There has never been a better time to be a fan. Games, shows, films, books, covering every conceivable property and continuing the story of every beloved character imaginable inundate us daily. And to ensure that your fandom is never bereft of content, podcasts and YouTube videos and listicles cover every facet of every fandom constantly. Extraordinarily comprehensive wikis exist for every imaginable topic – you wanna get the deep dive on Batman? I’ve got you covered. Oh, I’m sorry, you meant Batman specifically? No problem. Wait, you meant Batman specifically as in Batman portrayed by Christian Bale in Nolan’s trilogy? Mate. Don’t even worry about it.
And this hyper-interest does not exist in a vacuum. Across Twitter and Tumblr and Discord and a bewildering array of innumerable web forums exist extraordinarily specific niches; places where one can congregate with fellow nerds and examine the minutiae of their chosen idols. Endlessly turns the wheel as fans explain canon, query dubious narrative choices, and eagerly hunger for news or rumour or speculation concerning their love. Naturally, though, this need not be an abstracted love limited to an invisible online presence. Official and unofficial merchandise galore is but a click away, a chance for you to own your own piece of fandom and to parade it, to wear or display your dedication in a real and tangible and clear fashion.
One might detect a certain cynicism running through all of this, and I may as well lay my cards down at this point. I am deeply, deeply suspicious of modern fandom. I am suspicious of how it manifests, of what it represents, and how it is used. I am suspicious of the camp-forming and the hyperbole it encourages. I’m even suspicious of the sorts of stories and narrative choices contemporary studios and artists are implicitly encouraged to produce by modern fandom.
This feeling of mine may seem hypocritical, and it may seem mean-spirited. To the first, I can only confess that this is inevitably true. I am, of course, blind to my own foibles, and I can only apologise for them. I like to think that I avoid certain pitfalls at least, and have become cleverer about avoiding them…yet doubtless for every pitfall I dodge, a much larger chasm waits to swallow me up.
As for being mean-spirited, this is perhaps the harder accusation to defend, yet I hope it is also less true of me. There is much to be admired about modern fandoms. There is nothing wrong with a passionate love for a thing, nor is there anything wrong with any single thing that I called out above. I find the behaviours of fans to be difficult, sometimes, yet I like fans. I even like fandoms (or at least would perhaps be counted among some). My issues are, hopefully, deeper than being surface-level critiques…and all I can do to that end is to lay them out, and allow you to judge my misanthropy.
So, without further ado, I’d like to talk about my concerns with fandom culture. Because maybe there is something more to them than a determination on my part to be morose – I certainly believe so.
Entitlement & Identity
Gatekeeping has become a dirty word in fandoms and online over time…and, to be clear, rightly so. Yet there persists a slightly more nebulous form of gatekeeping – perhaps even an internalised and self-actualised form. If one is to be a fan, there is an expectation that one be able to demonstrate it in some fashion…preferably multiple. Whether it be attending comic-cons and obtaining precious photos and signatures, gathering merchandise, or simply obsessing over trivia and minutiae, it is not at all atypical for a fan to end up going beyond some sort of abstract love and appreciation in their fandom.
There is, in short, a certain devotion that ends up being practised among and within fandoms. And despite the frequent assurances that one need not demonstrate such devotions, the fact remains that when one sees fellow fans engage in such a manner, a certain fear of missing out develops. Should I, too, be attending that expo? I don’t own any posters with that character – even though I like that character!
Now, again, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with such inclinations. Again, I undeniably tend toward them! Where I think an actual problem can (and frequently does) develop is rather in the investment and sunk cost that often develops as a result of such dedicative behaviours.
Because this, often, is the logical following stage. As a fan, you enjoy something. As a fan, you invest in that thing. And this investment can lead to a sense of entitlement and ownership, or to an inescapable sunk cost inclination.
Neither is inevitable, there are plenty of fans who avoid both! Yet both are nonetheless common and problematic phenonema. In the case of the former, this sense of ownership inevitably leads to dissatisfaction as the media fails to live up to heightened expectations. This is too different to the thing I once liked…no, it’s not different enough, merely a rehashing of old material…no, now it’s a betrayal of the characters I initially fell in love with.
