Much of fan culture comes with a casual sense of superiority. Those of us who aren’t furries have at least some group of geeks to look down on, as Lore Sjöberg’s classic Geek Hierarchy illustrates.
While working the Adventure Retail booth at Comic-Con, it was my not-all-that-carefully considered opportunity each morning to look down on the people who ran, upon the opening of the exhibit hall and in defiance of Comic-Con’s Great Voice in the Sky, to stand in line to receive a free bag. The joke I repeated went something like this: “I don’t know where these people live, but the Target where I shop gives me all the free bags I want, without running or anything.” It’s clearly uncharitable japery; legitimate points of comparison between Comic-Con bags and Target bags more or less end with “free” and “can contain objects.”
What that line of thinking led me to wonder was this: What—if anything—given away for free or presented for free viewing would make me run across an exhibit hall?
On one hand, the question goes to personality and temperament as much or more than it goes to the baked-in qualities of Badass Giveaway Item #2,572. My Gen-X cohort was steeped in a too-cool-for-thou detachment that made irony the only acceptable way to express anything emotional for a good ten years. The best possible reaction to honest enthusiasm was a round mocking. So I still have this vague fear that if I like something too outwardly, I’ll be somehow exposed.
What a bellwether of modern abundance the massive free convention bag is, by the way. There’s so much free shit to grab at Comic-Con that the first thing you need, and the most popular, is a massive bag to contain all of your other free shit. Consumer culture boiled down.
On the other hand, the question goes to changing values as I get older. More and more, what gets my attention isn’t some new product or IP, but instead some awesome, funny thing that one of my sons does. To have been there when my oldest, in the company of his mother, pulled down his pants in Starbucks and called out, “Look at my bottom!”… Yeah, I’d have run across a convention hall to have been there. (And to have been there for the denouement. Later on during the same Starbucks visit he commented, “That was funny. I’ll probably do that again.”)
In thinking about the running of the bags while turning shiny new GenCon releases over in my hands, I came to the conclusion that the thing that bothers me most is that I’m pretty sure those who do the running haven’t really stopped to think about why they’re so excited.
In my experience a lot of fan culture is like this. Even as academics embrace pop culture as a field of study, all too little critical thinking seems to occur inside it. And that’s too bad. Fans seem to decide what they like, and/or what they advocate to others, in order to justify a self-identity they chose in their mist-shrouded childhoods. They stick with garbage because they liked garbage once. I suppose it makes “fans” an on-point descriptor.
I remember going to a concert with a buddy, back in the day. It had been terrible. The album that the tour was supporting had also been pretty bad. My friend insisted both had rocked, that they’d been as good as the previous concert and album. He was defending his purchase and his identity, not thinking critically.
At every convention we both attend, Ken Hite and I have breakfast together on the last day of the show. The magnificent and scary thing about one-one-one face time with Ken is that there’s no hiding behind an unsubstantiated opinion. I’m not sure how he does it, but Ken remembers everything, and he’s thought about it. There’s no asserting that The Wire is the best television show, full stop, without having done the reading and then making the argument. (So I’m off to watch The Prisoner.) Every fan ought to be so expertly called on their bullshit and made to justify their soft and thoughtless fandoms. The nature of post-modern society’s horror is, perhaps, that there are all of us and only one Ken Hite.
Here’s my plea: Whatever you like, know why you like it. Be able to explain the reasons, and debate them. Your thoughts should go to the objective, rather than to squishy rationalizations about how whatever thing made you feel. Falling back on “I just liked it” is a 100-point deduction. Admitting that you know it’s not good but that you like it anyway is a 200-point deduction, at least without a damn fine explanation.
So you’re allowed to like Rifts, but you’d better be able to talk about how it, alone among all other games, is the perfect nexus of cross-genre elements and rules non-balance to reward intimate knowledge of the rulebooks and related game-reading stunts. Or whatever.
Again, you’re allowed to like things, you just have to be able to talk about why. The same goes for the inverse. Disdain is fine, if you can talk about it cogently.
