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1. Introduction: Slime Tutorials and the Musical Theatre Fandom on Tumblr

Musical theatre exists in a strange meridian:

It's too extravagant for people who don't enjoy live performances, but it's too commercialized for theatre-goers.

Tickets (especially to Broadway and West End shows) are ludicrously expensive, so all its biggest fans can't afford them.

It's incredibly localized and time-restrained (shows only run in one place for an allotted time) and yet fans remain interested despite when or where they are.

The industry relies on fan support, but discourages the circulation of the very content that attracts new fans.

How, then, are new fans entering the musical theatre community so consistently? The short answer: online fandom. The advent of social media allows for constant engagement, even if a show has stopped running. Online fandoms, however, are largely occupied by young people, many of whom have never seen their favourite shows live. How is this possible? Bootleg videos, shared on YouTube or online drives, allow for fans who can't access live theatre to experience the magic of a recorded show from their own homes. The catch? It's illegal. In order to bypass YouTube's copyright flagging system, many bootlegged recordings make up coded titles for their videos, with a common theme being the use of the words "Slime Tutorial."

This research will focus on the emergence of bootleg recordings of musical theatre, colloquially “Slime Tutorials” on YouTube, and their ties to the digital age/Web 2.0, the inaccessibility of theatre, and fandom culture. It also delves into the interplay between these bootlegs, online fandom, and their implications for the future of live theatre.

In “Tap, Tap, Tapping on the Glass”: Generation Z, Social Media and Dear Evan Hansen by Bethany Doherty, the notion of paratextuality is frequently mentioned when examining current trends within the musical theatre fan community. "The term paratext refers to materials that have been created to aid the promotion of a performance." When considering this definition outside of its traditional context of marketing (though this angle will be explored later), it's easy to make connections between paratextuality and bootlegs. While not created by the theatre company themselves, fan-curated video databases and other forms of online circulation are often how prospective fans discover new shows, thus intrinsically linking a show's success to its social currency through word-of-mouth marketing.

This model is particularly effective with younger audiences who can't afford tickets or travel, and thus the shows with a younger-leaning demographic are more likely to achieve online virality:

"Social media is facilitating this shift towards a more collaborative relationship between production and audience, as social media users become more apparent as content creators. Younger audiences delight in such interactions, which have led to critically engaged and creative responses to the musical. Widespread access to online, interactive platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr bring new opportunities for paratextual creativity and for re-experiencing the feelings and euphoria associated with the fleeting nature of performance. There is also something to be explored in the nature of sharing the fan-established paratextual creations for those who are yet to experience the performance moment. The relationship between fandoms is beginning to expand, in an attempt to replicate and share this ephemerality with those unable to witness the performance first-hand" (Doherty).

Tumblr is the ideal platform for this research, as despite its dwindling userbase, it has become the website of choice for niche fandoms and individually curated content, especially considering its lack of algorithm. It's also a multimedia blogging platform, which allows for photos, videos, gifs, text, audio, polls, and many more features which diversify the fan experience. This research pulls examples from all of these features. The following analysis posts include clickable links to all content referenced, which have all been previously "reblogged" by this account.

Let's embark on a journey through musical theatre bootlegs and how they affect the online fan experience!

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2. Theatre and Accessibility

This poll, called "Do musical bootlegs make you want to see shows live?" was created to better understand the demographics of musical fans on Tumblr, and the approach that they take to bootlegs.

Final results, after 1,260 responses and countless comments, proved overwhelmingly that Tumblr's fanbase still wants to see shows live (97.1% of respondents, to be exact), but most of those fans resort to bootlegging for accessibility reasons.

55.7% of respondents cited that the main barrier keeping them from live shows is money (be that for tickets or travel). Many users replied to the post outlining their personal experiences.

From these numbers and anecdotes, it is clear that bootleg videos are causing no noticeable reduction in ticket sales. In fact, amongst those who can afford to, many respondents watch bootlegs and live shows interchangeably, and may even be convinced to see a show live when without a bootleg, they would be reluctant to spend the money.

