TORCHSONG! Oh, the hilarity.

[tencrush]

Yeah, so I dip my toes back into fandom and find this whole Torchsong hilarity on Fandom Wank. There are things I could say about this particular wank but sisterelwood has already been succinct enough to sum up my thoughts in the comments:

If you don't want something talked about then don't fucking tell a convention full of strangers. It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Additionally, anyone who dropped that much money on an event and didn't bother to understand the refund policy or make sure they were handing over money to a reputable group deserves to have their money stolen.

This whole thing isn't so much funny as a case study in fucking stupidity.

LOL. Comment of truth FTW!

Okay, actually I do have one or two things to say on the subject of Torchsong and -WAHEY!- John Barrowman. When do I ever not?

• There's a few comments at the anonmeme about John's behaviour, but I try not to read the anonmeme too much, if indeed at all, so I only skimmed over them. There was, however, a nice comparison somewhere between John Barrowman and a pedophile. Which was loltastic and very much to the point, the point being that this attitude of JB's of "I do special personal stuff for you convention guys! Stuff I don't do for ANYONE ELSE! Please keep it to yourself or they'll make me not do that special stuff anymore, so if you love me and want to be my special friend, you won't tell anyone about the special stuff we do together!" IS FUCKING CREEPY AND MANIPULATIVE AS FUCK. Seriously. CREEPY. In fact, I'm starting to think JB has some sort of narcissistic or histrionic personality disorder. I hope I didn't type that out loud just then.
  
  Really, though. Creepy. Creepy and weird, but mostly creepy.


• If John really wants to drag his non-celebrity other half and said other half's arse into the public eye, why doesn't he just do something REALLY tasteful like Celebrity Wife Swap or All Star Mr. and Mrs. or something like that? Maybe, now that the André's are splitting up, they could do a reality thing to replace Jordan and Peter Stateside on ITV 2. Or is it 3? (I mean, it's not like there's a Torchwood Season 4. We all know this.) It's obviously the sort of thing he's aiming for. TACKY!


• GDL uses Viagra? What drug habit is he compensating for, dudes? Answers on a postcard. (I'm guessing speed? Maybe coke?)

Crazy times, people. Crazy times.

Comments

[tencrush]

I have answered your comment here.

I never said Scott did anything against his will. I meant "dragging" in the loosest possible sense, I'm sure he's well aware of what he's doing. I just said I think it's tacky. Jordan-and-Peter style tacky.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

(Apologies for the tl;dr, feel very free to skip)

I realise you didn't actually call him that - it's such a loaded comparison though, that it maybe should be avoided altogether, unless it's actually warranted.

Like others said, I'd have to hear what was actually being said, before I'd call it intentionally manipulative, but even then there's all kinds of... levels of emotional manipulation, conscious and unconscious, in almost all human interaction. If I'm being friendly to customers at work so that they like it here, and buy the book they want in our shop instead of another bookshop, even if I have to order it for them first, and so keep my job secure, am I being emotionally manipulative? I've occasionally given regular customers more of a discount when a book was a bit damaged than I would have given someone I've never seen before. I've even told them, a couple of times, not to tell my boss, though that was only half-serious, because it wouldn't actually have got me into much trouble. And while I try to be polite, friendly and helpful to everyone, there's stuff I'll do for regular customers, especially ones I like and are friendly (and occasionally bring chocolate, *g*), that I won't do for everyone. Is that being emotionally manipulative? Is that being emotionally manipulated? Or just human nature? And I'm not a born sales person by a very, very long way, that's just stuff one picks up after a while, even someone with very few social skills like me. And in a way JB, too, sells a product, and obviously to him interacting with people comes a lot easier and more natural than it does to me, so I guess a certain level of... if you want to call it that, manipulation, is inevitable. But if there no harmful intent, and no actual harm done, I don't really see a problem.

Now personally (but this is coming from someone who's never been to a con, so my perception might be skewed) the issue I have is with the basic concept of selling this kind of (pseudo)intimacy for money. I wasn't really a NIN fan any longer at this point, but I already hated it when TR did it with the (now, I gather, defunct) 'The Spiral' fanclub. On the other hand, if this is what people want, if it makes them happy (and it apparently does), who am I to judge. The vast majority of Barrowman fans are adults, so if they chose to honour his request, it's their choice. Doesn't have to be creepy manipulation. Maybe they want to feel special. Maybe they don't want to lose the fanservice. Maybe they just plain like him, which plenty of people seem to do, after all, and that outweighs the brief internet fame and the 483 comments they might get on livejournal for posting.

Which doesn't answer the question why he does it, I know. Now I realise that this is a very random guess, but... I was a bit of musical theatre fan once, for a while. Now I don't know how this is in the UK, but here in Vienna the interaction between the actors and the fans tended to be pretty personal. Maybe this is what he's used to and tends to forget that he has a very different fanbase now?

As for the Scott thing - it's mostly that I've read one too many 'Poor Scott' comment (see hamsterfur's comment above, which sums it up pretty well), and I kind of snapped - sorry it was at you.