No more blind herd-following. No more buying tickets to comic book adaptations when it’s clear from the trailers that they’re garbage. No more proclaiming your love for what everyone else likes so they’ll think you’re smart. No more retroactively liking the stuff you already bought to justify having bought it. And furthermore, no more reactionary slogging of the stuff that the rest of your tribe hates just because that’s the popular opinion.
Hate Watchmen? Fine. Why?
Love The Fantastic Four? Great. Why?
Thanks, everybody. I’ll see you at next year’s running of the bags.
There’s an online game site called Pogo.com that I play on frequently. Each week they offer “badges” (basically challenges in two different games that net you a little icon and a small (relatively) token bonus.) They don’t unlock any special game variations, or give you access to things that you wouldn’t be able to do without the badge – it’s just really a “stamp” in your virtual collection book and a small amount of tokens (on a site where most regular players have hundred of thousands if not millions banked anyway.)
For months, I played those badge challenges diligently, spending hours on games that I didn’t enjoy in order to gain the weekly badge. A month or two ago, while several hours into a “grind” game that I neither enjoyed nor had any intention of ever playing again after the badge was done, I was struck with an epiphany.
“I don’t want to spend time on games that aren’t fun.”
And so I didn’t. I shut down that window, and haven’t gone back to the “push a button over and over to get points” games since. I still keep an eye on the badges, and when there’s one for a game I enjoy playing, I’ll try to achieve it just as an interesting challenge. But I don’t play games that don’t entertain me, for the sake of some nebulous reward.
I’m embarrassed that it took me months (closer to 2 years, honestly) to realize this obvious point. But now that it’s realized, I’m finding it applies to other areas of my life as well. GenCon was not a frenzy of “which companies can I get to allow me to write for them”. It was about learning and networking, and seeking out the /right/ opportunities – checking out the badge challenges for the games I like to play, as it were.
Very insightful article, Jeff! Linking back here on Twitter, etc.
The Wire is better than The Prisoner because its crushing sense of inevitability is not deus ex machina-d.
FYI. 😉
I’m bothered by people who take asking why they enjoy something as a threat or challenge. I’m just curious. Maybe I’m even trying to learn how to enjoy the activity in question.
Well said, Jeff.
If you pressed me, I could even explain why I liked this post. 😉
I agree with all of this, but I am now about to argue with it.
The call for some introspection is a welcome and often necessary one, but it has a darker side (even beyond those still clinging to their hipster disdain of passion) – it can too easily transform into a game of Justify Your Passion.
Geeks like to argue, and they’re often painfully nitpicky about such things, and the danger of taking the time to discuss _why_ you like something is to invite other to tell you why you are wrong. And they will. Vigorously.
Most fans are not lucky enough to have their positioned challenged by Ken Hite. More likely the conversations will be with a Huge-Screaming-Asshole-Utterly-Without-Malice kind of guy who will zero in on the details and use them as a club to beat a sense of your wrongness into you. In the face of this, it is only _reasonable_ to stick to emotional points, to protect yourself from this sort of response.
I say all this to underscore that if you are to call on people to be more thoughtful about what they like and why, you must also call on people to be more respectful of those thoughts and insights. Respectful, thoughtful conversations about these rich topics between passionate, knowledgeable individuals are solid gold, but for them to work, it demands that _both_ parties come to the table willing to work, not just to win.
-Rob D.
Also, there are some things that are killed by introspection. Particularly humor. If you want to thoroughly kill a joke, try to dissect why its funny.
There are some things I like because they make me smile… They activate my funny bone, intentionally or not. And dissecting that would make it less fun.
Call me a hedonist, but I’d rather have unreflective fun than destroy fun by dissecting it.
That said, I’m all in favor of being more reflective in general… But like all things, it can be taken too far.
To go further, I think there is a simple equation at work: I am happy to talk in great detail about any number of fannish topics, and I would even enjoy doing so, but that requires that I have a level of trust in the person I’m speaking to.