Web 2.0 has fostered an environment in which the ability to share videos has made everything from travel to home design easier to visualize. Information gained from an online video is a powerful tool for broadening one's interests, and so it is a given that theatrical bootlegs have led to immense growth in online fandom, as prospective fans have a risk-free gateway into a new experience.

Furthermore, the internet's ability to broadcast and share videos has done wonders for accessibility (working from home, for example, has become a popular and more sustainable career choice). When fans, despite how much they would love to see a show live, have no money or live too far away, bootlegs bring the show to their own homes for free, and in doing so, initiate a fan who is more likely to see the show in person if the opportunity arises.

Bootlegging musicals, as the name suggests, is illegal. Should it be? The suppression of this highly effective resource is inherently classist, as it criminalizes behaviour which is proven not to harm the fiscal performance of shows and enforces that the only "valid" way to engage with theatre is to be in the upper classes (i.e. have disposable income and/or live in a major city).

Accessibility is not the only systemic injustice which suppresses the majority of musical theatre fans, and these will be discussed in their own posts. However, it is a highly important piece of the puzzle, as it is at the root of the online musical theatre fan community, and is the driving factor behind bootleg videos.

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3. Bootleg Titles and Etymology: The Slime Tutorial

What's the deal with musical bootleg titles on YouTube? Often called "Slime Tutorials" or using vague or convoluted language to describe the plot of their show, bootlegs are rarely titled with the show's real name. Some examples of this phenomenon can be found here and here.

YouTube is notorious for its copyright policy, and bootlegs are a common target for strikes, often being removed if they gain too much traction (such as likes or adding to playlists). In response, fans created their own codes for YouTube bootlegs: adding "SLIME TUTORIAL" [sic] to the title, or not using the show's name at all.

Why "Slime Tutorial" specifically? This moniker was happenstance, as a major YouTube Broadway boom occurred in the late 2010s, coinciding with the trend of making "slime" at home as an alternative to stress balls or kinetic sand. The BBC discussed this trend in 2018 after it had been around for a few years and was still gaining popularity.

With the huge influx of slime content, bootlegs were able to remain under the radar by using the over-saturated term. Even now, long after slime content has diminished, fans still use "Slime Tutorial" in their bootleg titles because it has undergone a semantic change. This post and this post poke fun at the phenomenon. New fans enter the community already knowing the term, and so the market for bootleg spreading requires the nomenclature to remain, even if it is now far less hidden than before.

You can check out a shorter discussion of this phenomenon here.

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4. The Digital Theatre Experience: Watching Bootlegs

Clearly, fans are not flocking to bootlegs for the quality. As outlined in this post, the actors' faces are often blurred from the bright lights, the sound quality is poor, and inevitably a nearby audience member will make distracting noise, brought up here as well. No digital approximation can truly replicate the immersive experience of attending a show live. Why, then, are bootlegs so popular?

As previously discussed, this is in part due to accessibility (or lack thereof). Bootleg recordings are the easiest and cheapest way to experience a show and it is not difficult to find them, especially if one is already in a thriving fan community such as Tumblr's. Fans are grateful for the bootleg's influence on fan-made media (discussed further in this post), and can often find great comfort in returning to beloved shows on demand.

The bootleg trading community is alive and well on Tumblr, seen in posts like this (not exclusive to musical theatre), as well as respondents to this poll, who indicated that they personally archive their own bootleg libraries:

The other side of bootleg trading can also be seen here where a user asks if any fellow fans have access to a recording of Ride the Cyclone featuring a well-known actor (Taylor Louderman) who had only briefly been in the cast, making this bootleg rare. Rare bootlegs are coveted by collectors and fandom archivists, but the general fan population tend to gravitate toward the most popular bootlegs, often those which feature the most well-known cast (usually those who were on the cast album). Examples of these types of cast are "OBC" (Original Broadway Cast), "OOBC" (Original Off-Broadway Cast), and "West End," and it is these shows which circulate YouTube.

