Date: 03/09/26

Mood: avoidant

Listening to: Watch Me - bludnymph

bootleg videos in relation to tumblr gifs

This is an essay largely about how bootleg videos were suppressed, then rapidly shared during the YouTube era of the Rammstein fandom. And how these changes in availability affected tumblr gifs being made when the website pivoted to embracing fandom content on the platform. Including changes in social media preferences prioritizing video sharing over text format that was established prior in women's fandom spaces online. I also discuss how technology changes moving towards a video oriented fandom impacted how women interact with shipping and gifs through tumblr.com, as compared to blogs and forums prior. Largely, my discussion is through a female fan perspective.

Note: This a fangirl's blog and I allow talking about shipping to a degree for relevant purposes regarding fandom history of events and how fandom transformed. If it's too cringe for you, move along.

Fandom disorganization and limited availability

I would really enjoy it if women online didn't pretend in this fandom. It's okay to not know and admit to shortcomings. There is no penalty. There is also no penalty to admitting to being a normie type of fan who was really casual. There is nobody to perform for or win over with this. It is an element in fandom that literally doesn't matter.

Anyone who doesn't understand my comments here doesn't know the history. This comment is not about the band members themselves. It's a comment about the fans making fics. It's about people who have to make something up because they don't have access. It's a comment about fan behavior. I am not listing out these examples of Paulchard to say, "the men themselves hated each other, lol loser ship!!". Anyone taking it that way, is really insecure about a ship. Relax, okay? Deep breaths. (They really do help.)

When the context of my statement is about fandom disorganization. I am talking about the struggle to access content in an organized mannerism that causes trends in shipping too. Such as struggling with translations being known in a neat location to read about other pairings or men that aren't a specific two all the time. How can you appreciate anything else when it's hard to find? Nobody needs "help" with Paulchard because all you have to do is go on IG or tumblr to the tag and be spammed with it in gif and mp4 format endlessly scrolling.

I am listing out these ideas because I am trying to tell you what women in the fandom had access to before 2010. I did not list 1999 lick gif, 1997 French magazine quote, 1997 Spiel images, or [insert thing you are mad about] because it wasn't known in the old fandom days. I openly mention the 1999 bootleg on my site here and wrote about 1997 and 1999 contents here when talking about Sehnsucht era. I am extremely aware of these things.

Paulchard did not "exist" to women's minds until 2010. Because the footage or photos did not "exist" to women on the Internet between 1997-2010.

Hey, you know this 2001 Hamburg bootleg people made gifs from recently?

It didn't exist in the public sphere until after 2010.

Hey, you know this 1999 Canada bootleg where Richard licked his shoulder?

It didn't exist in the public sphere until after 2010.

A majority of Rammstein bootlegs were not available in the public sphere until Emu (ex-manager) of the band was removed from his position in early 2010. Huge plethora of R+ video was kept exclusively private, trade only, snippets on YouTube, etc. A lot of bootleg stuff was stuck on physical media of discs and you had to get it somewhere in Europe. By the way, if you tried to buy or sell it on eBay, Emu would legal threaten you if you lived in Germany.

You cannot find the videos you are talking about in 2004. Nobody in 2006 has seen it. In 2002, nobody has the Internet speed to download DVD rips. I remember when my videos loaded at 50.0kbps. A DVD5 disc at that rate would take days to download if you left your desktop on 24/7. Everyone used discs and DVD players to bypass the speed problem. Nobody had a hard drive big enough for these files either. I remember when a 500GB external drive was over $150. Now you can have 4TB for $100.

Many 1997 Spiel mit mir images you fawn over, were not scanned and online until after 2005. I "own" one of the Spiel pictures in a magazine dated to 1999 publication. It's a 1997 image not even printed for two years. Several of them were put online by the photographers after 2005. If you ever see watermarked images online of "scanned by Ezzy" or "Ezzy's stuff"; she (Ezzy Davidson) put that online on Facebook. Despite them being old photos. FB did not gain recognition to be a popular place until well after 2008.

MANY photos from before 2005 origin, were not well spread and known online. Many images we know now from the 90s or Mutter era, didn't get circulated until RR/R era or even LIFAD sometimes. If you are like me in my old fansites pages and look at the galleries; you will see many images we know today from the era were not in circulation. In the old days, there was one person with her Icelandic fansite who had the biggest collection on the net. Which was approximately 300 R+ photos. The next biggest was on Geocities and her site was "rammsteinbildsammlung" with some hundreds.

