How fans ruin things they love

I love cyclists. They're not polluting the atmosphere or worsening their health at public expense (that's a Canadian concern eh) and they take their life into their hands every time they venture out in urban environments.

They're a net benefit...douchebags included. Vancouver is a great place for them too with quite a few new bike lanes. Now Critical Mass that's a whole other issue. We've got 'em here too. I hate evangelists and proselytizers in any guise.

Legomancer wrote:

Erik Twice wrote: I remember a good friend of mine, who liked platformers being told he wasn't a real "fan" because he didn't like platformers of low quality. He was told that if he really liked the genre he would also like the worst parts of it.

Of course, it's all backwards. The reason he liked those games is because they provide him with something, if they don't, he doesn't play them. This is probably a good example of the idea Legomancer fiddles with.

It is. This is part of what bugs me about how nerds talk about "collections". "I collect action figures." "I collect train games." "I collect DVDs." More often than not, "collect" just means to blindly buy every instance of the thing put in front of the person. There's no thought behind it, no curation or quality to be regarded, it's just consumerism, buying something for the sake of buying it. You see this a LOT with the boardgamer crowd, who think that five bookcases full of things they never play is somehow better than a half a bookshelf of stuff that sees table time.

No one throws whatever change they have in their pockets into a box and calls themselves a coin collector, but that's exactly how most nerds operate.

It's a kind of autism, and not surprising that so many nerds are on the spectrum. The inability to filter data and the need to just give it all equal weight.

I'm totally with you on this. I'm amazed at the pile of crap people accumulate in the name of being a fan.

I went and saw Pat Rothfuss give a reading and a Q&A a couple weeks back. It was mostly really interesting, especially with his insights about writing and the creative process. Two things stood out to me though

1) He's been spending a lot of time when he's not writing working on worthless knickknacks from his in-book universe, all sponsored through Kickstarter of course. This includes playing cards with the different characters on them (which admittedly look pretty cool) and, I kid you not, currency from the world of this book.

2) The best questions were all about the actual writing of the story, the process and so forth, but mostly people just wanted him to answer questions about the characters and the world, to remove any ambiguity that they may sense. His general response to such questions was "that's a very good question," although this was mostly to deflect any thoughts about the third book in the series.

It was a little frustrating to feel like I was the only one there who wasn't really interested in obsessive detail about the story itself. And everyone seemed to think that it was so cool that you could buy this currency.

Fandom of any kind is bankrupt and empty. It's nothing but a way for people to find something to identify themselves with and to identify who they are among others. The problem is that this basis for self-realization is typically in corporate-controlled media, consumer detritus, and vampirising the work of others instead of creating your own world and self-worth.

Fandom creates more junk from junk...it encourages shallow, meaningless consumption under the guise of it being something personally important or significant. It's an easy way for people to fill the void of self when a person is unable or unwilling to come to terms with who they are.

So much easier to find solace in a room full of Star Wars "fans" discussing extratextual bullshit than it is to realize "I need to lose weight and get over this shyness I have from being picked on in school". So much easier to run away from social responsibility and self-betterment by collecting old video games or having the biggest collection of depression glass you can muster.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with liking things and being really into Firefly, Legos, a band, bacon, or whatever...the problem is when who you are is entirely dependent on you areas of fandom.

Legomancer wrote: It's a kind of autism, and not surprising that so many nerds are on the spectrum. The inability to filter data and the need to just give it all equal weight.

This totally bothers me as well, the equal weighting of things. Fans joyfully wade through some real crap because they are unable to detect any difference in quality. Or conversely, to obsess over trivial details in a critical way while missing blatant problems like terrible acting or shitty writing.

I see a pretty clear connection between the hobby cyclists who drop $3000+ on their gear and the board gamers who drop similar amounts on their collection. In both cases it's using conspicuous consumption as a way to establish identity, because then you don't have to actually do anything, you can just point to your wall of stuff.

I'm just as guilty of it. It's a hard habit to break... Thousands and thousands of ads per day beamed into the brain takes its toll. Not watching TV or listening to the radio helps. I started running last year and suddenly I have expensive shoes and clothes made for running (because no one ever ran before fancy shirts and shorts) and a heart rate monitor etc. So silly in retrospect but it's the death of a thousand small justifications.

It's tempting to see this as part of a general trend towards identity politics. So much easier to boost self-esteem by being part of something than making up your own thing. At least for me, I hate being part of groups and don't like thinking of myself as anything in particular. It's all stupid tribalism. Except being an Ameritrasher of course, that's hard-headed rationality.

