Fandom Shame
Regularly on F!S somebody posts a secret about how they've made it out of fandom and discovered that elusive "real life" by walking out their front door into the sunshine and it's awesome. And even though they denied it before, now they can admit that their time spent in fandom always really was a pathetic way of hiding from real life. Now that they don't care about fandom anymore (phew!) they can post that .jpeg to tell other people about it. It's almost as if you're not truly not a nerd anymore if you don't make it clear to other nerds that you find them pitiable now.
I mean, seriously? Because let's unpack that secret. To start with we should admit that there actually are people for whom the internet is the only kind of interaction they can have, or at least the easiest. I met a woman recently who was talking about discovering a chat room. She was a grandmother whose epilepsy had suddenly gotten worse to the point she was having 30 seizures a day without warning and leaving the house was dangerous. She was grateful that via the internet she could have contact with people. She still wanted to be able to interact with people in the physical world, go back to work etc. But she's an example of someone who really can't easily interact with people where they are physically and is finding a healthy alternative with the internet, where they can interact with people without having to do that much physically. The same goes for people with different mental conditions or just life circumstances that are isolating for one reason or another. (Making it rather ironic that the way they've found to over come their limitations and be social anyway then gets accused of being the reason they're not social.)
In my experience, far from being a substitute for real life, internet interaction is helpful to real life interactions. This is just speaking for myself, of course, but for example, on the 'net I got used to speaking to people with different speaking styles, and because I had more control over what I said and when, I often chose to continue discussions that IRL I would have dropped at the first sign of awkwardness or discomfort. I can't strictly say how this affected the way I behaved with people in the physical world, but it felt like a difference.
But what I really wanted to talk about was just this obvious SHAME thing that always seems so present in fandom. I haven't met too many people online that I know of who had any kind of social handicap. Mostly I meet married women with children. Also many single women, some of whom with boyfriends or girlfriends, all of whom have careers of some sort. I've also met straight men and gay men, with or without partners at different times. Trans men and women, also with families, jobs, sometimes a current S.O. The only thing they really have in common is an interest in whatever fictional thing they're a fan of and so like to talk about/write about. Sure I've come across some people that fit some of the fandom stereotypes--not usually all of them at once, but one or two things at a time. But there are few enough of them that they don't seem representative of the whole. Oh, and I've probably met a higher percentage of talented writers and artists in fandom, for obvious reasons. It's a hobby centered on fiction and art.
The *fear* of being that stereotype seems very prevalent, though: regular F!S where people announce that they have finally achieved the ability to "go outside and play" and are now the adult version of popular, constant lookout for "wank," "get a life" "move out of your mom's basement" and "never seen a grown man/woman naked" comments in arguments, distinctions between fandom and real life, viewing acquaintances that end when you no longer share a fandom as proof that fandom acquaintance is empty--and the responding defiant pride. Fandom just really seems stalked by the knowledge, whether defied, denied or accepted, that we're doing something socially pathetic.
On one level it's not surprising. I was thinking recently about what things in modern society you really want to avoid, and the geek stereotype seems like the embodiment of it. It just stands against so many messages of the ideal: the fandom stereotype is an unattractive social and sexual failure. Which is kind of interesting given that the nerd character has really risen in stature. In the last century, especially the first part of it, the nerd character would probably never get the girl in a movie (I don't think somebody like Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby really counts as a real nerd). And I can't remember the last time I read a celebrity actually admit to being anything like popular in high school, since that's come to be sort of synonymous with 'bitch'--more of a guilty pleasure as a character than something one should aspire to be. Nowadays we want the hero/heroine to be/have been the misfit in high school-usually the kind who was a misfit because they were so much cooler and smarter than all the drones.
But seeing all that "Am I Comic Book Guy?" anxiety under the surface I can't help but wonder if other hobbies are the same way. I suspect they all do have their own shame versions of themselves, I just don't know if they're quite so obsessed with it. For instance, I don't know much about sports but from what I do know I would guess the stereotypical pathetic sports fan is the guy who criticizes players while having little to know athletic ability or even physical fitness. I'm sure there are times where sports fans call each other on this, but I don't know if they police themselves as carefully as fandom does. I mean, it's one thing to occasionally laugh at middle aged Joe's claims that he would have made that basket that whatever NBA star he's criticizing missed, and another to want Joe to know you really think he's wrong to get that carried away. Or having official venues to publically criticize Joe's behavior en masse. Do they so often feel its their duty to wonder if time spent thinking about baseball literally did not count as living?
Or...I wouldn't be surprised if, say, stage mothers who put their kids in beauty contests regularly have catty conversations about how a particular mother pushes her kid too hard, but I wonder if the idea they're all pathetic women who wish they could be beauty queens themselves and instead use their kids as extensions of their own worth (if that's the stereotype--don't know much about that world) is quite so present in their own minds in every interaction that they have.
I guess the difference is that it seems to me that when it comes to geek culture the greatest fear is already imposed on the community from the outside to the point where it's not even questioned. I'm talking about the fear that you are really an embarrassment. Fandom is linked to lack of important social skills far more irrevocably than interest in sports is linked to some social taboo. But that link is somewhat arbitrary. Not because it's false but because it's so defining for the whole hobby even by the people who share the hobby. You can't really enter fandom without being aware of the potential social implications and to some extent internalizing them.