An anonymous Tumblr user sent this ask inquiring how most fans tend to save their bootlegs. According to the results of the poll cited above, YouTube is the most popular platform for bootleg consumption. However, it is also the least reliable, as these videos are prone to being removed under copyright law. Some users take to downloading these videos to a personal drive before they can be removed, though many casual viewers will simply wait until the "Slime Tutorial" is inevitably reuploaded under a slightly different title.

Bootleg videos contribute to fan culture in plenty of other ways, too. Most fan-made paratextual media is derived from bootlegs, especially in the form of GIFs and short videos/edits. These short forms draw more careful attention to the moments that they show, and are therefore helpful tools for fan analysis.

The Tumblr "gifset" is a post which often incorporates highly edited .GIF files which have been artfully arranged, though may sometimes feature one or two raw GIFs. These posts tend to highlight aspects such as a particular character dynamic, casting choices, or a favourite moment.

Similarly, short clips are excellent tools for archiving moments unique to a particular performance, such as this ad-lib in Beetlejuice, or this time that a line was altered in Heathers for one show, briefly canonizing the main character as bisexual (she is otherwise a straight woman, though her potential bisexuality is a popular fan theory). If no fan had been recording those performances, these fleeting moments of theatre could not have been immortalized. Therefore, it can be argued that despite their illegality, bootleg videos serve not only to record the production's entirety, but also to preserve the minutia of the actors' craft.

The sheer power of the internet has inadvertently spawned a new form of theatre patronage: the bootleg archivist. Although they contribute no money aside from the tickets that they bought to film, their contribution to the development of fan culture in the digital age is undeniable. Many fans cite bootlegs as their introduction to their most beloved shows, while others collect for the sake of cultural preservation. Regardless, this digital theatre community is one which has brought significant amounts of attention to the shows' names.

Why, then, is the musical fan community so looked down upon by theatre critics and executives? Is it fair to discredit fan-favourites, even if they become box office hits? What happens when fans influence a show's perception?

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5. Musical Theatre and Stigmatization

Musical theatre, as a genre, is subject to stigmatization on multiple fronts. Firstly, there is the association with "popular" theatre, leading it to be seen as "low brow" compared to more prestigious theatre. Additionally, musical theatre demographics tend to lean young and feminine, both of which, especially when intersecting, face a lot of dismissal for their taste in art and culture.

Scholar Matt Hills discusses these phenomena in his articles “Implicit Fandom in the Fields of Theatre, Art, and Literature: Studying “Fans” Beyond Fan Discourses,” and “Popular Theatre and Its ›Invisible‹ Fans: Fandom as External/Internal to the Theatrical Field,” respectively, and the following analysis is based on those texts.

5.1 Musical Theatre as Low-Brow

Hills explains how, "in Mike Savage’s Social Class in the 21st Century[,] 'there are two modes of cultural capital, one which we term 'highbrow' and the other 'emerging''" Also sometimes referred to as "autonomous-autonomous" and "heteronomous-autonomous" modes, the distinction between them is that the former is universally seen as timeless and respectable (think Shakespeare), and while the latter is recognized for its cultural significance and impact, it is ultimately dismissed for being too commercialized.

"According to Savage’s data, 'highbrow' cultural capital is historically established and sanctioned in the education system, but 'it is also an ageing [sic] mode of cultural capital' which can be contrasted with 'emerging' cultural capital displayed by younger people and legitimated through their social media usage rather than through the educational system" (Hills).

Musical theatre falls under the "emerging" category of theatre despite being a long-established art form. This is mainly due to the commercial aspect of it and the seemingly endless rotation of new shows, especially those which handle topics more appealing to younger audiences (such as high school, the internet, and LGBTQ+ issues) and whose composition borrows from pop and R&B styles as opposed to the traditional Sondheim sound.

