well first, i’m tired of people claiming the “wait for it“ line with articles that are untrue or give false hope. Also if you’re going into stage management? Get the fuck out, you’re part of the problem. And hell yeah I’ll bring it back to your blog and defend whatever the hell I want, what are you going to do, ban me from a career in theater? Oh nooo, i won’t get to engage in a career path that i didn’t intend to be on anyway! My life is over! I’ll just cry in this corner where i keep my paintbrushes and other art supplies.
Aren’t y’all the ones crying about how theater needs the eyes and the ears of the youth? Aren’t you guys always bemoaning how theater is becoming more and more disconnected from the general public? Man I wonder why that is. Is it the fact that ticket prices are through the roof in major cultural centers? Is it because the theater community treats movie versions and proshots of shows in the best light as “flawed adaptions that can’t capture the Magic“, and at worst “abominations that are only being made to kill revivals and establish themselves as the definitive version of the show“? Is it that apparently some people in theater here think that “shows are too expensive and limited for the masses“ is adequately answered by “don’t fucking watch theatre?? And continue to complain about it???“? Ooh, what if it’s all of the above? I think we’ve cracked the case, Watson.
So here’s something from twitter because apparently all of you guys’ arguments are the same. consider it a sample for the 2k word monstrosity i’m working on now:
“Here’s the deal, Lmm’s human, he makes mistakes, and some of them have been mistakes that’ve built up and helped lead to the crack in the fanbase.
Let’s be clear, most of this price/sold out thing isn’t true. People mob the tickets and then resell them back to ticketmaster. Ticketmaster is a major scalper here, but we never see them get heat, just fans who want a bootleg or individual scalpers.
Then he comes out against the workshop demos, which okay, sure. I get why he doesn’t want it, but to have a show that talks about history and info lost and then be against an early archive of the show itself? It comes across as a bit tone deaf.
Also the lotto deal. At a time when tickets are at a premium and around the holidays, someone makes the choice “for fairness” to leave the seats empty. Not give them to some needy kids or anything. There’s probably a legal reason why that had to happen, but we never heard it, so it adds to the backlash.
Now we have this, and it didn’t even have to end this badly. “hey guys, I’m not okay with the bootleg and the gifs, but that’s out of my hands now. So would you please tag them something other than the main fandom tag? You do you, I do me, let’s not fight” But no now we have what happens every time Lmm comes out against bootlegs, you get the fandom attacking itself and old-school theaterfen going on about the “magic” of being there.
Guess what, even if the tour comes to every major city in the US, it’s not going to guarantee that people would get to see it. In Sf the cost for the pre-order hovers around 300$, this is a year before the show even opens. Also this doesn’t cover other countries/schools in countries that don’t tend to get school versions of things.
So you want to know how to actually combat bootlegging? Encourage creators to use the internet as a platform for pay-per-view and streaming shows. Take the cost of a ticket, slice it in half. Okay you’re at 40-50$. You pay and you get to watch a show, and the creator gets money they wouldn’t get otherwise. Add 20$ more onto that price and they can download that specific show. Yeah someone could upload it later, but guess what, anyone could also just pay the fee and watch live theater on their own and get their own copy at that point. It floods the market so hard with legit sources that bootleggers don’t have an incentive to keep at it. And real talk? This wouldn’t just open up the market to people who can’t see the show in other countries, but for people with special needs and people with anxiety disorders. Plus, you’ll still get a proshot later on too. Because a proshot is filmed like a movie. They all fill different niches.“
Because you’re right, Lin has done a ton to make parts of the show available, but it’s him working with the platform of the internet that’s kept a bootleg under wraps this long, not actively trying to fight what the internet just does. In fact, let’s have a fun experiment, go back and see when people started giving the Hamilton fanbase and LMM crackback, check when the first bootleg gifs started popping up. Oh man, LOOK AT THAT, right after every time fandom was shitty about people who couldn’t afford to go, or after the mistakes listed above. In fact the backlash is at the worst now because people like you are being assholes about it.
So congratulations, this is an “open the cages in the zoo” kinda stupid. People are so pissed that instead of the notoriously complicated and secretive bootleg trade, people are openly giving away copies for just a please and thank you. They’re mirroring copies just as fast as they’re being taken down, and why? Because theaterfen like you decided to just stick your collective metaphorical dicks into a beehive and do a little jig.
Oh right, one more quote from what I’m working on:
“Lin’s one rule was “don’t share the bootleg”, Wheaton’s one rule is “Don’t be a dick”. I guess we’re all going to have to live with disappointment, won’t we?“
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