The fannish investment thus forms a sense of ownership that is only marginally supported by critical thought…if at all. I actually do think it’s very healthy to be critical of the things you love – I wish to return to that point later! But this entitlement is critical only in the sense that it forms unduly negative perceptions of that which deviates from whatever material inspired the initial fandom.
In some ways, there is remarkably little separating this entitled fandom from the sunk cost fandom. But where entitlement leads to heavy handed criticism, sunk cost fandom manifests rather as a slavish devotion. I’ve already invested so much time, and money, and thought into this thing…surely that means that this thing is good? If it is not, what does that mean for me as a person? If my choices are that I was “accidentally” loving something bad all this time, or that this thing is actually good and the critics are wrong…what motivation is there for me to carefully reflect upon that initial choice? No, in short, it’s simply not possible that past me made a mistake in loving this thing. Therefore, I cannot be mistaken in it now.
This self over-identification with being “a fan” is perilous yet as with becoming entitled, I think this is not a wholly negative way of engaging with narrative material. Enjoying something is not bad, and enjoying something that is flawed and imperfect and yet gaining a full enjoyment from it is not bad.
But we then see the next step in this process, and (following the brief entitlement/sunk cost divergence) it is once again the same step no matter where on the dichotomy one falls. From entitlement or sunk cost comes camp forming and echo chambers.
This camp forming, pitching one’s banner with this or that side, is something hardly unique to fandoms…I do not think it is a brave or controversial statement to claim that the modern internet is plagued by it! Left wing or right wing, religious or atheist, this or that sporting team, artist, franchise, whatever…the inclination of the internet toward extremism is an issue for many outside of pop culture. Yet in a way, pop culture is a very useful lens for consideration of this phenomenon, too – for what is an unthinking devotion to a political party or a football team if not a fandom?
So one engages with a franchise, and finds people who feel likewise. Then, when those people push a boundary, one is more likely to accept their word – there has previously been agreement, after all, so it is likely that one agrees with this too. Simultaneously, the extremists of the “other” side become more and more visible, and the disagreements become more and more vitriolic. No rational person can agree with this position…and so the “other” becomes wholly derationalised, even as one slides further into irrationality and groupthink.
You might notice that I’m being circumspect with my language here, and this is deliberate. For the “negative” fans (or haters, or critics, call them what you will) of media properties are themselves fandoms. They have found enjoyment in the criticism, and have tribalised about the criticisms. There is, at this point, very little difference between what “side” one has found oneself on. Further, there is very little difference in the conduct of the extremists on either side, though there may be relatively few extremists…which, in turn, begets the perception of each side that the entirety other is angry, irrational, even vicious.
No True Fan
This othering also frequently and explicitly comes into play, through the conception of what a “true” fan ought to be, or how they ought to conduct themselves. To take Tolkien as an example for a moment, it is not at all infrequent to see Tolkien fans argue what a real Tolkien fan should or shouldn’t be. A real Tolkien fan shouldn’t be racist, or should be Christian, or shouldn’t be unkind, or should be accepting.
All of this is nonsense. A real Tolkien fan can be any or none of those things, and many more. To be clear, they may not be a very nice person if they are racist! Or at best, they may have some serious introspection and improvement that they ought to do. But racists can be and are real Tolkien fans. As are all sorts of people, whether they are good or bad or mostly a bit of a muddle of both.
The “no true Scotsman” fallacy (for that is what this identification of true fans is) is an insidious one, for several reasons. First, it identifies some sort of moral or absolute quality with rather more subjective (and often entirely disconnected) interests. Second, it furthers that “othering” – if I am told that I, as a Tolkien fan, am not a true Tolkien fan, that does not make me inclined to give fair consideration to the other party’s further points, however worthwhile they might be. Finally, it is a lazy and intellectually dishonest way to dismiss someone else’s ideas. Why listen to them, when they aren’t really a fan at all?