I was reading an article about a psychological study of happiness that measured the happiness gained from an experience vs that gained from acquiring something. The latter starts fading immediately, but the former lasts for months and months before your happiness starts resetting to your base level! So it's not even rational to acquire things or collections or whatever - go do stuff!

Yeah its like those people who listen to lots of music spending thousands on good stereo equipment. You can hear it fine on a cheap boombox. It sickens me the way some people choose to spend their own money on stuff they want.

I recently had to deal with someone who spent $600 on HDMI cables (or maybe a single one, fuck if I know). The same mentality exists in the bike world, but it is actually a meaningful purchase if you are in a fucking Tour. Dropping 5g-10g here and there or any of the other marginal improvements are important when you're competing against other people at the peak of human performance. If you're a dentist on a Sunday ride you just look like a dipshit.

I'm a fan of this thread! Pretty soon my tribute novella that is totally faithful to the source material will be finished. But I hurt my foot so right now I can't use my notebooks.

Bicyclists are weird. I've got a '99 full suspension mountain bike that I love to beat the shit out of on trails. I bought a cheap-ass used Trek no-suspension to ride too because the FS is kinda heavy to pedal around when you aren't soaking up big bumps and whatnot. I go to the trails in my shitty 8-year-old shorts and the rattiest T-shirt I can find because I know I'm gonna wreck at some point and who in their right mind puts on nice clothes to run into trees with? But when I go to the trails I'm surrounded by people on multi-thousand dollar bikes, spandex everything, and a bunch of weird gear. They're all very serious bikers to talk shop like they're competitive professionals, but they're only really competing with each other. Suddenly a few years ago a significant portion of them stopped showing up on their regular multi-thousand dollar bikes and started showing up on new multi-thousand dollar bikes that had 29" wheels instead of regular 26" wheels. That's about when getting attention became even more important in the very serious biker mind and people started showing up on weird mutant-looking 26-to-29" conversions, fat (like flotation tire fat) tire bikes, really expensive multi-speed mountain bikes converted to single-speed for no apparent reason, and even some custom paint jobs that match their clothes.

Then again I've got around 200 board games when counting expansions, so I'm sure they'd think I'm weird too.

Yes, that's exactly right. That kind of professional level equipment becomes, in the hands of amateurs, just a status thing to show how much more into something you other than another fan/hobbyist.

The cables thing...back when Dollar Bill first started making a lot of money, I went with him when he went to buy his big screen TV (which is now horribly, horribly obsolete since it wasn't even HD), I sat there and listened to the salesman sell him on these $500 Monster cables because they were 24k gold plated and all of this...he said all of this really technical-sounding BS about signal ratios and whatnot and I could tell he knew he had a sucker with too much money on the line, looking to buy the most impressive setup and not necessarily the best.

Of course, a $50 set of standard cables would have been fine...but nope, my friend bought the $500 ones.

Status bullshit.

I am always bemused when subject such as this come up.

First let me say, in regards to bicyclists, I don't give a shit what they wear or how much the spend on what they ride. I resent that a great majority of them feel that they need not obey the rules of the road and are entitled to do as they please in traffic. It endangers them and more importantly me. The stuff about the spandex and what not...well I just think they look rediculous.

Stating that "fans ruin things" leaves out the other half of that coin which is that "fans allow these things to exist at all". You like comic books but you hate comic book fans. Except that without the ability to sell nick nacks and chatchkes and back issues of comics to fans, your local comic shop couldn't exist. Maybe you don't care about that in the digital age but at one time if there was no shop you never got exposed to new and innovative titles and thus by extension to some great stuff. The dross makes the gold possible.

The same could be said of movies, or boardgames, or novels or anything you can think of. If people didn't buy the crap, there would be no market for the good stuff.

To complain and shake your head at how people spend their money. Well we all do that to one degree or another but please don't get high and mighty about it. It comes down to them spending their money on any damn thing that makes them happy and god bless them. The childish notion, soon to be expressed by some other poster I'm sure, that the money "could be better spent helping the sick/old/homeless" is nice but foolish. Stopping one will never enable the other. Disposible income, whatever amount an individual assigns to that category, will always be spent on whatever amuses that particular person.

Also people will always choose one thing by which they identify themselves. Ask yourself the question "Who am I?" and quckly answer without using your name. If your honest, your answer probably won't be "I'm a multi-layered and nuanced humanbeing. I have many facets and many sides." What you'll probably answer is what you do for a living..."I"m a dirty Tow Jocky". Others might respond "I am a gamer". Certainly some answers will be based on accomplishment over enjoyment but either answer is valid.

Can fan-boys be annoying? Hell yes. But no more or less than Blase Hipsters.