This photo of Paul in Mutter tour is from "Sixtynine"s fansite who had the biggest collection of the era. You can see the 69 in the corner. She scanned it from a print source. She also did her diligence to get articles and translations online you couldn't find anywhere else. Including from her friends who helped. She transcripted her Gert Hof book. She was amazing for independent women's sites.

The content modern shippers fawn over did not exist to the general public's awareness between 1997 and 2009. Images did not start to get organized online until 2005 via rammimages.com. Which spawned from women's communities who desired these photos. You are privileged and live in Paulchard abundance. You do not understand about how a woman never saw the things you saw before in her life. No, most people in 2001 have never seen the shoulder licking gif. No, they hadn't seen it in 2005 either. And in all honesty, it's unlikely women ever saw it until 2011-12 when bootlegs started falling into the hands of tumblr and YT. A majority of women writing fanfics in 2004 never have seen the 1997 Zwickau Viva interview. Never even heard of it either.

Many in this fandom never had the privilege of seeing the Sonne making of until 2003 on Lichtspielhaus. It aired on TV only and was trapped on bootleg DVD and VHS. Where you had to 'know someone' to even get them. No subtitles. The only way to get TLs was text on someone's site if you were lucky to find it. You, in your privileges, load up YT making footage at any moment you want. With multiple subtitle formats attached. The making of footage of Amerika, Keine Lust, Rosenrot, or MGM was TV only. No DVD until MiG. This is a big part of why they sold the DVD separately. Mein Teil's making of was on a Keine Lust rare DVD single. That was it.

I know someone online who was ecstatic in 2001 to have a copy of a VHS transferred to disc with R+ TV clips from news reels about them in Russia in November. She couldn't rip it due to large file sizes and not knowing how to compress them, and only posted screenshots on her website. You, in privilege, have seen and watched every single 2001 news reel clip ever in 360p on YouTube at your whim. Instantly. No hassles.

Many in the fandom never saw 1998 Rock am Ring except what was on Lichtspielhaus, which means they never saw DRSG from TV only. Many fans never saw 1998 Rock im Park from TV until 2012-13. I remember the first time I ever watched it still. You, in your modern privilege, have seen DRSG and Rock im Park since the day you came to the fandom.

For near 10 years, no one but tape trader men with DVDs and special locked files ever saw 2001 Mutter era Hamburg or 1999 Asche intro Richard licking footage. Numerous trader men were forced to delete or remove R+ listings or face legal threats from Emu. The big PTC listings for trades had to remove their entire R+ section.

You don't have to take my word. How about having a tape trader man from 2018 explain it.

Inside that comment section you will also find Amadeus83; who if you didn't know, is a Rammwiki staff.

"Biesenthal v2" is this footage on tumblr in gif format. I remember seeing this footage v2 for the first time in 2011. The earliest I could find on tumblr is spring 2011. I reblogged it recently for this post on my mind. Same with me reblogging Hamburg.

Hey, you know the famous 1996 Bizarre Festival recording that looks pretty good? Guess what?? That was recorded in 2008 during a re-airing. Before that, every bootleg version of it looks poor color, filled with static, and very blurry. The tape was also slightly misaligned. Same thing with the 1996 concert fanclub VHS. The new modern rip was done in 2020. The old version is dark and ugly looking from bad hardware and settings of the VHS player.

Mmmm yes, I love my crunchy 240p 2007 YouTube VHS rip with 5000 pixels and discoloration.

Paul is almost inside this video if you squint really fucking hard.

If it doesn't exist in their minds and they never saw any of it before, how do they write about it and publish art? Go to old fanfic communities and tags before 2010. You will see only a little Paulchard. That's why on my post here, I discuss the "history of R+ slash" in a brief way. Where I link numerous old fic communities in archives. And guess what? Paulchard was a 'rare pair'. Go look at the decaying archives on fanfiction.net. Rare pair. Go to Deviantart and type in "Paulchard" and filter it to "text" instead of images. Go to the very last pages and tell me what years and dates you see.

