Shakespeare keeps popping up in examples, but does it change if we look at his reception during his own time?
The same with Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or Dune or Stephen King or Charles Dickens or Tangrams or Hot Pants. We talk about fandom as being here and now but fandom has certainly existed before now. People flock to certain objects. Trying to say that some of the flocking is distinguished by the word “fandom” and that “fandom” means that the flocked-to item has a bad quality seems… petty.
People flock to good things. People flock to bad things. People defend good things. People defend bad things. People argue about which things to flock toward. If we took software piracy as an object of flocking, would it qualify as an object of fandom? It fits the description: It has easy to attack “badness” that is controversial. Untold numbers are obsessed with it while most of the fanbase really doesn’t care all that much. When new things to pirate arrive there is a frenzy to get it as soon as possible. I suppose there is no piracy convention… and I am sure no one in the world would call the pirates a fanbase. But why?
I guess my point can be bullet-pointed as such:
People flocking to an object does not imply a fandom
People flocking to a bad object does not imply a fandom
Fandom implies people flocking to an object
The question being asked is: Does fandom imply people flocking to a bad object?
The question I am asking is: Why are we studying fandom instead of flocking?
Instead of looking for examples of fandom that flock around non-bad objects we should be wondering what makes people flock to bad and non-bad objects. “Fandom” is a loaded social term. Trying to get a strict definition of “fandom” is pointlessly controversial.
What confuses me here is the use of ‘convention’. Yes, Shakespeare has conventions. (So does Joyce. So does Wagner. I bet so does Bach.) He has had hundreds of them, if not thousands. His hometown’s economy is apparently built on them. It’s just that we don’t use the word ‘convention’, we use synonyms like ‘conference’ and ‘festival’.
Do they have fandoms? Do the fandoms have conventions?
Did they have fandoms?
Shakespeare keeps popping up in examples, but does it change if we look at his reception during his own time?
The same with Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or Dune or Stephen King or Charles Dickens or Tangrams or Hot Pants. We talk about fandom as being here and now but fandom has certainly existed before now. People flock to certain objects. Trying to say that some of the flocking is distinguished by the word “fandom” and that “fandom” means that the flocked-to item has a bad quality seems… petty.
People flock to good things. People flock to bad things. People defend good things. People defend bad things. People argue about which things to flock toward. If we took software piracy as an object of flocking, would it qualify as an object of fandom? It fits the description: It has easy to attack “badness” that is controversial. Untold numbers are obsessed with it while most of the fanbase really doesn’t care all that much. When new things to pirate arrive there is a frenzy to get it as soon as possible. I suppose there is no piracy convention… and I am sure no one in the world would call the pirates a fanbase. But why?
I guess my point can be bullet-pointed as such:
People flocking to an object does not imply a fandom
People flocking to a bad object does not imply a fandom
Fandom implies people flocking to an object
The question being asked is: Does fandom imply people flocking to a bad object?
The question I am asking is: Why are we studying fandom instead of flocking?
Instead of looking for examples of fandom that flock around non-bad objects we should be wondering what makes people flock to bad and non-bad objects. “Fandom” is a loaded social term. Trying to get a strict definition of “fandom” is pointlessly controversial.
What confuses me here is the use of ‘convention’. Yes, Shakespeare has conventions. (So does Joyce. So does Wagner. I bet so does Bach.) He has had hundreds of them, if not thousands. His hometown’s economy is apparently built on them. It’s just that we don’t use the word ‘convention’, we use synonyms like ‘conference’ and ‘festival’.