Fandom: My Insights

What does it mean to be a fan

An important question is what is a fan? Everyone likes something but what makes one a fan or even more a fan boy? It is a love of a brand, a product, a person, anything really. One can be a fan from everything from Nature, to computers, to spirits and the paranormal. There is nothing that is out of the reach of the love that is fandom.

What brought us to being a fan? It was something that sparked this love in our hearts and minds. Maybe it was an influential person in your life, maybe it was something someone said, maybe it was a chance encounter, maybe it was just something you were even born with (are anime fans made or are they born?), maybe it was something as mundane (as mundane as love can be) as trying something and falling in love with it. The list of what would stretch on for thousands sentences with endless combination but we as fans all know what made us fans.

My Insights

I am a fan and even at times a fan boy but my devotion is not blind but instead earned and maintained. It does not mean that they who I am a fan of have a blank pass to do as they please but are instead heal dot a higher standard for the praise they receive.

This is what made us fans and fan boys in the first place, a great product, service, or etcetera. It was not because we one day woke up and decided to give our following to a particular article of anything. It was through something we loved, something we admired, something that we believed was worth praise and our love.

Yet many have forgotten the why and now only offer blind praise, blind support, blind love and let whomever go about as they please, trashing our favorite series, acting in a manner that is not acceptable, or going against the very principles that made us say “this guy knows what he is talking about!”

When this happens our recourse is only but one thing, a reevaluation of our devotion, not blind action. Do we stop listening to someone talk? Do we stop buying from that particular series or something made by that particular company? Do we stop shopping at that particular store? And the list goes on. Maybe just maybe there is a time when our fandom must come to an end; this doesn’t mean we stop loving the earlier products or the memories for they shall be loved in our hearts forever. Though that is the past and this is now and if you want our fandom it should be earned, not expected.