It is what I said; Tillchard was the mainstay. Then the obvious Till and Flake. Richard and Schnei was a popular one too. Paul was largely paired with Schnei, Flake, and Till for obvious reasons relating to ahem... books. Books that were translated specifically in "by women, for women" fandom spaces in the early 00s. From women who were from the "R+ Slash Mailing List" on Yahoo Groups. That overlapped and spawned the "Ich will forum" which was the biggest women-only fan space. They jokingly called themselves the "RSB" which means Rammstein Smut Brigade. And they also called themselves the "division of the sluts" and Till humored them. You can probably realize exactly what they messaged each other about and what stuff they typed in fiction format. Where both groups are the women who helped get started on rammimages.com. Full circle. I respect fangirls of the past. Without them, we're nothing.

Have you ever wondered why fanfics on AO3 do not take on until 2016 in general? Where were the fics??? They were on personal sites, FFN, LJ, Deviantart, and Wattpad. For whatever insane reason, this fandom refused to use AO3 for years. A lot of Paulchard from 2009-2013 is sitting on LJ (inaccessible to get in the community "the6") and Deviantart, actually. Go to AO3 right now to Paulchard tag and go to the last page of oldest fics. What do you see? A huge 'explosion of popularity' around 2016.

Well you see, my theory is Paulchard as a phenomena isn't merely fan creation of whimsy and attraction. But directly correlates to social media changing how one interacts and posts in a fandom online. Where videos and gifs become mainstays, things like text and photos get pushed to the side. Paulchard is something that thrives in mp4 and gifs. Other pairs in this band, not as much. Only a little. Many pairings are largely text format related to history or the past. (eg Paul and Flake.) In this sort of academic sense, it was social media prioritizing how fans communicate via video clips (IG videos) and gifs (tumblr) that changed perceptions of how people engage with Rammstein in a fandom community. Old fandom for R+ was text based of blogs/forums, and very much about watching TV or buying magazines. Much of their live show was in-person only and you literally had to be there. Or only have the official concert DVDs and nothing else.

In this regard, Rammstein as a fandom is perfectly splintered between old media (TV / print) and new media (Internet). Somewhere in the middle was video format. The Internet's push of social media made video format coveted more than any other and discouraged text. Where 240 characters on Twitter is nothing. IG captions are limited. Blog sites have totally fallen out of favor. Forums are almost dead. tumblr basically demands people to fit all ideas into short tags due to etiquette.

This shift of social connection styles, directly corresponds to how women changed their engagement with one another. This also is reflected in shipping trends, interestingly enough. And was the point of my screenshot.

Video revolution: technology gains and freedom

It was the fandom's "video revolution", so to speak. We were free from Emu's video prison. We slowly gained video access between 2009 and 2013, and then afterwards given a hype Festival tour cycle that made people want those videos even more to be spread around. Largely to a new audience cultivated by advertising themselves to the biggest metal festivals in Europe and North America for two years. Right around the time they put their discography on Spotify and started using their official YT channel. Amazing.

What happened in 2010? Emu was let go from his position as manager. LIFAD touring footage and photos. Social media like Facebook and Twitter happened. Myspace is popular too still. IG is starting to gain traction by 2012. tumblr sets in with the youths around late 2010 and definitely by 2011. Sunset homoerotic guitar clip. Public facing friendship via videos on YT on tour from cell phones or digital cameras that now have zoom. No longer controlled via bootlegs, bad Internet speed, and the wrath of Emu. YouTube is about to become the best tool.

We were finally free in LIFAD-MiG era. Not only did we get the MiG DVDs with making of footage, we had another huge thing happen that was boiling under the surface. Unknown to the average fan at first. What was it? Tape traders. Bootleggers. The audio file guys. The dude with his FLAC rips.

Tape traders for R+ did not start to publicly post their trades until 2010-2015 era. Because Emu was gone! Nobody was being threatened legally anymore and monitored online about their files. This is proven here and here for archives. Many of those videos in that original format they had are highly desired by collectors still around. Several Paul interviews are gone and are fully lost media, by the way. Including a 2001 Dutch monk cut and a mid/late 1998 MTV. There is also a missing RTL Bravo TV of Paul as well, I suspect it's from really early 1998. They only exist now via screenshots. If you check their trade files, you will slowly realize they have copies of videos that are not online anymore in that format. I know it's upsetting to think that even videos from digital LIFAD era are missing.

