Like any kind of automation, it’s not that the human is written out. It’s that the task of believing, of being a fanboy… is being augmented. Fewer humans can accomplish more of the “fanboy” task. The fanboy robot does not replace humans, but it augments them such that vastly more task can be done. Not every gif is worthy of use, but a human can easily go through 100 gifs and choose the best few. It takes no expertise. And, in fact, it actually makes that person MORE of a fan than they probably were before, because they are partaking in an act of creation, no matter how indirect.
So… what I’m trying to say is:
Everyone who creates a TV show should probably pay Darius to do this for them. It won’t create fans out of thin air, but it does allow the fans to produce vastly more “fan culture”. It allows your fans to be more effective.
We’re not at the stage where the “fan culture” task is maxed out. I think we’ll see it evolve a few more times before we get to the point where humans are “fired” from being fans because there’s too much fan labor and not enough fan tasks that need doing.
But, hey, I look forward to that future. It sounds amazing.
Craig Perko, “The Nature of Fans” also responding to Darius Kazemi’s newest bot
this cage is worms 
Hrm. I struggled to think of a good way to express myself as regards this in your prior post on the Bot, and hence said nothing, but i think perhaps i’m able to articulate what i think is disturbing(?too strong a word perhaps.. unsettling? ambiguous?) about this – if like you mentioned prior, this is like some type of fan/singularity nexus we are seeing in the early stages, do you think potentially humans will become obsolete; even as regards the cultural artifacts we like/consume? will the singularity be inclusive, or exclusive? Hrmmm, off to think some more.
(p.s, digging thru the site, really enjoy your perspectives)
Honestly, I don’t have answers for most of the questions you’re asking here. I do think that human labor and human recognition of the “good” in the creation of GIFs might become obsolete. Instead, the human might become a process of curation, of picking out the “good ones”–I imagine that the people with huge number of fandom followers on Tumblr are probably already serving this function. I can’t say what shape I think new fandoms will take, or how they will define their borders, or really anything about them. I’m not good at the speculation, I just feel something interesting coming, if that makes sense.