This may sound like an emotional issue, but it’s actually all about sports. This kind of discussion is, ultimately, a sport to be engaged in for the sheer joy of it. You might walk away with a list of new things you want to read or see, and those might eventually impact your views, but the conversation – no matter how passionate or erudite – is not going to change anyone’s mind. And that’s why it’s a sport – so long as both sides know this, they can really get into the weeds of Old Mage vs. New Mage, or the best system for playing supers or whatever, and do so for the sheer joy of the topic. You get to show off what you know and the connections you’ve drawn, and if you’re lucky, you also learn something yourself.
But minds aren’t changed. This is not a persuasive argument, and treating it as such is the fastest way for it to get toxic. And this is why I want trust for. I’m really interested in this sport, but if the other guy is not playing the same game I am, then it’s going to end really badly when he decides to sack the pitcher.
-Rob D.
Well I, for one, like collecting convention bags because then I have a greater supply of reusable bags for groceries. But that’s me. And I only got one convention bag at this year’s comic-con, so clearly I did not show sufficient dedication to craft.
As for the “I know it’s bad but I still like it” point: As you know, I watch a lot of television. A lot. I watch a lot of good television, and a lot of so-so television. Even some bad television. Why do I watch the non-good things? Why do I often, in fact, gravitate toward them before the good things? Because sometimes I enjoy having something to watch that carries me through a story without my having to pay deep attention, or think too hard. There is much to be said for frivolity. Sure, sometimes I want to watch The Prisoner (which I adore for its atmospherics, suspense, mystery, and creativity) — but sometimes I just want to let an episode of, say, CSI wash over me. Sure, it’s not great. But that means I can check my e-mail while it’s on.
Is there room for that in your formulation?
I fear summation. This causes me to sometimes be a poseur, because I’m afraid of being cataloged solely because I enjoyed A Knight’s Tale (it’s a storybook translated into American English, right down to the music, but without losing its accent) or The Rocketeer (zeppelin, jet pack) too much. So I can appreciate where you’re coming from, Rob, when you talk about the dangers of demanding justification for our tastes.
Exploring, rather than conquering, each others’ opinions is where it’s at. I am fascinated to know why people like what they’re passionate about, but I also discriminate between something that is beloved and something that is good at what it does. Some things are beautiful, lovable machines that simply fail to hit their target.
Anyway, I think Jeff’s point is valuable: It’s valuable to understand our own passions, even if we don’t change others’ minds with them. Let us understand why we want what we want… and if we are happy with the answer.
I totally disagree with some of the basic premises this article seems to have. One of the premises is ‘liking something without knowing why is bad’. Totally disagree. Liking something is its own reward. ‘Convincing yourself you don’t like something you previously liked is good’. Again, have to disagree. Something positive has to come out of that analysis to cancel the initial hit you get when you used to like something and now you don’t, and while I think that something positive *can* happen and therefore it’s sometimes justifiable to talk yourself out of liking something, exactly what that positive thing might be is never discussed.
The one premise I agree with is that ‘knowing why you like something is good’. So, sure, if you can manage it, figuring out why you like something can be nice. But don’t forget you might be wrong. Liking things doesn’t come from the rational parts of our brains, and sometimes force-filtering it through the logic can make you miss the essentials.
I like the game ‘Iron Dragon’ with a somewhat irrational glee, despite the fact that it is basically too long and somewhat of an extended game of multi-player solitaire. I am somewhat curious about why I like it so much, but before the day I discover why, I’m not going to convince myself that I don’t actually like it because it’s too long and too solitaire-ish. I trust myself enough that I’m willing to accept my like of the game without having to subject it to a rigorous logical analysis.
In the end, I’d rather feel joy than feel smug.
I would offer the addendum that it’s perfectly okay to enjoy crap, or even mediocrity, as long as you know that’s what you’re doing. I very much enjoy reading Sherlock Holmes pastiches. I have never yet stopped reading one because it was crap. But virtually all of them are crap.
In other words, liking Firefly is just fine, as long as you don’t confuse it with liking Veronica Mars.
Yes indeed, Rob, I hereby additionally call on fans everywhere to be respectful of the thoughts and insights of others. When the day of judgement comes and teams are chosen, I will stand against the assholes. I do think that minds can sometimes be changed—I know it’s true because my mind has been changed by such discussion—but I don’t think that either “side” ought to go into the debate with that goal in mind.
