Add Category
A few weeks ago, I and 21,000 other rabid Harry Styles fans flocked to the Ticketmaster website to compete with one another for a place in his glorious, life-affirming presence. Maybe he’ll wear a sequin jumpsuit. Maybe he’ll look in my general direction, and I’ll faint.
I know that I am a 31-year-old woman with a high school crush on a pretty, pretty man from a boy band. But we all need somewhere to indulge in our guilty pleasures, whether it’s an online community, a comic book convention, or a stadium with a capacity of 50,000 people. Cue the Harry Styles fandom.
A trend that began with Sherlock Holmes is alive and well in the era of Harry Styles.Credit:Getty/Instagram
Let’s define a fandom as a collection of people connected by their fervent love of a particular person or group, film or TV series, book, or team. An organised subculture of people with a shared interest, coming together only to read and write fan fiction, discuss theories about an upcoming season or album release, share pictures of their deity, compare elaborate cosplay looks, or melt down about a new song or episode in an environment where their thoughts and opinions will be echoed.
Fandoms are not new. Apparently, the Sherlock Holmes fandom was what started it all: people publicly mourned Holmes’ “death” in 1893, and began writing their own fan fiction. When Star Trek launched in 1966, Trekkies were born. It’s fair to say that social media has allowed the fandom to explode.
Now there is no limit to the number of subreddits, Tumblr and Instagram communities, or areas of Twitter where you can tap into a community of people who really vibe Benedict Cumberbatch’s new haircut, the Star Wars universe, or the subtleties of Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister’s relationship in Game of Thrones.
Some have cutesy nicknames: Justin Bieber fanatics are called Beliebers, Beyonce’s army of supporters is called the Beyhive, devoted cricket fans are called men.
IllustrationCredit: Robin Cowcher
Perhaps it’s sacrilegious to compare fandoms to religion (no, it definitely is), but it’s not a strictly false equivalence.
Tell me the people still writing 200,000-wordHarry Potter fan fiction manuscripts aren’t at least as committed as we lapsed Catholics who go to mass twice a year to appease our grandparents. Announce to Twitter that Taylor Swift is untalented and watch her followers flock, furiously, to her defence, citing your remark as more fodder to her ongoing public crucifixion – a renewed reason to believe that she is a saint who can do no wrong.