In the early days of the World Wide Web people expressed both their passion and their creativity (or lack thereof) by constructing fan sites for their favorite actors, musicians, artists, authors -- even historical people who have been long dead.
Over the past few years, particularly as Google AdSense has become more popular with people wanting to make money off the Internet, fan Web sites have been squeezed out of the search results by commercial Web sites that have pretty much been made for AdSense.
Even sites that were once considered "amateur" productions, like IMDB, Wikipedia, and others have become commercialized and corporate entities. They are not true fan sites, they're just there trying to make a buck (or, in Wikipedia's case, to spread someone's propaganda and misinformation in the guise of being an "encyclopedia") from our eyeballs and clicks.
I picked a celebrity at random that I thought might have a few fan sites. You wouldn't know it from the search results for her name:
Rachel Weisz (that's a Google search). Google is particularly bad about hiding good quality sites and flooding the search results with commercial crap that is just monetizing user-generated content.
But there ARE a few Rachel Weisz fan sites (only one or two of which actually appear on the first page of Google's search results). You'd better look quick now because finding these kinds of sites becomes more and more difficult each year. Even if you force Google to search for "rachel weisz fan sites" you'll mostly get commercial made-for-adsense pap (the kind of garbage Web sites that Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt seems to feel will "clean up the cesspool" on the Internet because they have
brand value).
So, without further vitriol and hyperbole, here are the last true Rachel Weisz fan sites that I am aware of. I would be glad to learn there are actually more out there. BTW -- those two Geocities sites will vanish later this year because Yahoo! is shutting down the service. Hundreds of thousands of unique fan sites and amateur research sites will vanish when they flip th switch and turn off the service.
You're under no obligation to go out and create fan sites but if you've been wanting to and telling yourself it's too much trouble because you don't have the talent, then think again. Great fan sites are not about talent and Web design -- they are about the passion you feel for your favorite topic.
If you're a big fan of Rachel Weisz, tell people. That's what we want to find in the search results.
Screw Google. Back in the day before there was Google we helped each other find cool sites through our links. I'll still happily link to fan sites any day of the week.
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