Supplemental Post 1 - Charlotte

 Andrejevic describes the “merging of two forms of audience participation” (26) implicit within participatory fan websites like TWoP, with audiences at once consuming and producing content. While I have never participated in a message board like those described in the article, I realized upon reading that I am active in a different sort of fandom. I really love Dance Moms, the Lifetime reality show that ran for eight seasons. I have watched and rewatched the series sporadically since it first premiered when I was thirteen. Though the series aired its final season in 2019, the fandom has continued to expand on YouTube, with many users ranking their favorite dances and dancers, and editing “cringe compilations” (a trend where the most dramatic or explosive moments from a given reality series are edited together, often intercut with memes to punctuate the craziness). Perhaps the YouTube fandom is aided by the almost daily uploads from the Lifetime YouTube channel, which include full episodes and longer compilations around a certain theme. What I find most interesting, however, is a series called Dance Moms Uncovered. Housed on a channel titled MackZBoss, the narrator conducts extensive research on mysteries related to the series, focusing largely on the produced nature of the show. The creator draws from production material, close textual analysis, and testimony from show cast members, most of whom now have large social media followings on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. The fan content is largely critical of the series, presenting it as either a stupid waste of time or as an example of the excess of reality television. The content uploaded by Lifetime is incongruous with that of the fandom, presenting the series as it always has: a fun, dramatic, relatively low stakes reality show. The dissonance between content released by Lifetime and content produced in the fandom may be attributed to the resurgence of the series in any way. While the new content may be critical, it has drawn many fans - myself included - back to the series.