that sense of discovery and curiosity to go down the rabbit hole. And I think during this trying time, knowledge is definitely power and learning about things by turning over stones, no matter how insignificant they seem to be at the time, will lead to some interesting findings.
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