Bonus: This Week in Fandom History

Speaker: 00:00:05

Hey there, Danny here. This is a little bit different from the usual Artifacts

Speaker: 00:00:08

episode, because today I've got a bonus episode from another podcast that I

Speaker: 00:00:12

recently discovered and really enjoyed.

Speaker: 00:00:15

It's called This Week in Fandom History, and I thought it was a particularly

Speaker: 00:00:19

good fit for the Artifacts audience.

Speaker: 00:00:22

It digs into the history of fandom, internet culture, and the communities that

Speaker: 00:00:26

grow around the things that people love, which is pretty close to a lot of the

Speaker: 00:00:29

territory I explore here.

Speaker: 00:00:31

So when I found the show, I thought, Rather than just telling you about it,

Speaker: 00:00:35

why not actually give you a taste of it?

Speaker: 00:00:38

They've put together a special 10-minute version of one of their recent episodes

Speaker: 00:00:41

for me to share with you as a little bit of bonus content between Artifact Seasons.

Speaker: 00:00:46

One quick heads up before we get into it. There is some adult language in the

Speaker: 00:00:50

episode, which is completely natural to the hosts and their audience,

Speaker: 00:00:53

but it's a little different from what you'll normally hear on Artifacts.

Speaker: 00:00:57

So, if you've got younger listeners who usually listen along with you,

Speaker: 00:01:00

consider this your warning.

Speaker: 00:01:02

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this.

Speaker: 00:01:09

I'm V. Arrow. And I'm Emily Jay. And we host This Week in Fandom History.

Speaker: 00:01:14

We take a weekly deep dive into the events that shaped fandom as we know it,

Speaker: 00:01:18

and we look at why those moments still matter today.

Speaker: 00:01:20

From Starsky & Hutch fans inventing VHS smut to the immortal ebony darkness

Speaker: 00:01:25

dementia raven way, we get deep into the who, what, and why behind fandom's

Speaker: 00:01:30

highest highs and weirdest lows.

Speaker: 00:01:33

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,

Speaker: 00:01:37

or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker: 00:01:39

I'm excited about this episode. This week in fandom history,

Speaker: 00:01:42

we are talking about on September 1st of 1850. Wow! Which is so long ago.

Speaker: 00:01:52

It's definitely our oldest episode. So long ago.

Speaker: 00:01:55

September 1st of 1850, opera singer Jenny Lind landed in America for her first

Speaker: 00:02:03

national tour, but like she obviously was not going to like the West Coast because

Speaker: 00:02:07

it would have taken her like a year and a half because it was 1850.

Speaker: 00:02:10

She would have had a full-on be on a wagon train. It was 1850. There was no railroad.

Speaker: 00:02:14

By national tour, they meant like she's playing both New York and Boston.

Speaker: 00:02:17

Golly gee. I don't even know what accent to do for 1850. The way that I found

Speaker: 00:02:24

this event even because it's so old, obviously it's not on fan lore because it predates,

Speaker: 00:02:30

the word fan. There weren't Jenny Lind fans because that wasn't a thing people fucking said.

Speaker: 00:02:36

Weirdly, fandom as a word did exist. Really?

Speaker: 00:02:42

Yeah. Didn't shorten it to fans. No. That would have been crazy.

Speaker: 00:02:46

Crazy talk. What Daniel Cavicci says is the generally accepted origin of the

Speaker: 00:02:51

term fan is fanatic, but it actually may have come from the fancy, a

Speaker: 00:02:59

more benign English sporting term from the early 1800s, indicating those who

Speaker: 00:03:04

shared a preference for a specific competitor.

Speaker: 00:03:07

And it was generally used in both pigeon racing...

Speaker: 00:03:12

And boxing. So if you fancied, if you were a fancier or part of the fancy of

Speaker: 00:03:19

a certain boxer, then you were a fan of that boxer. So if you were a fan of

Speaker: 00:03:24

Jenny Lind, you'd be like a Lindian. Yes.

Speaker: 00:03:26

Yes. Okay. And also, Jenny Lind was so big that we had full-blown Lindmania, which is super fun.

Speaker: 00:03:35

And like I reading about this, her tour in 1850 was the fucking era's tour of.

Speaker: 00:03:43

1850 and also like blows the era's tour out of the water.

Speaker: 00:03:49

It was really, really fun to read about because this tour was also one of the

Speaker: 00:03:54

first times that there were concerts that were not invitation only.

Speaker: 00:03:59

So it was really the beginning of music being able to be like a public pastime

Speaker: 00:04:05

that wasn't just going to church and listening to hymns.

