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Fandom in today’s world is a transaction where the individual trades their power for a sense of belonging. We’ve been doing it wrong. A thread. 1/
First, two premises: A) fandom has changed over time. B) the new fandom is not inherently bad, but it IS dangerous. Because, while it creates positive spaces for humans who need them, it also turns the creator/gatekeeper role into a position with potential for abuse. 2/
So, where did we begin? When the world was less fragmented and not in the always-on floodlights of the internet, people made their own favorites out of things they discovered. That discovery was personal, and largely done in isolation or very small groups. 3/
For example, people discovered they loved horror by happening on some on TV, or from a parent, or at a friend’s house one night. Then they rented movies from the video store or borrowed films, and each lead them closer to what they liked the best. 4/
A Fulci fan in this era – let’s call it early fandom – was probably the only one s/he/they knew. If you discovered over time you loved a director, a series or a production company, you did it on your own, or through maybe one other friend. 5/
So, key difference A) your fandom didn’t come with expectations. You didn’t have to prove you were a “True Fan,” to a mass of other people who were measuring fandom like cult commitment. 6/
Also, it was one-way. To be a fan didn’t require you to react to direction from Fulci himself to be able to feel that special connection. You didn’t know Lucio Fulci, have any chance of meeting him, didn’t know what he had for breakfast, who he feuded with or his politics. 7/
Last, you didn’t get to engage your fanhood very often. King writes like a bat out of hell, but you were still only getting one book a year (or every decade, if you were waiting for Wizard and Glass). 8/
Sigourney was only Ripley every seven years. If you loved anime, you relied on the Books Nippon Japanese Animation Fan Club for any little taste you could get. 9/
So early fandom was characterized by individual discoveries, inaccessible creators and infrequent content. Solo and sometimes. Being a fan meant you’d discovered something YOU liked. It was about your identity, what made you you. It wasn’t so much about membership in a club. 10/
That changed when we entered the information era. Things like the internet, fan conventions, streaming, and creator social media accounts collapsed the distance between fans/creators/content/one another in a Great Aggregation. This mutated fandom in two important ways. 11/
First, fandom became directly connected to the creator. Where before you were a fan of their work, now you were a fan of a conflation of the person and the product (or “art”). Like some Cronenbergian horror, they melted together and became indistinguishable. 12/
(Now, this was a very good development for many makers, like @BrianKeene, who could consolidate their following into leverage with distributors, and go direct-to-market with product, cutting out the profit-swallowing middle folk. But it was a seismic power dynamic shift.) 13/
Most important here was the new, intoxicating potential of INTERACTING with your favorite ~whatever~ was and is one of the most powerful lures in fandom. It’s a tectonic force, and it is dangerous in its potential for abuse, and it is transferable (more on that in a bit). 14/
Second, being a fan stopped being part of your PSYCHOLOGICAL identity and became a SOCIAL membership. Once, it was enough for you to like Argento, and have your favorite Argento movie, and to have some understanding of giallo history. That made you an Argento fan. 15/
But now, whether you were a fan or not wasn’t entirely up to you. Other people got a say: the thousands or millions of other Argento fans who were coming together as a class. Criteria for “true” fanhood emerged in the form of social pressure, gatekeeping and policing. 16/
This shift is CRUCIAL to all that comes later. How could people who, in their bedrooms and at Walden Books and drive-ins, had independently made personal discoveries – how could they be told by someone else they weren’t loving, say, Terry Gilliam or Terry Brooks “correctly”? 17/
The answer: because there is almost no force in humans more primal or powerful than the need to belong. We made those discoveries based on our own tastes and experiences. But the chance to join a tribe through them is appealing enough that we'll bend to fit in. 18/
So we'd gone from distant creators, infrequent content and self-determined fanhood to present creators, instant content and membership criteria. The private feeling of discovering something only you know and love had become a ticket to a cool kids club – if you’d conform. 19/
In this mix, we frogs boiled ourselves in the sweet nectar of belonging and access. We gave away our power without valuing it. We agreed to participate in a transaction without understanding the currency we were using to pay. Fandom became a race to The Most. 20/
Part of that was commercial: paying for access at conventions (not inherently bad!), having the rarest VHS or plushie. It was also about proving yourself: knowing the most minutia about the thing, adhering to the most popular interpretation, being a fan the longest. 21/
Somehow, what brought us together became a competition where we tried to out-fan the people who loved the same thing we did. We pulled True Scotsman nonsense on other fans to make our own feel more special. 22/
(In our argument, this is the line, right here. This is where we could have had a much healthier approach to fandom. We missed our chance the first go-round, but it’s not too late. We can change it.) 23/
Why is this atmosphere unhealthy? Because what should be inclusive and welcoming becomes threatening. It’s fucking Church of England all over again, and everyone’s living under constant threat of excommunication. 24/
We fans – many of whom didn’t have a lot of friends, didn’t fit in, worried about socializing – saw our thing turned against us. Now we were worried about getting rejected and ostracized because we weren’t The Most Fan? 25/cont.
