Are we a Culture of Theft?
So, I noticed a funny thing while on the Tour de Nerdfighting. Not only was the biggest cheer of the night for the part where I stuck “Benedict Cumberbatch” into Book 8, but pretty much everyone had seen season two of Sherlock.
Don’t get me wrong, I had also seen season two (or should I says “series two”) of Sherlock. John, however, had not. This is either because John actually doesn’t believe in piracy, or because he can’t be bothered the extra trouble of piracy.
See, there is no legal way to acquire season two of Sherlock in America, so every one of those people wearing “I believe in sherlock” shirts were theives, at least in the eyes of the law. Also, y’know, in the eyes of rational people who understand intellectual property.
John got into a kinda big fight with one girl at one of the events. She kept insisting that she’d watched it legally. John was like “Oh, were you in the UK?” Eventually, she was like “I streamed it, it’s totally legal.” AGH! What?! Streaming is just downloading without the saving.
To be clear, unless you flew to the United Kingdom or ordered a Region Two DVD from Amazon.co.uk (and a Region 2 DVD player along with it) you have not legally watched Sherlock in America.
So, yes, I and all of the rest of the American Sherlock fans stole the series. I’m willing to bet that a healthy number of us have done this with other UK series…QI, Dr. Who, Downton Abbey, etc.
The question is, why do we do it? There are plenty of television shows in the good ol’ USA. But apparently our appetites cannot be satiated by such droll pastimes.
I have a theory about this, and please correct me if I’m wrong.
We want to work for it. If it’s being dumped into our houses on that fat coaxial pipe, it seems like a bore. “Anybody can watch those shows…that can’t possibly be cool!” we think. We’re not those people…we know about better programming…something that normal Americans can’t access because they aren’t part of our culture and don’t have our knowhow.
Acquiring Sherlock could potentially be a days-long affair (especially now with Megaupload gone.) Networks of people sharing links and flash drives and burned DVDs, convincing each other that it’s worth it, and then enjoying the fruits of their labor when it’s done.
Buying something? Meh…again, boring. There’s a twinge of adventure in going after content that hasn’t been sanctioned for viewing by you. A bit of a “shove it up your bum” kinda feeling. Like we’re rubbing their old broken system in their face just a bit more. And that, maybe more than the content, is what really makes us love it.
I’m not saying the show isn’t fantastic…it totally is. But I think a big part of the interest of our little corner of the internet is beyond entertainment, it’s cultural, almost a rite, something to go through. And if you don’t have the right mindset or the right abilities then you miss out and the whisper of that sub-culture takes over…maybe you’re not one of us.
Nerdfighteria is like that as well…you have to work to be part of it. You couldn’t fit all of the inside jokes into a 200 page book. And there are other internet cultures with the same barriers to entry. Homestuck is a great example. At this point, if you don’t have a good 40 hours of time to spare, you’re never gonna get Homestuck.
It’s part of the new way cultures are being defined, and it’s pretty pervasive among internet-enabled young people. I would prefer that theft not be a part of that, but I actually don’t seem to care that much.
And that’s a little worrying.
TL;DR: We download / steal unavailable content not because it is the best content, but because we have to work for it and only a small number of people will do that work. For that reason, we can use that as a test with which to define our sub-culture. But I don’t know what it means that that sub-cultural entrance involves not only work…but theft.
Hank, I really can’t say I agree with this theory. In my experience, people on the internet, especially communities like nerdfighteria, are very eager to share the things they like with the world (as John once famously said, nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusastic about stuff.) Honestly I believe what happened here is some people saw Sherlock (which is not all that obscure— it’s on TV!), they fell in love with it, so they wanted to post about it on Tumblr and rave about it and try and talk everyone they knew into watching it.
Unfortunately, in the US this means you have to sit and be spoiled for months (still about three months to go before the second series aires here — btw for those wondering you can probably see the first series being aired on your local PBS station). Even while knowing the show has already aired and is out there. …and knowing that with the internet, in a couple clicks you could see it too, and the only obstacle would be your own morals. (And goodness, Hank, I have to say— it doesn’t take days or much work to get these things. Most people are not working that hard.)
You said yourself that you saw people in “I Believe in Sherlock” shirts. There’s this whole fan-driven campaign to anonymously hang up posters and things to give more exposure to the show. I would hardly say that’s the behavior of a fandom that wants to keep their show to themselves. Not to mention, it’s not as though the fans who saw these shows legally on TV in Britain are less enthused about the show than American fans who had to work for it, or that the internet is not just as obsessed about a lot of American shows, or plenty of things that are easily legally available to pretty much everyone with an internet connection. Like vlogs, for example…
I don’t think we’re a culture that likes to work for things. On the contrary, I think we’re a culture who is impatient and doesn’t like to work for things. This makes sense regardless of whether you’re talking about the Sherlock fandom or people who download a song they could buy for 99 cents on iTunes, while I think your theory seems a little too far-fetched to apply to a majority of cases.