Speaker: 00:04:08

Right. The first part of this event that I read about that I just like lost

Speaker: 00:04:13

my mind reading about because it is so crazy to me is.

Speaker: 00:04:17

Not quite this week, but in September of 1850, a couple of weeks after she landed

Speaker: 00:04:22

in New York, she was playing shows in New York.

Speaker: 00:04:24

She was going to go and play shows in Boston. And one of the things that P.T.

Speaker: 00:04:29

Barnum did that was really, really brilliant as a marketer, because he was a

Speaker: 00:04:34

brilliant marketer. He was a terrible guy.

Speaker: 00:04:36

But he was a brilliant marketer. And one of the things that he did that was

Speaker: 00:04:39

really brilliant was because these were public concerts for kind of the first

Speaker: 00:04:44

time, he would have auctions

Speaker: 00:04:47

for basically what we would today call a backstage pass or a meet and greet.

Speaker: 00:04:52

Yeah. So in each city, in each show that she played, one person would get to go meet her.

Speaker: 00:04:59

And they would auction off the ticket for going to see her.

Speaker: 00:05:03

And they would auction off not even like a bad ticket. So the average salary in 1850.

Speaker: 00:05:14

For an American was $7 a week. Okay.

Speaker: 00:05:16

Wow. Yeah. And the tickets that they were auctioning off were tickets that their

Speaker: 00:05:20

starting price was $3. So not a bad ticket. Like that's a very expensive ticket. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker: 00:05:29

Wait till you hear how much they fucking auctioned for because I lost my fucking mind. Okay.

Speaker: 00:05:35

So at the end of her New York stay, when she started, so rewinding a little

Speaker: 00:05:41

bit, when she started in New York.

Speaker: 00:05:44

So on September 1st of 1850, the first of these auctions for like a meet and

Speaker: 00:05:49

greet with Jenny Lind was held. And a hatter, which is not a profession that

Speaker: 00:05:53

people have anymore. Like a haberdasher? Yes.

Speaker: 00:05:57

Yes. I was going to say a milliner, but yes, a haberdasher.

Speaker: 00:05:59

A hatter is how he is credited. Named John either Gannon or Jenin.

Speaker: 00:06:04

I am not sure which. Won the first ticket, the first meet and greet ticket to

Speaker: 00:06:09

meet Jenny Lind for $225. Oh my God. When he was earning less than $7 a week.

Speaker: 00:06:18

Oh my God. This obviously.

Speaker: 00:06:21

What? Sensational news story up and down the East Coast, which is as far as

Speaker: 00:06:26

news could go in 1850, because it would take weeks to get further than that

Speaker: 00:06:30

because it's like the Pony Express. Literally.

Speaker: 00:06:32

Sensational news. Everybody's like, oh my God, New Yorkers are crazy.

Speaker: 00:06:37

I can't believe somebody spent $225 on anything. Like, my house costs less than

Speaker: 00:06:42

$225. Jesus Christ. What the fuck?

Speaker: 00:06:45

But then, of course, Bastin.

Speaker: 00:06:48

Bastin was like, well, New York ain't shit.

Speaker: 00:06:51

We can do better than that. We got crazier people up here. We got crazier people.

Speaker: 00:06:55

We want to meet Jenny Lind more.

Speaker: 00:06:56

She's going to remember Boston more than she's going to remember New York.

Speaker: 00:07:00

So in Boston, there was a small literary magazine editor named Ossian Dodge,

Speaker: 00:07:09

which is such an 1850 name.

Speaker: 00:07:12

Ossian E. Dodge, just to give him his name. E. Dodge. Ossian. Yes.

Speaker: 00:07:18

Yes. And he showed up at this auction for her first Boston show.

Speaker: 00:07:24

And he claimed at first that he went just to be able to write about it for his

Speaker: 00:07:30

literary magazine, which makes sense. Okay, sure. This auction, P.T. Barnum was there.

Speaker: 00:07:36

He was the auctioneer. And Jenny Lind herself was not there.

Speaker: 00:07:40

But, you know, tons of people showed up hoping she would be there just so they

Speaker: 00:07:43

could get a glimpse of her knowing that they wouldn't win, but like wanting

Speaker: 00:07:47

to see her. She wasn't there.

Speaker: 00:07:49

And the crowd was made up of, and I'm quoting here from, uh,

Speaker: 00:07:53

from Kavici's book, merchants, speculators, clerks, lawyers,

Speaker: 00:07:56

writers, teachers, and music lovers all.

Speaker: 00:08:00

Most people, so they showed up hoping to see her, but also just wanting to be

Speaker: 00:08:04

part of the sensation. Yeah. Like they just wanted to be part of the crowd.