Did you not know in August-September 2024 that Universal Music unleashed massive bans on YouTube that suspended hundreds of videos and channels of R+ content? They not only struck official contents, they destroyed people's cell phone recordings. Videos that were left untouched for 10+ years from tours vanished and are now dead URLs. Numerous interviews were hit by proxy of channels hosting live clips beside it. Now you understand my scornful tone about Rammstein fandom media disorganization and laziness. The Internet was once a playground and full of abundance if you found the right community. Each year, it shrinks smaller and media is going missing. Things are hard to find. Search engines grow worse.

I challenge you right now to a game: go to YouTube and find this Paul interview. It's LIFAD era and this gif was created in 2017. It's 2026. Where is the video? You instantly lose the game if you find the RZK version.

I am doing my part to fix this because I went through five popular Rammstein interview playlists on YT and saw these videos are never on them. This fandom is disorganized online. Always has been. Seidbereit.ru is the best place that isn't like this. The Russian fans are by far the most proactive and trying to do something about this. Every man who isn't Till or RZK has interviews missing. So much so, you'd have the modern impression there's less Paul interviews than there is in video format. No. The fandom ignores his interviews in such a massive way, they're now obscure and missing. I see people on tumblr in my time there looking at old posts; it's the year 2020 and they're asking where a 2009 interview is. Nobody knows how to answer or link it.

Because women love reblogging 10+ years old contents I have to ask. Have you ever in your life stopped to look at old R+ blogs between 2011-2014 and realized: wait a second all of these videos and gifs have something in common...? A majority of fans do not make videos of certain contents we know today. As if they don't have access to other videos. They were not stupid or lazy. They literally did not have access to something or know how to find it. That's why.

Things that are a problem before mid-2011:

• Emu the video overlord trying to control an entire fandom
• tape trader men keep things in low circulation and all we get is one song on YT if we're lucky
• these YT uploads are often in the worst pixel condition
• sometimes watermarked or 240p
• a majority of people do not know a codec or why their media player cannot be given a .vob file
• many people need a .avi format XviD file that means encoding a high quality thing to a lower format
• YT is prone to removals. especially after 2009 era when YT was forced to give copyright control to companies more
• in 2009-12, Germans dealt with GEMA/YT hell aka "Blocked by UMG"
• before 2012, tumblr's gif limit was 500kb and then raised to 1MB. this means your gifs had to be either 1) fast, short, and big resolution or 2) longer but less than 400 pixels.
• you cannot import a majority of videos into Photoshop to make gifs until CS6 (2012). you will suffer endless codec errors. mp4 is not the standard and H264 is not supported by CS3-5.
• making gifs required you to know the CS3 method (load files into stack), or use VirtualDubMod, or change the codec for CS5, or an external site like gifsoup
• tumblr later raises the limit to 2MB (now 10MB) and introduces photosets around 2013. this is why old posts cannot be sets.

The floodgates opened for tape traders and bootleggers in LIFAD-MiG, then it finally boiled over and spilled into the public sphere around 2011-2016 in waves. By 2013, huge portions were stabilizing in public via Seidbereit.ru's forum. And now we have it where you can type the name of any bootleg into YT and find it instantly in full. Eventually, the 2001 Hamburg bootleg was public which was considered peak rarity for a time. So while you watch it today all mundane and stare at gifs from it like it's meaningless, just know before 2010 that was a big fucking deal.

In the aftermath, by 2016 numerous of it got put on YouTube by Amadeus83 and others who stopped bothering to guard it. It is no coincidence that his YT channel is active for "9 years" = 2016 era. Where fans were seeing some of this for the first goddamn time in their lives.

Do you know what else happened in 2016-17 era? The official Rammstein YouTube started being active and uploading old videos, making of, and live clips to allow people to access them widely. Did you not notice or realize this? Before that, it was only online via fans in dubious quality and illegal means. Fans on tumblr made gif sets referencing the old confusing state R+ videos were in back then in 2014. It was chaos.

