baker-street:

findingsherlock:

BBC Sherlock and it’s stars has a very loyal following. Many people love an adore Benedict, Martin, Mark and Steven so very much. But there is an etiquette to being a fan that social media can sometimes allow to get muddled, so I thought I would write this handy guide, using myself as a metaphor so you can gage any of your future fan actions.

MY DAYDREAM:

I, like many Sherlock fans, have a daydream about one day meeting the cast and crew of Sherlock. 

I would of course be in London, in a park, taking a break from visiting the British Library and going through the copies of 19th Century newspapers that their librarians so kindly made for me. Along would come one of the cast/crew/writers of Sherlock, see that my project was also on Sherlock Holmes and suddenly I would find myself introduced to Gatiss and Moffat, gaining Institutional Review Board (IRB) permissions, and suddenly I would be walking among the production of the show, interviewing, and recording the methods by which Sherlock Holmes of ACD becomes Sherlock of BBC, and finally being able to figure out what part of the final creation is the writer’s, what is the cast’s and what is the director’s through a longitudinal study on a series of Sherlock.

Now, every little kid dreams of one day running a longitudinal sociological studied on Sherlock Holmes. And I’m sure some little kids grow up to get to met their heros and tape record their reactions to scripts in order to uncover the deeper meanings of the return of political liberalism through the resurfacing of a Victorian hero. But lets face facts … not everyone is going to get to be a primary investigator of such a study, no matter how much they may want to catalogue the contents of the 221b set systematically to determine the influence of the set designers on the over all characterization of Sherlock. And nattering on about random sampling and regression patterns on Twitter to Mark Gatiss or Steven Moffat will not give me the IRB approval to do such a study.

Sherlock is a job. This is a job to these people … a fun  job but still a job.

Now for an exersise in judgment:

Imagine your mom or dad at work. Now imagine that someone (lets call them Umbrella for shits and giggles) wants a job at that company because they so admire your parent’s work.

Companies use Twitter now to drum up business or for PR reasons. So imagine that this Umbrella, who is obsessed with your Mom (or Dad), uses the company twitter account to locate your parent’s personal account. 

Now imagine that Umbrella starts to send tweets directly to your Mom. And then shows up on your mom’s facebook page, and calls the office and speaks familiarly of your mother on their own twitter and LiveJounal sites as if Umbrella knows her personally.

Imagine that Umbrella then plans and throws your Mom an expensive catered party to celebrate her promotion without ever having met your Mom face to face or even online.

And finally imagine Umbrella in the parking lot of your mother’s office building one night handing out invitations to that party to your Mom’s coworkers. 

Does this sound like a good idea? Does this sound safe? Would your mom be flattered or terrified?

This is the potential problem with some Sherlock fans … no one may ever be as crazy as my fictional “Umbrella” but it’s been known to happen. And everyone who admires your Mom’s work becomes suspect after Umbrella comes on the scene. 

My study … the fantasy of many fans, I’m sure, will never get a chance to be done. I’m ok with this, because it is a fantasy, not a life plan. After all there is only one Sherlock and there are literally hundreds of thousands of fans all wanting to run the same analysis or on set socio-linguistic aspects of enacting Sherlock. It’s nice to dream of, but horrifying to think that the Umbrella’s of the world (no matter how well intentioned) would use things like Twitter and official Q & A sessions to further their sociological experiments. 

So before you reach out to Gatiss or Moffat on twitter, just think of what it would be like if Umbrella sent the same text to your mother. Would it be flattering? Or creepy?

The answer is nearly always, creepy.

If you have questions about what is or isn’t appropriate behavior in a young social scientist looking at the cultural politics of Sherlock, or even (though this is rather unlikely) as just a Benedict Cumberbatch or Martin Freeman fan, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ASK ME ANONYMOUSLY. (or just in a private ask to ask chat)

This. Is. Epic.