Twitter and the 'follow me!' fans

I love Twitter. I love the immediacy and the fun and the random connections you can make with people. One of my new fave things to do is follow the #PMQs hashtag and giggle at the wit coming from the voting public aimed at the kids sitting in Parliament. This week's PMQs was utterly ridiculous. Cameron almost earned himself a geekpoint but then he totally mixed his metaphors.

"There was a £300m black hole, and you do not have to be a Star Trek fan to know that when you are in the black hole, you should stop digging."

But I digress. Twitter is great. But it's brought out a whole new sort of crazy in fangirls and boys who now have the chance to get even closer to the objects of their affection. I'm talking about the 'follow me!' fans who probably run fansites or are very active in online fandom. These are the people who squee when an actor starts tweeting, follow them immediately, and then start tweeting them daily to try and develop a close personal relationship which leads to mutual followship. I doubt it's ever actually happened, but 'follow me!' fans live in the hope that one day it will and run the risk of twitter-stalking their idols.

Social networks are a great fan tool. But sometimes they can make fans act like tools.

That fringe moment

Poor Olivia Dunham. Locked in a cell in a parallel universe and forced to be a brunette with a fringe (that's 'bangs' to any US fans reading this). Her hair was almost a character in its own right in the finale 2 parter, it was integral to the plot and the setup for season 3 as well as the main spot-the-difference point for her and her doppleganger.

I wouldn't be surprised if a few random fandom sites pop up dedicated to her hair over the next few weeks. Someone is bound to ask the Comic Con panel "Will Olivia keep her new hairstyle?" Yeah, because who cares about the plot when you have exciting new hair to talk about. Please no. I want to know WTF is going to happen next. I really hope season 3 lives up to the promise of this finale. And I want parallel Charlie to cross over and join our team on this side!

We all start somewhere...

...and for me it was The X-Files. I think I was 14 and my older sis told me about a show she'd seen on Sky. Actually, she told me about a hot guy she'd seen in a show on Sky. The guy was Fox Mulder and the show was The X-Files.

Cut to a few years later and I was at university and suddenly had access to computers. I thought I'd try and find other people who liked my beloved X using t'interweb so I searched around. I met fanfic and slashfic at the same time and have never been the same since...