You could post R+ on YT without being wrecked if you were careful. You could post your trade list without Emu showing up like a villain behind you. And YouTube was uncontrollable without aggressive copyright tools until the Viacom issues. Bootleg sharing lists for R+ flourished without needing to host a list on a site subjected to Emu. Traders for this band took advantage of it in 2008 onward via YT and posted one song or 30 second snippets to make lists of their trades on their accounts.

A byproduct of this amount of concentrated lust and attention from women on video content is slash shipping. By this era, we had the Festival tour which is filled with a bunch of fun guitarist interactions too. It only makes LIFAD and MiG era footage from phones age like the finest wine ever to go back to for more. So by the time you get to 2019, the band is now "self-aware" about shipping because it's so unavoidable.

How this impacted tumblr & changes in gif accessibility

The fandom on tumblr was NOT massive during LIFAD-MiG itself at all. You are mistaken. You are looking at the aftermath from 2013-2020's peak and thinking it retroactively applied. No. Back in 2010 until 2016, if you posted Paul stuff you'd get 5-30 notes total. If you had a lucky post, you'd get 30-100 notes. This can still be seen on some blogs if you dig hard enough backwards. You can see posts with less than 30 notes still there. tumblr added the dates feature on posts so you can faux reblog it to a draft and look through the interactions too. Many 2013-14 era posts of Paul only get 10-40 reblogs. Many of Lea's posts only got 20-50 reblogs too. And that was during 2016-17's hype.

I wish more people could admit and recognize Paul isn't as popular as believed. It's a byproduct of shipping making his status artificially perceived. It's a bunch of RZK fans pretending to be Paul fans. If I was wrong, not a single Paul interview would be obscure. Where is the Paul4Ever account on YouTube salvaging his career in pixel video format? Where is that fan? Where is she?

It is no coincidence tumblr activity for this fandom was at its all time highest for the aftermath of Festival era. The best time to be a fan of this band and on tumblr was 2016-2020 for the core of it. We can lie to ourselves and blame 2023 drama all we want. But the pandemic is what halted tumblr's R+ momentum and hype. Many blogs go inactive in 2020-21. Many IG accounts suffer the same problem, actually. 2022 was notably subdued and never was the same as it was before. 2023 drama didn't help, yet it's not to fully blame. At all.

Here's stuff I found to prove my point that the best circulation era on tumblr was 2011-14 for the first exposures. Slowly, it leaked to the public in waves.

Some of the oldest abandoned R+ blogs from pre-2012 show almost no reblogs of VHS content from what I see. They largely stick to official discs and photos. Here are some 2010-12 relics: one, two, three, four, five, and six. Most concert footage gifs are contemporary LIFAD-MiG tour or official DVDs. There is notably almost nothing circulating from the Ahoi tour that isn't the DVD.

Here's an extremely disgusting looking January 2011 of 2001.11 Russia on YouTube for the first time. This uploader was clearly in the trade scene from his videos. A mid-2009 horrid rip of 1997 Amsterdam from a tape trader putting up a snippet song to advertise his lists. His JP 2000 and SG videos prove he's a tape guy. A lucky woman in 2008 with a 2002 London snippet.

Early 2008 the famous Das Modell live is uploaded by a tape trader. On his channel are small song snippets he found interesting to leak between 2008 and 2009.

During this era, finding anything from 1996 September VHS show is nearly impossible. All I found was this. The person who posted this didn't make it. But found it already online.

The earliest 1996 BF is late 2010 from a January 2010 upload of the songs cut out each. That appears to be the most popular ancient source ever. That circulates in gifs then and later in early 2011 again. This appears to be from the re-air but had to crop the station logo to survive online.

Someone in November 2010 saying she spent "a year" trying to find the 2001 July Gilford clip's source. Because it's likely she only ever saw screenshots or random tiny gif with no way to understand or access a trade list to find it. In May 2012 I found a gif edit for this tape and one of the earliest I could find in my attempt. Surely there has to be a 2011 somewhere. From a 2008 upload with a watermark logo on it from an obvious tape trader account. Who uploaded R+ bootlegs snippet songs to signal his trade list, in low quality. (He likely transcoded and destroyed the VBR to be too low.) Where everything is pixelated garbage like this. The traders would only ever upload one song on purpose as a sort of "list of stuff I have" and it's why they didn't care about visual quality on YT.