Speaker: 00:08:08

Sure. That's how, that's fandom, you know?

Speaker: 00:08:12

You go to the midnight showing, not because you wanted to stay up till midnight

Speaker: 00:08:15

to see Avengers Doomsday, but you want to be part of the crowd.

Speaker: 00:08:18

You want to be in the room where it happened. Yeah. Ossian Dodge is one of

Speaker: 00:08:21

the people who showed up.

Speaker: 00:08:23

And he knew the story of the $225 winning bid in New York.

Speaker: 00:08:30

And he was like, nah, I can do better. I'm going to do better.

Speaker: 00:08:34

Oh my God. So Ossian Dodge is watching this frantic auction and it should

Speaker: 00:08:40

have been a $3 starting bid. So you'd think that the next bid would be like,

Speaker: 00:08:44

I bid $3 and a penny. Right. No.

Speaker: 00:08:48

It immediately jumped from $3 to $50. And Ossian Dodge was like,

Speaker: 00:08:52

whoa, this is for real, real.

Speaker: 00:08:55

And it went, you know, $50, 51, 52. It went up over some time.

Speaker: 00:09:01

And when it hit 75, Dodge lost his motherfucking mind.

Speaker: 00:09:06

And he jumped up on his seat and swept off his top hat and shouted $225,

Speaker: 00:09:14

which, if you will notice, matched the New York amount.

Speaker: 00:09:18

Yes and so the next person said that they would bid 275 and then okay it jumped from 275

Speaker: 00:09:29

to $550. What the fuck? Again, people are earning $7 a week.

Speaker: 00:09:36

I did some quick math, okay? And given what I, like, before taxes and whatever,

Speaker: 00:09:41

like, between all my jobs, like, that would be the equivalent.

Speaker: 00:09:45

What the $225 guy, $225 for a $7 a week milliner.

Speaker: 00:09:50

Right, right. Would be the equivalent of almost, of like $45,000.

Speaker: 00:09:56

$45,000. Yep. to meet somebody that I don't know whose music I've never heard.

Speaker: 00:10:03

Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. What is going on? Just wait.

Speaker: 00:10:07

So Ossian Dodge, still hatless, still out of his fucking mind.

Speaker: 00:10:12

The rogue. The rogue. He's lost it.

Speaker: 00:10:16

He's just, all of his body heat is coming out of his head is the only explanation

Speaker: 00:10:20

of this because he yells 575 and the crowd just goes silent for a second.

Speaker: 00:10:28

And then they started shouting at like repeating all of his bids,

Speaker: 00:10:32

which is confusing the fucking auction because that's not how an auction works.

Speaker: 00:10:38

Oh, you yelled 575. I was just yelling it. Well, you can't do that at an auction.

Speaker: 00:10:44

You can't do that. You have to be quiet if you don't want to bid.

Speaker: 00:10:48

The competitor who is not named, who is bidding against Dodge,

Speaker: 00:10:53

waits a second and then says, quietly, says, six hundred,

Speaker: 00:11:01

And the crowd all turned as one to Ossian Dodge. Fucking Boston, man.

Speaker: 00:11:07

He tipped his hat, still not on his head, and he smiled calmly.

Speaker: 00:11:12

And then it says, in a triumphant crescendo, he said, $625.

Speaker: 00:11:20

Which that's ERA's tour today money. And it's too much.

Speaker: 00:11:26

Yes. Yes. Ossian Dodge ran a small literary magazine in Boston in 1850.

Speaker: 00:11:32

He did not have this kind of money. I will just say it now. He did not have

Speaker: 00:11:36

this money. It was over two years of what would have been his annual salary.

Speaker: 00:11:40

Oh my God.

Speaker: 00:11:49

And there you go. That's This Week in Fandom History. I hope you enjoyed that little detour.

Speaker: 00:11:55

If you did I definitely recommend checking out the full show there's a whole

Speaker: 00:11:59

back catalogue waiting for you with plenty more stories about fandom,

Speaker: 00:12:02

internet culture and the communities that grow around the things we're really really into,

Speaker: 00:12:07

you can find This Week in Fandom History wherever you listen to podcasts or

Speaker: 00:12:11

head over to thisweekinfandomhistory.com to find out more. and I'll leave a link

Speaker: 00:12:15

to that in the show notes so be sure to check them out.

Speaker: 00:12:18

As I mentioned I thought it was a great fit for Artifacts so I'm glad I could

Speaker: 00:12:22

introduce you to the show, and thanks for giving this bonus episode a listen.

Speaker: 00:12:26

I'll be back with another Artifact story when Season 3 drops later this month.