I mean, seriously? Because let's unpack that secret. To start with we should admit that there actually are people for whom the internet is the only kind of interaction they can have, or at least the easiest. I met a woman recently who was talking about discovering a chat room. She was a grandmother whose epilepsy had suddenly gotten worse to the point she was having 30 seizures a day without warning and leaving the house was dangerous. She was grateful that via the internet she could have contact with people. She still wanted to be able to interact with people in the physical world, go back to work etc. But she's an example of someone who really can't easily interact with people where they are physically and is finding a healthy alternative with the internet, where they can interact with people without having to do that much physically. The same goes for people with different mental conditions or just life circumstances that are isolating for one reason or another. (Making it rather ironic that the way they've found to over come their limitations and be social anyway then gets accused of being the reason they're not social.)
In my experience, far from being a substitute for real life, internet interaction is helpful to real life interactions. This is just speaking for myself, of course, but for example, on the 'net I got used to speaking to people with different speaking styles, and because I had more control over what I said and when, I often chose to continue discussions that IRL I would have dropped at the first sign of awkwardness or discomfort. I can't strictly say how this affected the way I behaved with people in the physical world, but it felt like a difference.
But what I really wanted to talk about was just this obvious SHAME thing that always seems so present in fandom. I haven't met too many people online that I know of who had any kind of social handicap. Mostly I meet married women with children. Also many single women, some of whom with boyfriends or girlfriends, all of whom have careers of some sort. I've also met straight men and gay men, with or without partners at different times. Trans men and women, also with families, jobs, sometimes a current S.O. The only thing they really have in common is an interest in whatever fictional thing they're a fan of and so like to talk about/write about. Sure I've come across some people that fit some of the fandom stereotypes--not usually all of them at once, but one or two things at a time. But there are few enough of them that they don't seem representative of the whole. Oh, and I've probably met a higher percentage of talented writers and artists in fandom, for obvious reasons. It's a hobby centered on fiction and art.
The *fear* of being that stereotype seems very prevalent, though: regular F!S where people announce that they have finally achieved the ability to "go outside and play" and are now the adult version of popular, constant lookout for "wank," "get a life" "move out of your mom's basement" and "never seen a grown man/woman naked" comments in arguments, distinctions between fandom and real life, viewing acquaintances that end when you no longer share a fandom as proof that fandom acquaintance is empty--and the responding defiant pride. Fandom just really seems stalked by the knowledge, whether defied, denied or accepted, that we're doing something socially pathetic.
On one level it's not surprising. I was thinking recently about what things in modern society you really want to avoid, and the geek stereotype seems like the embodiment of it. It just stands against so many messages of the ideal: the fandom stereotype is an unattractive social and sexual failure. Which is kind of interesting given that the nerd character has really risen in stature. In the last century, especially the first part of it, the nerd character would probably never get the girl in a movie (I don't think somebody like Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby really counts as a real nerd). And I can't remember the last time I read a celebrity actually admit to being anything like popular in high school, since that's come to be sort of synonymous with 'bitch'--more of a guilty pleasure as a character than something one should aspire to be. Nowadays we want the hero/heroine to be/have been the misfit in high school-usually the kind who was a misfit because they were so much cooler and smarter than all the drones.
But seeing all that "Am I Comic Book Guy?" anxiety under the surface I can't help but wonder if other hobbies are the same way. I suspect they all do have their own shame versions of themselves, I just don't know if they're quite so obsessed with it. For instance, I don't know much about sports but from what I do know I would guess the stereotypical pathetic sports fan is the guy who criticizes players while having little to know athletic ability or even physical fitness. I'm sure there are times where sports fans call each other on this, but I don't know if they police themselves as carefully as fandom does. I mean, it's one thing to occasionally laugh at middle aged Joe's claims that he would have made that basket that whatever NBA star he's criticizing missed, and another to want Joe to know you really think he's wrong to get that carried away. Or having official venues to publically criticize Joe's behavior en masse. Do they so often feel its their duty to wonder if time spent thinking about baseball literally did not count as living?
Or...I wouldn't be surprised if, say, stage mothers who put their kids in beauty contests regularly have catty conversations about how a particular mother pushes her kid too hard, but I wonder if the idea they're all pathetic women who wish they could be beauty queens themselves and instead use their kids as extensions of their own worth (if that's the stereotype--don't know much about that world) is quite so present in their own minds in every interaction that they have.
I guess the difference is that it seems to me that when it comes to geek culture the greatest fear is already imposed on the community from the outside to the point where it's not even questioned. I'm talking about the fear that you are really an embarrassment. Fandom is linked to lack of important social skills far more irrevocably than interest in sports is linked to some social taboo. But that link is somewhat arbitrary. Not because it's false but because it's so defining for the whole hobby even by the people who share the hobby. You can't really enter fandom without being aware of the potential social implications and to some extent internalizing them.