The Good, The Bad, The Fangirls #01

Happy Friday, TenEightiers! TenEightiers? Ten Ate-erhs? Tenner At hers? (No, we’ll work on our ‘fan name’ another time…) And welcome to The Good, The Bad, The Fangirls, a weekly column here where I – yes, me, Teoh? The editor of TenEighty? Famous musician and YouTuber ‘mrtinoforever’? I recorded at Abbey Road? Oh never mind – report and poke fun at the best, the worst and the fan who screams the loudest. Although, screaming doesn’t really work over the internet? We’re still figuring this out guys, bare with us.

The Good: TenEighty is ACTUALLY amazing!

Did you really think I’d be egotistical enough to only talk about myself and how well the TenEighty launch went? You did? Well I am. TenEighty launched last Sunday, and our website traffic, twitter feed and tumblr literally went mental.

In just two weeks – thanks to all your interactions, retweets and the swanky Ben, Tim and Helen promotional covers – we’ve gone from 0 to 550+ followers (and rising) on Twitter. And that number seems to be growing at a regular pace every day. I know Alex Brinnand, our social medias guy, has really enjoyed chatting away with you guys, and we are all overwhelmed by the response. So thank you so much.

Our Tim H, Ben Cook and Helen Anderson photo-sets on Tumblr, which the lovely Olly Newport shot, seem to have gone down a treat, each with hundreds of notes. Sit tight, we have another batch of photo-sets of all three of them on the way, and of course, we’ll be teasing future interviews on Tumblr first. (So maybe you should go follow us there, yeah?)

As a team, I know we’re all really pleased with the pace at which the website has grown in such a short time. It’s a manageable pace that we can keep up with, but an assuring one that tells us we’re giving you something you enjoy. We have big plans for TenEighty, and this has given us all a confidence boost.

On a personal level, I’m really pleased with how many of you are complimenting the quality of writing and that The Abuse Scandals That Shook The Community was met with praise. That article was a hard one to write, but one that needed to be said. Nonetheless, in the lead up to launching, I did start to worry if it might dampen TenEighty’s launch. But it hasn’t, and that means the world to me. I’m glad we’ve created a space where we can talk about these issues and people will listen!

The Bad: I think we’ve upset Carrie…

Well, Craig T Dillon followed us on Twitter, and nobody wants that, right? (just kidding, just kidding.) Unfortunately, Carrie Hope Fletcher appears to have blocked us on Twitter, we assume because we posted Carrie Accused of Victim Blaming on 4:01 Show to our news section. Now, I’m not one for defending my editorial decisions or making a scene (okay, okay, sometimes I do make scenes), but it worries me that she maybe felt our decision had ill-intent.

Part of what I hope will make TenEighty important to the UK YouTube community is strong news reporting. But as we’re a new publication its hard to figure out, so early on, what is and isn’t news. I strongly believe that TenEighty should never report on gossip, and in many ways the Carrie news story can be seen as ‘he said, she said’. However, enough prominent YouTubers were talking about it, most defending Carrie, some calling her out.

The purpose of news is to report on what’s happened, without casting judgement or having any bias: just present the facts. And I believe we did with this article. Our main responsibility is to the loyal fans of YouTube, and keeping them in the loop is part of serving them.

Either way, we never meant to upset her. On behalf of TenEighty, we’re sorry if we did. We really hope Carrie understands where we’re coming from, and one day will forgive us. She’s an important part of the YouTube community, and someone we’d love to have a dance and a drink with at the next social, not be scared she might throw that drink over us (Although Carrie would never do that, she’s so lovely :3).

The Fangirls: Don’t anger the #Phandom

To be honest, this bit could easily fall into ‘The Good,’ because I’m impressed we got the attention of the wider #Phan community so early on. It all kicked off late Monday night (well, early Tuesday morning) when we tweeted a quote in reference to Dan Howell, from Secrets of the Slashers, and tagged him in it.

“If @danisnotonfire reads this he’ll hate it”. Read the secrets of YouTube fan-fiction writers: http://t.co/VuE142F0fU #Phan

— TenEighty UK (@TenEightyUK) April 22, 2014

Within minutes we were hit by multiple fans of the ‘Phan’ pairing demanding we take down the tweet. However, at first, that wasn’t really clear, because we were getting so many at replies that we couldn’t keep up with exactly what they were demanding and why.

Note to self: Do not anger YouTube fan-fiction writers on the @TenEightyUK account… pic.twitter.com/SFctiEsTz0

— Alex J Brinnand 👀 (@AJBrinnand) April 22, 2014

Nevertheless, we figured out they were upset we tagged Dan directly in the tweet, when the article was about slash fiction. A far less angry and upset slasher explained that there’s an unspoken rule, within the slash community, that you don’t make your pairings aware of your stories, so tweeting directly at them was a no no.

Whilst I understood this, the article actually celebrates slash fiction as a legitimate hobby and attempts to dispel misconceptions the wider community has about the genre. To me, it was clear that many of the people bombarding our at-replies hadn’t read the article itself. Otherwise, they would’ve seen there were minimal references to Dan and Phil, and that it spoke about slashers in a positive light.

Nonetheless, we did lead with the quote “If Dan reads this he’ll hate it,” and used that as our hook, so I guess we should’ve seen it coming! Here’s a selection of our favourite tweets from the night; our personal favourite is when yusmuffins, the slasher – referred to as snowcappedlove in the article – who we quoted saying those ‘controversial words,’ spoke up:

https://twitter.com/jaejoiner/status/458441370957406208

https://twitter.com/molleroni/status/458438037739814912