In my thirty plus years on this earth, I have been a part of many fandoms: I counted myself a frequent visitor to Sesame Street. I knew all the lyrics and maybe a dance routine or two from Newsies. (And yes, that’s the Christian Bale classic that he would like to forget. Never, Christian. I will never forget, Jack “Cowboy” Kelly.)
Twenty-four years later, and this still turns me on.
For my entire eighteenth year on this planet, my eyes were permanently swollen from seeing Rose not move over and put Jack on that damn door. (Of course you took the entire door, you spoiled brat.)
I read The Twilight Series multiple times, saw the movies -at least twice for each, downloaded the soundtracks, and bought all five DVDs for those Saturday nights rainy days.
I thought that to be a fan, you simply had to like the actor, buy the album, read the newest book. Maybe you saw the movie twice, put the album on repeat for so long you knew the number of seconds of silence between songs, dogeared that book so much every page had the same indentation. And sometimes that didn’t happen but you still considered yourself an admirer.
But this past year, I have come to realize something about me: I’m a horrible fan, and I’m perfectly happy with that.
Now this isn’t my way of fishing for a compliment or some type of confession, which is usually associated with some type of guilt or shame. I just feel that the certain fandoms that I am a part of have morphed into a monster on a deadly combination of steroids, hormones, and caffeine pills – some Jessie “I’m So Excited” Spano hard shit.
So, what makes me a content, horrible fan? Here’s just some of my anti-fan manifesto.
I Refuse to Fanguard
Unless you eschewed all forms of social media, entertainment and walked around with noise canceling headphones on, chances are you know that Beyonce released Lemonade, also known as the album that most likely made Jay-Z shit his pants and wear a sports cup under his $200 boxer briefs. In the song “Sorry,” Queen Bey calls out a cheating lover and “Becky with the good hair.” The hive immediately swarmed in defense of their queen and attacked not one but three different women who all supposedly fit that ever so vivid description of “good hair.”
And who was among the attacked? Rachael Ray. That’s right. They mistook the woman who doesn’t have time to pronounce cooking staples or meals over 30 minutes for designer Rachel Roy, who may or may not have had an affair with Jay-Z. Wow. You told her.
To be fair to Beyonce fans, her hair does look good here.
But this incident is just one of my problems with certain fandoms: the belief that celebrities – whether they are actors, musicians, or even authors – can’t hold their own in their private lives and need fans to dive bomb suspects with vitriolic tweets. Or even worse: tattle tale on others to that celebrity.
First, we’re all adults. Second, what’s the purpose? To put the offender in a time out? Go to the thinking corner and reflect on what happened?
Now some will say to me, “Well, how else do you show support for that person?” Um, why not support them through positive means – buy the album, watch the film, read the book, send them a tweet that has heart emojis and perhaps a haiku of your appreciation.
Those were dark times but I couldn't stop dancing to Outkast with all the spandex I had on.
— James Franco Poetry (@FrancoPoetry) December 28, 2012
But being a fandom hall monitor? Count me out.
I’m Practicing My Right to Abstain
I know you’ve seen them before: the tweets usually accompanied by a meme and the reminder that you still need to vote and that there is still time. Your Twitter feed is filled with one after the other. The memes become more and more ostentatious as the polls reach the final hour. Those once gentle reminders are now desperate pleas and demands.
No, I don’t mean tweets about voting in the presidential primaries.
I mean the incessant campaigning for fan favorite awards.
For me, I can barely muster even zero shits to click my vote for “Sexiest Fake Ginger” or “Hottest Couple on Television”. I really don’t think that if my favorite actor wins “Hottest Actor in Skinny Jeans” it will improve his craft, or that if my favorite television show wins “Best Fake Accents” that it definitely is a solid contender for Emmy season. Does this make me a horrible fan?
For some, the answer is yes. Some fans believe that no matter what the award is, you should be voting every hour on the hour, or find some app that will vote for you so you can walk away from your computer and, y’know, live your life or at least go to the bathroom. And if the person you’re voting for starts to slip in the polls, you must rally the troops and flood people’s Twitter feeds with incessant reminders that this star depends on you to win an award that looks like a Georgia O’Keefe glass sculpture or a ceramic figurine that I had to make in my high school art class. (It broke when I placed it on my teacher’s desk. I got a B for effort.)
I, on the other hand, believe that the ultimate award is my undivided attention. If you want, I could make an award for that: it would be a picture of me with two thumbs up, decoupaged on a salad plate. We could call it the Julie’s.
I Don’t Always Agree with Everything
Here’s a little something you need to know about me: I wasn’t too crazy about Renesmee in Breaking Dawn. The last episode of How I Met Your Mother still infuriates me when I think about it. Whenever I listen to Adele’s 25, I skip “River Lea”. And there are certain moments in this season of Outlander that made me cringe and wish for a do-over.
So, what do these all have in common? I’m still a fan of all them. There is no official rule that states one must enjoy and support every aspect in whatever it is in order to be a fan. But for some strange reason, the minute you express one iota of disappointment or even constructive criticism, you’re labeled as a “bitch” or “snark monster.”
And that’s just one of the many reasons why I found solace in That’s Normal as first a reader and then as a contributor. It became my safe space to express my opinion, both positive and negative, and not feel that I was going to be excommunicated from a fandom or that I was violating some absurd list of “proper fan behavior”. It’s okay to not like that month’s book selection for Boozy Book Club or express disappointment over some scene in some show we’re discussing in our Hangouts.
So, if that makes me a “snark monster,” then that’s a label I will wear with pride.
What fandom rules do you break? Also, truth: Are you Becky with the good hair?