And so fandoms splinter and buckle and fracture, internally and externally alike. Indeed, the internal issues are just as troublesome as the external, since the “us vs them” paradigm generates fear amongst the “us.” If I misstep, if I fail to toe the party line, if I make an error, maybe I’ll be forced out into the wilderness where “they” are…and I fear them. Better, by far, not to cause trouble. And so fandoms segregate and congregate and settle into their own little echo chambers, disturbed only when their echo chamber violently collides with another. There is nothing healthy about this tendency. And the slow inclination of fandoms away from external dialogue and away from dialogue that may be challenging manifests clearly in a general lack of understanding within fandoms of the merits of criticism. But, before I deal with this, I also wanted to touch on a further fandom issue that is also primarily caused by the facility of the internet.
Lore and Elitism
Much of what I’ve described thus far is facilitated by the era of instantaneous and geographically uninhibited communication that we find ourselves in. It is, of course, no bad thing to be able to find one’s tribe through social media and to be able to speak with like-minded people. The issues lie rather with the underlying tribal dynamics that this fosters and amplifies. However, I have a further suspicion of how the internet fosters negative fandom culture traits, by way of the information that is propagated and easily spread through it.
In short, the internet has made it terrifyingly simple for anyone to be an “expert” in any field. This, again, is no bad thing in isolation, and very often can be a good thing. Yet it is also often perverted or misunderstood, to the detriment of fandoms as a whole.
Take, for example, a typical obsession found across many fandoms – the obsession with lore. I’ve obliquely ranted about this before, and believe my internal feelings on the matter are only clearer now. Lore is, in short, a fandom menace, a set of facts and figures and trivia that are near-wholly useless devoid of their context. Yet to many people within fandoms, the “lore” is paramount, and I would contend that it is precisely due to its accessibility and ease of comprehensibility.
To turn back to Tolkien, I know of many people who are fans of the “lore” he wrote. Not of the stories, or of the ideas, or of the prose. The lore. Often, they have not read the books, or only passingly. Their knowledge of the lore comes from YouTube, from wikis, from fellow lore nerds discussing trivia and minutiae ad nauseam. They are interested in things like cameos, connections, trivial pieces of worldbuilding…rather than the works themselves.
Having positioned myself against gatekeeping above, it would be hypocritical for me to claim that these people are not true Tolkien fans, so I will not do so. I will posit, though, that they are exceedingly shallow Tolkien fans, and that (worse still) they do not realise it and believe themselves exceedingly knowledgeable. This facade of banal knowledge becomes an overwhelming front of credibility, as those who know “the lore” are more generally accepted as being actual experts and scholars, rather than glorified walking encyclopaedias. And, furthermore, the illusion becomes such that to many people, it seems as if the lore is all that is worth knowing.
Again, to be clear, I do not think that there is anything wrong with knowing lots of lore, or even with loving it! My concern is rather with the undue elevation granted to lore, to the exclusion and lack of consideration of anything else, including things that are both worthier of deeper interrogation and that may actually possess definable qualitative merits (such as theme or structure). Lore, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad…it’s just information. It is what the storyteller does with the information that is interesting, and how the audience interprets that doing. The lore itself is sterile and uninterpretative – which, I suspect, is part of its appeal to fandoms. There’s no need for nuance nor for critical thought if every meaningful question can be answered with a “yes” or a “no,” after all.
This edification of lore is further problematic when considered from the perspective of the media creators (at least the major ones), in that it encourages them to focus on lore to the detriment of all else. Lore, the studios have learned, provides engagement. It generates free advertising for them, by virtue of the myriad videos and articles that are generated spotting connections and factoids with every trailer, episode and new release.
Which means, in turn, that they are incentivised to include as much “lore” as possible…to include as many tidbits and cameos and connections as are feasible, with other trivial issues such as pacing and theme and character being secondary. (This lore obsession also encourages the tired mystery box style stories so favoured at present, as each fresh mystery begets speculation and engagement from the fandom – but this, arguably, is a question for a different essay.)
Further, you may have noticed that in all the commentary above, I have positioned this free promotion and advertising and engagement as being solely a good thing for the studios. Counterintuitively, I think that this is true even in the case of negative and vitriolic engagement. To a studio, engagement and content are equally useful whether they are positive or negative – and so they are encouraged to foster both. Indeed, both are arguably better than a mostly positive reception, in that the “fans” and the “haters” feed off each other far more effectively than if there is an imbalance of one.