The first sign of 2002 St. Petersburg's tape is around late 2011. But in one song video link (ignored) in mid-2010. Circulated in mid-2009 in a snippet from a tape trader. January 2012, Zwitter makes it to a gif showing more than one song is out there.

Early 2011, Biesenthal v2 in screenshot was found. Seidbereit.ru uploader, Doktor Flake, puts it online in 2013. Gifs circulate after this era much wider than before in direct correlation to the fansite's actions. Such as early spring 2013, two months after the upload.

The earliest 2001 Hamburg I have found is January 2012. Then mid-year. Here is someone directly saying finding the Hamburg video is impossible for her in 2012 despite having a gif. It indicates rarity of the tape and complete lack of knowledge that when people ask, nobody knows the source or title being 2001 Hamburg.

Rock im Park circulates in mid-2013. This likely correlates again to Seidbereit.ru. I was unable to find 2011-12 at this time. Surely, it's somewhere...?? Was this really 2013?

1998 Echo from the Viva tape. The earliest I got is January 2011. Wider circulation in early/mid 2012: here, here, and here. 1997 Zwickau is mid-2012. 1997 RTL for Das Modell goes around in 2012, here and here.

2001 Russia TV from tapes but it's the bad version before the upgraded VHS rip. A 2012-13 version of these Russian reels is the re-ripped that people are more familiar with.

2001 Australia TV version circulates at the earliest I have is Bestrafe mich in March 2011 once linked via YT. And found a gif of Du hast and Heirate mich Till from late 2010 that overlaps the spring 2011 revelation. More rounds in May 2011 showing the novelty at the time.

1997 Pink Pop from a tape doesn't circulate until May 2012?? This is the higher quality tape version with less hue problems, which is rare now to even find with modern era traders. Yes, rips from 2012 are legitimately missing/rare like I told you earlier.

1994 MDR footage from bootlegs goes around in 2011-12. Earliest reference to FLEISCH TIER is early 2011 to a deleted video. Found screenshots in late 2010. Someone mentions finding the footage from the doc for the first time in April 2011. 2012 was found here. And wider spread in 2013-14.

1996 Riesa from a tape circulates starting 2012. 1997 April Berlin from RTL (rare at the time) circulates 2013, but gains wider crossover in 2014.

1999 bootlegs circulates in 2013 with a heavy 2014 spread; here, here, here, here, and here. This directly correlates to Seidbereit.ru on YT in January 2013.

The earliest citation of the 1999 lick is here in gif format from 2014. Suspect the real circulation on it is 2013. And a screenshot in 2014. We do know 1999 tapes had a small public reach in gifs by now here. Some snippets are on YT in 2008 in low quality from this show from the worst version of the show's three tapes. Another Stripped snippet from the v2 tape. Good luck with making gifs from it 👍

1997 Dusseldorf circulates in both Viva broadcasts in 2012, here and here. Never found in 2011 from my digging. Makes a second wave around in 2014 by someone who clearly got access to a lot of DVD files. I suspect she was hanging out for weeks in late 2013 over at Seidbereit.ru just like I was at the time.

1997 Katowice tape doesn't hit tumblr until goddamn 2013. No way? Not even 2012? All I could find is September 2013. It was YT in 2008 by a tape trader advertising his list. I can't find a 2012 right now.

1997 August Unedited Viva VHS doesn't go around until 2014 either when put to gifs. The actual interview in 2013 via, ahem, Seidbereit.ru. 1998 FVT from New Orleans was never online in this high quality until after 2011 from a concert distribution website. Prior to this, it was only partially in segments available on a FVT news spot from a VHS tape.

And then you can watch R+ gifs utterly explode in 2013-2017 era on tumblr to have a wide variety and far more diversity of contents.

The evil was defeated. Rammstein fans are free and we are thriving. Flourishing. Loving. No longer tape and DVD oppressed. No longer controlled by tape trader men either. We're going public with videos. People are dumping them in full by 2012-13 era. The YouTube upload button is alluring to us after the years of oppression. We can't resist.

Between the years 1997 and 2010, huge swaths of R+ videos were unseen by a majority of fans. Including bootlegs and interviews trapped on bootlegs. This is why in my essay I keep saying, "I forgive everyone for this disaster before MiG" and "Emu caused domino chains long-term to us". Do you even know what the hell I am referencing? Do you even remember the crisis of rammimages.com in 2008 when it vanished? We lost so much. Many images there haven't ever been recovered.