Therefore, it is no surprise that musical theatre has taken to fandom spaces, largely occupied by enjoyers of other "heteronomous-autonomous" media such as television. With its market appeal to a younger audience and its exclusion from "high-brow" theatre, fan culture develops in online niches.

5.2 Anti-Fandom Sentiment

"[Joli] Jensen (1992) also argued that modes of engagement have been assumed to distinguish 'fans' and 'aficionados': where fandom involves 'an ascription of excess, and emotional display,' the affinity of an arts patron 'is deemed to involve rational evaluation, and is displayed in more measured ways,' such as applause after a play. These cultural assumptions 'are based in status (and thus class) distinctions'" (Hills).

It is telling that the assumptions are classist (and by proxy, ageist), especially considering the soaring price of theatre tickets, even for musical theatre. Anti-fandom sentiment, however, is also rooted in sexism. Hills writes: "This 'theatre snobbery' is at least partly gendered and directed against allegedly excessively emotional fangirls (Garside 2015)." Women, especially young women, face immense scrutiny when they engage with theatre or film due to their cultural perception as "shallow" and "emotional." Their cultural interests are often ridiculed or dismissed until someone with more social capital co-signs the media's merit. Compare, for instance, the perception of The Beatles in the 1960s and present-day, and you may find that what is now The Greatest Rock Group in History was once just a group of mop-headed teen heartthrobs.

Featured in Hills' article “Popular Theatre and Its ›Invisible‹ Fans: Fandom as External/Internal to the Theatrical Field” is an excerpt from Stacy Wolf's exploration of the sexist treatment of Wicked and its female fans by critics. She wrote:

"When Wicked opened in October 2003, critics who did not like the show used girls’ fandom to justify their own negative appraisal, arguing that girls, who could not distinguish between good and bad theatre, were the obvious intended audience for the silly show. [...] [I]n 2006, with the musical’s popularity [...] growing, [...] critics, who then claimed to appreciate the show, [...] stressed the musical’s 'universal appeal' and disavowed any notable relevance to girls’ lives."

This is just one of many examples of the constant dismissal faced by fans of musical theatre. Accusations that these shows are purely commercially-driven spectacles, or that they have minimal literary value, miss out on all the details which attract fandom, and those most often missing details are those who are the least likely to find themselves or their interests addressed in musical theatre. It is, ultimately, an art form for the underdog and the outcast, be it due to gender, race, sexuality, class, or age. It is incredibly ironic that it is those demographics who are the least likely to have the means to attend a show in person. The stigmatization of musical theatre is a reflection of a larger systemic issue: one which disenfranchises the fans who care the most about shows and ultimately results in online fandom being the only safe space for fans, new and old, to interact with each other and share a connection through their favourite media (most often not experienced live, but rather via a bootleg recording).

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6. Fan Culture and Community

A massive force behind the prevalence of bootleg musicals is the strong community formed between fans. These fans usually identify as fans of musicals in a broader sense, as opposed to just one or two shows, meaning that the solidarity lies between all musical fans rather than being segregated by fandom. This is due not only to the overlap in fandoms (if you like one musical, you probably like a bunch) but also due to the stigmatization that fandom faces from both outside and inside the larger theatre community.

Collected on this blog are a variety of examples of fan community in action on Tumblr. For instance:

Bootleg gifting (a form of trading videos) here and here

A petition regarding the human rights of a disabled actor in a disabled role here

There are also plenty of examples here of the specifics of fan culture, such as:

This discussion of the importance of MegaSix, a closing number in the show Six that encourages the audience to film and interact with the actors

This analysis of similarities between shows Six and Ride the Cyclone

This analysis of a scene in the most popular Ride the Cyclone bootleg*

And countless humorous posts about the nature of being a fan who watches musical bootlegs, referenced in Part 4: The Digital Theatre Experience

Another interesting phenomenon within the musical theatre fandom is the influence of bootlegs on fan art. Much like the above analysis (*starred) of Emily Rohm's performance of "The Ballad of Jane Doe," fans will often engage with the specifics of the production(s) to which they have access.