Humor’s an interesting thing to bring up, Kirt. I took a class on comic films in grad school, and discovered that the Grand Unified Theory of Comedy I came away with has quite deepened my appreciation of that which is funny in general. I don’t think that looking under the hood ruins the joke at all.
Lucian, it sounds like we can agree that it’s better to understand why you like something than to not understand. If self-knowledge kills your joy, I feel for you. But my goal here is definitely not to be a killjoy; to be a killjoy is to be an asshole, by the most clear definition I know of assholedom. I’d rather have an expanded awareness, myself; it feels more like the evolution of my person than the other option.
My company is known for having piles of advance reading copies of our books at our regional trade shows. The doors open and for the first twenty minutes or so, the booksellers swarm. Many of them barely glance at the stacks to actually see what it is they’re taking. Some of them do this because they’re bringing the spoils back to their stores for staff members who can’t attend (someone has to man the fort and sell books all weekend…) and they know that each book they take will find a reader. That, I’m okay with.
Then there are others who just take them because they’re there, or because they’re going to go stick ’em up on eBay and resell them. That gets a little disheartening.
Once that first surge dies down, though, we see the booksellers who are actually looking for something good to read, who want to have conversations about what’s coming out, which ones are our favorites and why. They might walk away with only one or two ARCs, but they’re the ones I know are going to go home and read the books and email me later on with their thoughts.
That’s my favorite part of the day. It lets me share my passion for the books, but it’s also a challenge: WHY did I love this book so much? What makes me think this particular bookseller will like it?
“I loved this” is an okay starting point, but it’s not enough.
(@Jeff) Well, hmm. It’s not really that self-knowledge kills my joy, it’s that I don’t mind liking something and not knowing why. You wrote “Your thoughts should go to the objective, rather than to squishy rationalizations about how whatever thing made you feel,” but what’s bad about feelings? Feelings are gestalt logic, and are no less valuable if they can’t be translated to linear logic. Sure, if you manage it, it can be insightful, but in the meantime, where’s the harm? Ken wrote “liking Firefly is just fine, as long as you don’t confuse it with liking Veronica Mars,” but again, what’s the downside if you do? And if you can’t figure it out, what then? It’s not hard to extrapolate “If you can’t figure out why you like something, you should stop liking it” from your post, though you didn’t say that explicitly.
I guess what I’m saying is that the post would feel more reasonable to me if it was an invitation to something better instead of an exhortation against something bad. Especially since the ‘bad’ you talk about is only bad (as far as I can tell) because there’s something better available. Take your friend who liked the concert for (you suspect) spurious reasons. How would it benefit him to realize he was fooling himself?
Lucian, I’m being only a little bit flip when I say that Jeff’s friend would save money on concert tickets and merch, but I do see your point.
At the risk of stretching this set of ideas past its breaking point, I think that the less one uses one’s facility for critical thinking, even with regard to leisure, the more one becomes inclined to not think critically when it’s important. The cable news networks are a pretty clear indication that we could stand more practice at critical thinking, rather than less.
I try to read David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon commencement address from time to time. Since the last time I read it, it’s apparently been released as a book, and consequently, pulled down from the web. (You can find the book on Amazon. You can also—for the time being—read the archived web version.) DFW suggests, there, that the work of being an adult is in deciding what to think about, because what we think about ends up defining us. I think he’s right, and I think that being aware of the the fact—that our thoughts define us—is important.
In total recognition that it often seems both pointless and hard to engage one’s full-on critical facilities in something as trivial as playing a game or listening to a concert, I think it would benefit my friend because he might come to make better choices about his health, how he spends his workday, and how he engages society.
At the end of the day, to not think is to do just a little bit of damage to your ability to think, which I guess I’m asserting is a bad deal all the way around.
I’m not sure I buy that.
What’s the point of making good decisions about your life if you’re ruining your quality of life in the process?
I love to think. Part of the reason I don’t drink is I can feel it degrading my ability to think and I hate that.
But sometimes you want to turn your brain off and just enjoy something. Are you telling me that I’m going to be better off if I stop in the middle of making love to think about why sex is fun? And if you start lecturing me on the advantages of tactically thinking about sex — beyond safety issues, like “wear a condom” — we might as well part ways right here.