You take ALL of this for granted in a modern, privileged YouTube era. You have no clue what old fandom was like. Nobody who was around back then would not remember bootleg oppression and why this fandom used to be text-oriented about interviews to bypass it. You would also know nobody called it Paulchard during LIFAD at all because there was no previous fic or fanon history to warrant it immediately during that tour cycle. As a non-shipper, I couldn't say I paid enough mind to know when the phrase started. I would guess 2013 sounds more likely, but I don't know.

For many years in this fandom, video and concert was gatekept and male fan controlled. On top of being oppressed by Emu. And all you get on YT is grimy 240p and pixelated videos bordering unwatchable. If you found non-YT most likely it was .rm format and 300px. If you found a 480p .avi file, it was basically godly. I, in my old age, have a .avi Pussy video ripped and converted off visit-x.net. Complete with old codec, resolution, MP3 audio (lol), and all file format oddities.

Female fandom spaces in the past

Do you know what women controlled between 2001 and 2008? Images and interviews in text format. That was ours. That is what we did to fight this. It was hosted in three places of women's groups. The R+ Slash Mailing list (2001-2004), the "Ich Will forum" (2001-05), and rammimages.com (2005-08). Plus some fansites of women. That is what I was discussing in my screenshot. Mink, owner of rammimages.com, decided to start controlling contents for women when we were kept out of the videos. She references the "Orgy snogging pic with Till" from the FVT DVD that nobody knew the source of or how to watch it. She would send the screenshot to people from her disc.

Women groups realized we couldn't learn about the band, lore, and men through video format on a struggling Internet before YouTube being controlled via Emu. We loved photos and text instead. And with some luck, radio interviews. She invented rammimages.com. Where she recruited translators and friends to get interviews about these six men online. These texts were what we pulled fic ideas from and learned about the members through them. It was all we had. Interviews from TV were never subtitled and if you did find one, it was most likely 300 pixels big in .rm format.

Okay so now that you do understand what women had access to. Do you know what doesn't exist in text interview format during this era? Paulchard. You're not going to find a huge plethora inside the MmeD book about them except some generic ideas. When it comes to founding R+ stories, they're the least interesting part of the story and Richard's explanation of wanting Paul is straightforward about production and experience. They hardly ever have interviews together for many years too. Or it's a whole band interview that doesn't do much. No subs. And once again, making of footage that isn't located on Lichtspielhaus is very rare and DVD bootleg only from what aired on MTV. No subs. Or it's a 2005 interview with them in separate rooms (lol). No subs. They did two rare 2001 interviews, but those only survive in jpg format. Which tells us nothing. And Paul spent basically his whole career refusing to say a name about Mutter and instead always speaking in plural ambiguity and wild metaphors. It's everyone else who tattled that. (How did this become popular a conception? I blame Haifisch doing it and retroactively applying this trope.)

They have a few photos together. Okay, sure. Yet how do you churn out a fic idea from this? With that sort of empty deck of cards for fandom women, hardly anyone wanted to make fics about this subject either between them. Thus you get the state of fics pre-2010; rare pair. What do you expect people to be inspired by? The Ahoi tour's Mein Teil intro or DRSG's bridge and nothing else? You're asking women to whole cloth make it up from imagination like I said. But why do that? In a band fandom, we tend to like to pull from real ideas loosely.

Or you can look at Paul in book/magazine format and see: text ideas about Schneider and Flake constantly, with some Till too. Or you can look at Paul in limited video format and see him in many interviews beside Schneider, Flake, or Olli. Or listen to him on the radio, where he did several appearances with Flake, Till, and Schneider. Yet again. Or the many photos of him with Schneider and Flake online. Huh. Imagine that. Then go look at Paul inside fics pre-2010 and realize why he was paired with who he was most often.

This is what I am saying in fandom illiteracy about text format being lost. Women stopped translating and discussing shipping in text format. This killed "lore". This killed people's appreciation or knowledge about interviews. This directly related to the medium of fandom itself moving into video and gifs due to social media encouraging this. And far away from text and interviews. When you do this, certain pairings will suffer for it. Which is a shame when many pairs have more to offer. Text posts are hated in a fandom. Essays are niche. Interviews go unread. People want visual contents and nothing more than 2-4 sentences. Paulchard thrives under this social media rule to discourage text format, because why have text when you can watch the gif speak 1000 words?