Here is an example of fan art which clearly depicts the 2014 Off-Broadway cast of Heathers, here is art explicitly stated to be of Brittney Johnson (the first Black woman to play Glinda in Wicked), and here is a painting that has been directly modelled from the same popular bootleg of Ride the Cyclone with Emily Rohm. Conversely, the art accompanying the above petition depicts the actor Yannick-Robin Eike Mirko who is to date the only disabled actor to play Ride the Cyclone's disabled character Ricky Potts, and who founded the petition. There is never one singular actor who is drawn into every fan art iteration of their character, although actors associated with larger-scale productions tend to be drawn more frequently. Having access to multiple versions of the same show, put on by different actors at different theatres over the years, has the added effect of being able to reinterpret characters over and over, and this is reflected in art.

Be it on Tumblr or in the comments section of a YouTube bootleg, fan culture is what keeps interest in these musicals high. Shows such as Heathers: The Musical and Ride the Cyclone were both fairly niche during their initial runs Off-Broadway, but after bootlegs became available on YouTube and lip-synch-able audio clips achieved popularity on TikTok, both shows reached exponentially more people, and this awareness has led to them being put on more frequently around the globe.

Still, the fan's marketing power is often overlooked in commercial theatre. While plenty of shows have begun producing short-form content for Instagram and TikTok, there are only a few innovators who have found ways to incorporate fandom into the essence of their shows.

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7. Fan Culture as Marketing

Despite the pushback against bootlegging from commercial theatre productions (discussed here), a show's success hinges largely upon fan culture and community. After all, who is in the audience? Who is recommending shows to their friends and family? New shows, especially those with a younger demographic, have started to take advantage of the fan's influence, especially when it comes to online presence.

The article “‘Does Anybody Have A Map?’: The Impact of ‘Virtual Broadway’ on Musical Theater Composition” by Clare Chandler and Simeon Scheuber‐Rush explores this new marketing tactic, how it currently manifests, and its implications for the future of musical theatre.

Shows like Dear Evan Hansen and Six make use of their online popularity by incorporating fan interaction into their performances as well as their digital presences (the former accepts fan submissions to be played during the social media "montages" which occur during the show, and the latter encourages fans to film the encore song "MegaSix" (see post here) and share it online, with some actors even briefly taking fans' phones and filming themselves, adding an extra layer of desirability for fans to participate). Chandler and Simeon refer to this interactive method as "Virtual Broadway." Might this be the future of musical theatre?

Doherty writes:

"Teen audiences are finding ways to interact with productions they have limited access to through platforms such as Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter in the community of their fandom. Hadley (2017) poses the question of whether social media will eventually cause audiences of the arts to lose the authentic ephemeral presence. Judging from the research presented in this article and the evident shift in theatre interactions, theatre has the potential to become more interactive. Content has the potential to fall into a more commercialised state, as marketing through social media can become targeted and manipulated to suit varying audiences."

As discussed earlier, there is little risk of losing the authentic ephemeral presence. Bootleg recordings are often have low-quality picture and may not have the entire stage in view at one given time. A negligible amount of fans would turn down a chance to see a show live just because they had already watched a bootleg, as no YouTube or drive video can replicate the immersive euphoria of attending the theatre. However, interactive theatre, especially that which encourages fans to engage with performances through their digital platforms of choice, certainly has the potential to dominate future marketing campaigns.

Bootlegs have immense power to shift the tides of live theatre, but the dismissal or even downright disdain that it faces from the most powerful voices in theatre makes this future less likely to come to pass. So what have we learned? What are the next steps?

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8. Conclusion: Analyzing "Slime Tutorials"

In the Internet Age, digital fandom is the main way that fans connect with one another, interact with art and theories, and spread the word about their favourite media. Tumblr has curated a niche of digital fandom which attracts multimedia creators, as well as fans who are drawn to multimedia fandom. It is no surprise, therefore, that fans of the "Slime Tutorial" gather on Tumblr to share their appreciation for musical theatre.