To return for a moment to the accessibility of information and lore to fandoms, there is a further issue that I have not yet touched on yet, and it is a somewhat ironic problem, given my disdain for the worship of lore. Namely, that it is in general far simpler to turn to wikis and recap videos for these lore doses than it is to actually engage with the source material…and so many people end up receiving their precious lore information through second hand reports, and not through the primary sources. This, naturally, is a prime mechanism for the spreading of misinformation, misinterpretation and speculation.
To be fair, there are some fandom creators who are very good about “showing their work;” about presenting their information with sources to back it up and with clear warnings when they are straying into speculation or interpretation. Yet most, I think, are very bad at this. Most fandom creators present interpretation and opinion as fact, or fail to properly illustrate what degree of authority a particular statement has. I would also contend that the best fandom creators produce material that is ancillary to the source material and/or that is illustrative of it, rather than being descriptive. The tendency to produce and present material that supplants the source material is baffling to me. It cannot be so very hard (if you are a fan of something especially) to engage with it directly, rather than turning to some secondary interpreter – at least, I think it cannot be.
Yet the popularity of recaps and lore explanations and “did you notice” videos and articles speaks against this. The only conclusion that I can draw is that such secondary sources are popular not because of any great insight that they provide, but because the material they present is so easily digestible and permits the illusion of more serious engagement. Or to put it yet another way, such reiterative material is not bad in and of itself. But it is too often confused with being either a replacement for the source works (the actual books and films and games) or for being rather more intellectually meritorious than it is. It is this confusion and misunderstanding within fandoms that I find deeply concerning.
And to return to the question of misleading intermediary interpretations in such material, even those content creators who are more rigorous in their citations and in distinguishing between fact, interpretation and opinion within their work (up to and including academics) may themselves be removed from context and caution through fandom readings of their material…which, to be clear, is through no fault of their own! But it is a fault with fandoms that, by and large, do not appreciate the actual nuance, qualification and criticality that is often required for deeper readings and observations.
Criticism & Academic Criticism
A related issue is the perniciously common fandom opinion that “true” fans are the only people qualified to write, produce and create media within their fandom. Quite apart from the pitfalls of determining whether someone is a “true” fan as described above, this also results in clear biases against critical engagement and against the recognition of artistic craft, merit and skill in favour of some nebulous “passion.”
I do not doubt that much of the best art is made with passion. Yet it cannot be reduced to that either – there is an extraordinary degree of skill and technicality and labour that goes into even the merest artistic work. But this is in fandom circles discounted in favour of whether a particular writer, director or even actor is sufficiently “passionate” enough, resulting in a clear and persistent refusal to engage with technical criticisms. Further, those who do have legitimately considered criticisms are themselves often indiscriminately counted amongst those “critics” whose criticisms lack structure.
To turn again to Tolkien for a moment (as this blog is wont to do), the all too common rallying cry concerning The Rings of Power that the showrunners and writers “don’t care about the source material” may or may not be accurate. But that is near-impossible to judge from the show itself, and is further a useless accusation. Useless, and counterproductive, in that for anyone involved in The Rings of Power who does love the source material (and I do not doubt that there are many!) they are “othered” by a significant portion of the fandom…and in turn, the other major portion of the fandom (those who love the show) is less likely to heed the very serious and sincere criticisms of the show that do exist, and to react with extreme suspicion and rank-closing to any such negative observations, no matter how valid.
Speaking of validity, this, too, is a troublingly fandom tendency – to debate and ascribe “validity” or authority to any given adaption, sequel, or extension. This, again, tends to fall into two opposed and identical camps – purists and individualists. But the weapons employed and arguments used by each are broadly similar. Both sides will turn to authorial appeals for validity, and both will engage not with whether something is good or not, but whether something should exist or not…again, at the cost of any actual consideration of a work’s own merits.
This, perhaps, is yet another reason why canon and lore are such fandom buzzwords – because knowing lore (or at least seeming to) lends validity to a commentator, and to their views. Further, given what I once wrote about The Rings of Power, one might assume that I tend toward a “purist” standpoint…I like to think I do not. My feeling concerning The Rings of Power is that it is wholly disconnected from Tolkien in that it is a novel work, and that its merits should be judged independently of judging Tolkien’s merits. One can certainly make an appeal to Tolkien’s source material in discussing changes and concurrences, but such appeals should really be engaged not in weighing The Rings of Power against some divinely perfected standard, but in considering the merits of each against the other.