And in many ways, directly relates to how a modern Internet shapes any fandom experience. In this regard, Paulchard is merely an observation about how fans engage with a fandom. The concept represents this shift towards visual mediums and the decline of text. You can watch this also unfold via tumblr gifs by the years. So that when the fandom enters 2016-17 era with the official R+ YT channel and a hype ass tour with modern HD cell phone videos, it's about to launch these guitarists into a trajectory nobody saw coming.

If you want to enjoy Paul/Flake or Paul/Till you have to learn to read book text. Of translations you don't know how to find. Translations that don't appear on Google properly. Many translations are trapped in archives the average person doesn't know how to get to. Most people coming to this fandom for the first time have never heard of rammimages.com before. How can a new fan enjoy these pairings or be inspired to write if she doesn't know where to read about it? So she instead seeks Paulchard, because it's 'easier' and in video/gif format. Not text.

On the IW forum and mailing list, it's very likely they had translations of Mix mir einen Drink guarded there but kept non-public for copyright reasons. Which was a huge concern in the early Internet, and why fanfics used to have "disclaimers". As I said, they have fanfics that have 1980s accuracy references that only comes from direct book sources. The mailing list had over 7,400 posts. Which is a hell of a lot of talking about gay slash. No gifs. No videos. Just text.

How much Emu affected the early Rammstein fandom

Did you think we were also not subjected to the evils of Emu? Wrong. rammimages.com was also taken offline for a while in 2005 due to legal threats before going back up. Largely due to huge public outcry and rage.

Emu was infamous for his controlling issues over the fandom that pissed every single person off ever. He personally destroyed the #1 fansite at the time, rammsteinfan.de and one of the most important sites this fandom had between 2001-04. It was a huge domino chain effect. He refused to let Seb have his site without proprietary access to moderate the forums. He approached Seb in December 2003 wanting to work 'with' him officially. Seb declined the offer. By July 2004, Emu wants to legally take the site away. It drove him insane people liked rammsteinfan.de more than the official Fan Area. And that bothered him so much, he wanted the site for himself to control the traffic, post contents to moderate, and attention it had.

I sometimes wonder if his dismissal in early 2010 was due to issues with Emu's online Internet beliefs since the band finally learned via Pussy that viral videos are godly actually. Paul himself said the video not being on YouTube was special and everyone knows it. Pussy reached 12 million views in mere weeks. This is viral YT levels at the time where 1 million was extremely uncommon. But 12 million?? Insane. The band themselves have even once said pre-LIFAD they don't much care about bootleg VHS stuff. It's only Emu who cared. Pretty sure Paul said it and that's why I know it. I think he said it in 2005, I can dig a source I'm sure.

Here's his ideas about Emu's "logic".

Q: A topic we cannot avoid and which was also was present in the media is the dispute with some fansites. Firstly the site rammsteinfan.de was closed down after a threat with a law-suit of your management and lately you had problems with the English site rammimages.com What’s your opinion?

Paul: The band was not involved in the measures taken against rammsteinfan.de management backed us up. For good or bad I don’t know. About rammimages.com I didn’t know anything until a journalist told me yesterday; the band is not involved here, either. It’s the task of our management to protect us, and maybe they sometimes act a bit harsh. But they just want the best…at least for us. Mostly we don’t know anything, to be honest. If I get to know something I try to explore what’s behind it all. But in my experience most of the times both sides are right in a way. With rammsteinfan.de it seemed as if the bad Rammsteiners were closing down a website, but if such things happen the other party is not totally innocent either. ⟫ Source

Emu and Seb exchanged numerous email chains during the debacle. He has another interview where he later recanted this belief and said the rammsteinfan.de situation was too complicated than believed before. When a situation is such a mess that even Paul cannot salvage or make sense of it... you know it's bad whatever happened in those emails. It's as if he hated us doing anything fandom-like. If this man was still around in 2016-2024 era, this fandom would be absolute torture on social media.

rammimages.com was offline by 2008. RIP. When the site went down in 2008, I remember people asked if it was Emu again. There you go. A mini history lesson for the privileged YouTube people.