Bootleg recordings are the backbone of digital theatre fan communities, as they allow for fans (new and old!) to view a show without the cost or travel time. Despite the concerns of theatre stars, they are also proven not to detract from ticket sales, as almost all fans would buy a ticket if it were feasible. The illegality of bootlegs rests purely in the murky waters of copyright infringement, especially enforced by video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, hence the code-name "Slime Tutorial." While theatre creators' disdain combines with the social belittling of musical theatre fans to form a harsh stigma that they are "entitled" or "don't respect" etiquette, these claims are rooted largely in classism and ageism, as while most musical fans are young (and therefore less likely to be wealthy), they are systemically barred from live performances due to skyrocketing ticket prices and social disapproval. Bootlegs serve as a budget-friendly alternative as well as a safe space for other fans in a similar position.

Furthermore, bootleg recordings serve the valuable purpose of archiving the limited experience of a particular show with a particular cast, sometimes even catching unique moments not seen in the official script or score. These recordings in turn encourage fans to create their own media, be it art, GIFs, or edits, which interacts with shows in a way which wouldn't be possible if the experience were kept behind lock and key.

While some productions are beginning to tap into the marketing potential of fan interaction, especially since fandom on social media has been a driving force behind word-of-mouth notoriety, digital fandom remains a largely untapped resource, likely due to the stigma. The future may be uncertain, but musical theatre has a very clear opportunity to propel themselves into the twenty-first century, if only they were to fully embrace their young, digitally-minded fanbase.

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Works Cited

Booth, Paul. Digital Fandom : New Media Studies. Peter Lang, 2010.

Chandler, Clare and Scheuber‐Rush, Simeon. “‘Does Anybody Have A Map?’: The Impact of ‘Virtual Broadway’ on Musical Theater Composition.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 54, no. 2, 2021, pp. 276–300, https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.13013

Doherty, Bethany. “‘Tap, Tap, Tapping on the Glass’: Generation Z, Social Media and Dear Evan Hansen.” Arts (Basel), vol. 9, no. 2, 2020, pp. 68-, https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9020068.

Hills, Matt. “Implicit Fandom in the Fields of Theatre, Art, and Literature: Studying “Fans” Beyond Fan Discourses.” A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119237211.ch30.

Hills, Matt. “Popular Theatre and Its ›Invisible‹ Fans: Fandom as External/Internal to the Theatrical Field.” LiLi, Zeitschrift Für Literaturwissenschaft Und Linguistik, vol. 47, no. 4, 2017, pp. 487–503, https://doi.org/10.1007/s41244-017-0074-2.

Kunze, Peter C. “Bootlegs over Broadway: Musical Theatre (Re)Productions, Digital Circulation, and the Informal Media Economy.” Creative Industries Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, 2023, pp. 204–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/17510694.2021.1996984.

Reside, Douglas L. “Bootlegging the Musical.” Fixing the Musical, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190073718.003.0006.

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Hey y'all, I’m conducting research on the musical bootleg community on tumblr and would SUPER appreciate if you would vote in this poll and reblog/share it!

I’d also love if you could tag what you answered, along with any extra details about your personal bootleg/slime tutorial experience! What are your favourite parts of being on bootleg tumblr?

Feel free to send me asks as well if you wanna chat about musicals or ask any other questions! I’d be happy to include you in my research and would be suuuuper grateful for your help

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Off broadway>>>>>

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You got us in the pape? You got yourselves in the pape.

David Jacobs & Katherine Plumber in Newsies (2017)

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I've actually been doing some research into this for this blog! (slimetutuorialanalysis is a grad project on tumblr and its bootleg musical community)

One of the main things that's always cited is that it can be distracting for performers on stage (but that applies more to flash photography). As someone who has done professional-scale musical theatre, we can't tell from the stage if someone is filming if they're not in the front five or six rows.