I do not think that there are many fans or haters of The Rings of Power who engage in such consideration, though. By and large (though not always) the fans point out thin comparisons and the haters illustrate thin divergences. Neither are useful nor productive.
And to be clear, this is no criticism of the communities that surround The Rings of Power. This, as I hope my material indicates, is a criticism concerning fandom communities of all sorts, including those that love or loathe Amazon’s attempt at a Tolkien adaption. There are many good fans of all sorts of things. There are great communities that exist within fandoms. But, as monolithic entities, I am extremely suspicious of fandoms…and concerned with the lack of introspection concerning their worst tendencies and how those tendencies influence not only discourse within fandoms but also the types of stories and priorities that creatives are driven to pursue in order to meet corporate successes.
I admire the passion that drives these fandoms and fans. It is a noble thing and not to be discouraged and I would feel unduly negatory and churlish if I did not acknowledge this. I do try to keep this blog a moderately insightful and mostly positive space, and I hope this post does not wholly err from that.
I admire the passion. But I am leery of passion masquerading as knowledge, and leerier still when the masquerade is unintentional and unacknowledged. Passion and immersion are grand things, and there is nothing wrong with loving (or even hating) a thing viscerally and with commitment. But fandoms, all too often, mistake this passion for authority, and mistake confidence and surface level trivia for understanding and knowledge. And that, ultimately, is what keeps me from admiring much of modern fandom.
A Coda on Sportsball
A final word, if you will, on a final comparison. A comparison that may well seem deeply ironic, given the common nerd/geek reaction to sport and sport fans. For many (not all!) nerds and geeks cheerfully talk down about sports, deliberately highlighting the meaningless futility of it and the comical seriousness with which it is treated.
Yet as I mentioned before, the blind fandom love is very much like the blind passion a sports fan might have…but the comparisons go far deeper, too. Because a game of football, ironically, may be “meaningless” – yet it is just as meaningless as any movie when considered coldly and scientifically.
Further, the passion and perceived drama that a sporting event possesses is, in itself, an entry into a Faeriean world. The immersion and belief that a fan possesses while watching an athlete or team engaged in competition is in and of itself a Secondary World, subcreated not by ink and thought but by physicality and rules. And if this comparison seems glib or unconvincing to you, know that it is not my comparison (though it is a comparison that I wholly agree with)…it is Tolkien’s:
Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker’s art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story- maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
A real enthusiast for cricket is in the enchanted state: Secondary Belief. I, when I watch a match, am on the lower level. I can achieve (more or less) willing suspension of disbelief, when I am held there and supported by some other motive that will keep away boredom: for instance, a wild, heraldic, preference for dark blue rather than light. This suspension of disbelief may thus be a somewhat tired, shabby, or sentimental state of mind, and so lean to the “adult.” I fancy it is often the state of adults in the presence of a fairy-story. They are held there and supported by sentiment (memories of childhood, or notions of what childhood ought to be like); they think they ought to like the tale. But if they really liked it, for itself, they would not have to suspend disbelief: they would believe—in this sense.
On Fairy Stories, by J.R.R. Tolkien
There is, I suspect, only one great difference between sports fans and media fans. For both find themselves elevated into a willing belief when entering their chosen Secondary World. Both become understandably passionate and irrational in their defence of these Secondary Worlds. It is ultimately irrational for me to desire that the blue teams wins that the red might suffer, just as it is irrational for me to enjoy Star Wars and be indifferent to Star Trek, or for me to deeply care about an adaption’s alteration of lore. There is nothing at stake here, and yet fans care.
The great difference, I think, is that many sports fans have a keener awareness of the irrationality of their passion than many media fans. Sports fans understand that they are ultimately tribal beings in a way that I think few fans of media ever do. And it is that veneer of knowledge covering a bare lack of knowledge that ultimately concerns me about modern fandoms. Perhaps we could learn something, however small, from sport fans.
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