this bathysphere is perplexing!

[sab]

Hey, LOTRips people? There's this thread over on the seekrit_pics community talking about smackin' down some troll or mole or whatnot, and I'm perplexed. Is it me? Looks around...

I'm so confused. I totally friended the community; I'm not a part of LOTRips fandom or even LOTR fandom (while being a fangirl in my own right -- and proud of it! -- off in my own other fandoms), but I was certainly enjoying watching the discussion and the fallout over there. I had no idea that my friending the community would create such draaaaamaa.

I didn't, um, I didn't friend the community to see Jason's pictures -- dude, I am IN the pictures, hell, I *took* some of the pictures; I just friended y'all on a lark when y'all started friending *me.*

Essentially, what happened was this: Jason, who is in no way internet-naive, but who does tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and has general faith in the goodness of humanity, uploaded the pictures to his gallery (which was alive and kicking long before y'all found it) and left it unlocked, figuring he'd give the URL out to his friends and family and let us enjoy his photography.

A good question might be, how did fandom discover his gallery in the first place? A reasonable answer might be: well, it's the internet, things are bound to get out eventually.

So, badda-bing. Some fan found the pictures, and the horse was out of the barn. Jason, still having general faith in the goodness of humanity, opted to password-protect some of the albums, while keeping others open, fully aware that fans were visiting and enjoying them, and figuring, well, as long as the fans didn't overload his bandwidth or steal and repost his pictures elsewhere, what was the harm? So about half the galleries were open for the past few months as we tested the waters, but folks kept nabbing and reposting the pictures and Jason's bandwidth usage skyrocketed.

Then last week we had the gingerbread party and the pix went up, and didn't get locked down quick enough, but there had always been plans in the works to lock down and password-protect the whole site, and so, a couple days ago, Jason did just that.

If you have any questions about this, I will answer them as honestly as I can, but there's no hypocrisy or eeeevil at work there, just the matter of trying to save Jason's site from being overrun by fans bent on conspiracy-theorizing about the content of these (really rather innocent, rather personal, and rather human) photos. Plus -- as far as I can tell, half the fandom was bucking for Jason to lock down the site all along, saying he was naive about the ways of the internet and shouldn't have put them up for public viewing in the first place. So what's the deal?

Comments

[batkisses.livejournal.com]

Hi Sabine, I know I don’t know you, but I wanted to make a post on this because this caught my attention here. I will say I mostly agree with not_alone here, and I will admit that I am a LOTR fan and a fan of Elijah’s as well like they are, and I don’t think I’m a LOTRip either (unless I am wrong because I take that to more or less mean, least as far as people in this particular incident were concerned, that it’s the ones who really didn’t respect Jason’s, Elijah’s, your own, or anyone else’s respected rights of privacy and posted the pictures around the net, etc.). And I did not go around seeking the pictures, but I did see some from (go figure) ones that got posted on some fan site I went to one time. And I will admit to liking what I saw too. Like empressaurelius said, there was a human quality to the pictures, so it wasn’t even really all about getting to see pictures of Elijah (though I can’t deny those weren’t fun to enjoy also). But then this had to happen, and suddenly it was like paparazzi, only it wasn’t technically because it wasn’t any form of press like that who had taken the pictures in the first place. Though now I have a question for you as well after reading your reply back to not_alone on the topic of privacy. You say as Elijah’s friend that makes you responsible for his privacy. And well firstly I agree with you there, as that’s even one reason why one of my pet peeves is people who are name-droppers. If someone knows a famous person and is friends with them, that’s of course fine. Why should it be any different than any one person becoming friends with somebody else? They are after all people just like the rest of the world, and their celebrity status shouldn’t make them any less human. But then you get someone who’s a name-dropper and you have to wonder how much they really respect their friend if they must announce to the world “I know so and so!” Thus I must ask you, I know you said Jason was trying to have faith in people so he wasn’t being naive in the ways of the internet (which was good to learn because admittedly I questioned that first, probably because I really don’t have faith in a lot of that myself… incidents like this only help me prove my point there), but do you know if it at all crossed his mind what people might think about seeing pictures of him with other people who just happen to be celebrities? Just curious if that crossed his mind at all. I mean I know he can’t be someone who doesn’t respect his friend’s, privacy otherwise he just might as well say “To hell with the bandwith and people stealing pictures, I know famous people, so I’m going to brag about it and keep this site running the way it is, no matter what!” But yeah obviously he didn’t, and I’m glad the site’s locked now so you guys can have your privacy. As I said I’m just curious if anything like that ever crossed his mind as to if other people might possible see him like that at first? Ok, so sorry if I rambled your ear off, but that’s my two cents on the matter.