What seems to be more prevalent, especially with recent backlash to bootlegging, is that the commercial theatre industry sees bootlegs as a net deficit, assuming that each view equals one ticket not bought. This isn't true, as we know, because most fans watch bootlegs for inaccessibility reasons (they live too far, can't afford a ticket, discovered the show after it closed, etc). I conducted a poll about this here, and the phenomenon has been measured countless times by other researchers.

An especially enlightening article on this is called “Bootlegs over Broadway: Musical Theatre (Re)Productions, Digital Circulation, and the Informal Media Economy” by Peter C. Kunze. He discusses how it's often the show's actors who are most vocally opposed to bootlegs because: "Broadway salaries generally do not vary from performance-to-performance, a performer makes the same amount for the show if they play to 100 people, a full house, or a full house and 10, 000 people on YouTube. The presumption here is that the YouTube viewer will not go to see the show because they saw it on YouTube."

With it already being as hard as it is to make good money in theatre, a lot of actors are so caught up in their "lost" income that they misinterpret the value and purpose of bootlegs to begin with. Kunze's article uses Lin Manuel Miranda as an example because of how vocal he is with his disdain for bootlegs, but it's important to remember that this is because he was not only the lead actor, but also the triple-writer (composition, lyrics, and book). He "loses" a lot of money if each bootleg view really represents a ticket not sold. Despite this, Hamilton has been one of the highest-grossing shows on Broadway since its debut in 2015.

TLDR; actors are especially against bootlegs because they incorrectly assume that YouTube is taking away viewership from live audiences and costing them potential income, despite evidence like this that is contrary, and the fact that many heavily bootlegged (ie popular) shows still pull massive revenue at the box office.

I'll leave it on this excellent passage, which summarizes the phenomenon particularly well: "Miranda's concerns represent an artist's desire to control how their work is received. Based on remarks he has made elsewhere, it also implicitly speaks to a desire to receive compensation for his work. But a consumer who would actively seek out a bootleg is more likely a fan than a casual viewer. Likely, the bootleg would supplement other materials that may be more accessible to them, including the cast album and companion volume. Miranda may have assuaged any ill will his reprimand fostered, but his 'disruption' of a fan space and policing of fan practices foregrounds the tense power dynamics that persist between producers and consumers."

Citation: Kunze, Peter C. “Bootlegs over Broadway: Musical Theatre (Re)Productions, Digital Circulation, and the Informal Media Economy.” Creative Industries Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, 2023, pp. 204–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/17510694.2021.1996984.

Hey, y'all, quick question, I've just watched the RTC slime tut, so now am on a rabbit hole (TYSM ADHD, but anyway)

Why do the majority of actors (at least the ones I've seen) dislike people filming? Just a genuine question, plus I just want an answer, lmao.

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do you know if most people download slime tutorials onto their computer or a hard drive or smth, or if they tend to just leave them in drive or on YouTube?

Hey thanks for the ask!! So, data from the poll I conducted here had some great replies that covered a spectrum... I saw a few people say that they personally download to computers/hard drives, but most have online folders (youtube, drive, and alternative sites such as mega.nz or encora)

It's been so neat to read everyone's answers!

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No slime tutorial is complete without:

1. An amazing title

2. Faces being one white blob because of the stage lights

3. Someone blocking the view at the end with a standing ovation

4. Someone in the comments with time stamps for every song

5. Someone in the comments saying they’ll sell their soul to see this live

6. A random person coughing

7. The mic dying at extra high/loud notes

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The term slime tutorial is now more applicable to its euphemistic meaning (musical bootlegs) than the original content. I remember back in the late 2010s-early 2020s there was an online craze about slime and so the term got chosen so that it would be hidden behind the huge waves of content. But now (real) slime videos are out of vogue and so all that's left is this esoteric codename that no longer covers anything up...and I think that's so cool

I love looking "slime tutorials" on any social media and before showing ACTUAL slime tutorials of slime, that social media shows me MUSICAL slime tutorials.