Sometimes you just want to enjoy something. Why shouldn’t watching a movie be more like making love and less like making a choice about healthcare? Sure, sometimes I enjoy (say) a game because it provides an interesting level of brain burn… But it’s insane to think that’s a good idea all the time.
You need to rest. Hell, you need to enjoy yourself… This concept that everything must involve thinking all the time seems really, really strange. Sure, don’t do things stupidly… But I don’t see how enjoying a film without reflection is harmful. If anything, it’s often a much needed rest from all that thinking about things like healthcare and your job. That doesn’t harm your ability to think, it helps it, by preventing burnout.
All things in moderation. Sure, an unreflective, unthinking life is bad… But so is an overreflective, over-analyzed life. That’s a recipe for burnout… I’ve seen it, people who overthink and explain and justify everything to a point where they can’t relax, can’t enjoy themselves, and drive themselves into a depression.
Justifying everything you do doesn’t make it easier for you to think critically. It makes it harder, because you’re burning yourself out.
Now, to be fair, along my moderation point… Perhaps a lot of people think too little, in which case trying to think more is good. But the opposite extreme is possible, and you shouldn’t just prescribe it to everyone. An emergency room doctor, for example, probably has plenty of experience thinking and doesn’t need to justify why he likes watching Firefly in his precious, nearly-nonexistent time off.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the social aspect of fandom. At uni, I think we used to call this the “social utility of mass media” — most of us watch what we watch (read what we read, game what we game) because it allows some measure of interaction with our peers. If your friends at the pub, or watercooler, or whatever, keep talking about Battlestar Galactica, there’s a very good chance you’ll be hooked eventually.
Most of the time (ie, unless you change peer groups, or you’re deliberately trying to impress someone) most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it. When I was in high school, I watched this dreadful soap opera just to have something to talk about with this girl I fancied.
Also, there’s a fantastic book — “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely — that talks about the irrationality of many common decisions, in particular the effect of “free”. (http://tinyurl.com/5s5vev)
When we moved from Toronto to the Netherlands a few years ago, we were desperately trying to reduce the amount of “stuff” we owned, as our shipping and storing options weren’t cheap. Getting rid of — and refusing — “free” stuff was weirdly, viscerally difficult.
Please, no, don’t hit the bedroom pause-button to have a middle-of-sex think! No one wants that. But that’s mostly about context appropriateness. No reason you can’t think about it later. God knows we all spend enough time in our cars that we can store up things to think about for while we’re driving.
It’s hard to argue that enjoying a film without reflection once is harmful. But I also think it’s hard to argue that a pattern of thoughtlessness, or lack of reflection, is not harmful. And a pattern is made out of individual instances. That’s really all I’m saying.
I’m not sure about burnout. I see burnout a lot in people who work too hard and try to do too many things. I usually think of that as a lack of reflectiveness. They don’t stop to prioritize, and, when needed, to eliminate things it doesn’t make any sense for them to be doing.
I do know people who can’t have any fun because they overanalyze. That, for sure, is bad. I have the sense that that’s a pretty specialized case. My buddy from the concert, for one, does not have that problem.
The social aspect of fandom is interesting. On one hand, the network effect can multiply your enjoyment of something because you can share it with your friends—watch whatever together, talk about it later, and so on. But on the other hand, you can spend an awful lot of time on garbage because other people you know are into it. So, I’m curious, Joshua: How do you feel now about having spent the time watching the dreadful soap opera? I’ll cop to not feeling particularly bad about having read lots of popular my friends were reading back in the day, even though I wouldn’t touch it now with the proverbial ten-foot pole. I think it contributes to the pool of background knowledge I share with fellow fans.
@Jeff: For me, how I feel about the socialized entertainment depends a lot on my relationship with the people involved. The girl I watched the soap opera to chat with? She never was interested in me, and I don’t think I could remember the name of the program now.
On the other hand, the cheesy sci-fi shows my wife and I watched together, with popcorn, back when we were just starting dating still seem like fun to me.