My definition of a “fan” is a person who makes something a core part of their identity. Colloquially, this definition is intertwined with that of the enthusiast and the supporter, but I want to keep those other concepts separate. Enthusiasts might know all the stats and have a good time at live events, and supporters might invest resources toward a preferred outcome, but fans make their objects of interest part of who they are.
And I think that people are far too cavalier about what they allow into their identity.
Entertainers, sports teams, and corporations do not belong in your core. They change for reasons you have no control over, and they have no duty of care to you. These things all have some business or power-related purpose. That’s not derogatory — money and power are morally neutral things, and it only makes sense that part of our society is organized around them. But it makes them unfit for stewardship of a whole human being.
Ben Collins-Sussman had this clarity about being laid off from Google, when he said:
Please understand: Google is not a person. It’s many groups of people following locally-varying processes, rules, and culture. To that end, it makes no sense to either love or be angry at “Google”; it’s not a consciousness, and it has no sense of duty nor debt.
Brian Cantrill has a great admonishment coming from his time at Sun as it was being purchased by Oracle:
Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think “oh, the lawnmower hates me” — lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.
But I think this stops short. Employees should not take Larry Ellison’s actions personally because he is acting on behalf of Oracle. I think Brian is trying to imply that Larry has low moral character here, which I have no opinion on; it may well be true. But you should never treat a corporation as a person, whether the individuals that make it up are individually upright or depraved.
Brent Simmons arrives at the same conclusion about Apple.
But I need to remember, now and again, that Apple is a corporation, and corporations aren’t people, and they can’t love you back. You wouldn’t love GE or Exxon or Comcast — and you shouldn’t love Apple. It’s not an exception to the rule: there are no exceptions.
Eric Schwarz links to that post and adds an interesting observation:
My relationship with Apple is a lot like following a sports team...
As a sports outsider, this captures what’s so strange to me about sports. Like corporations, teams are not people. Actually, not just “like” corporations; teams are corporations whose business happens to be sports. A team decision might be inconvenient, but there is no need for this:
Even more than the sadness, even more than the anger and the despair and the disgust, there is loneliness.
Sadness makes sense, to a point, as the enthusiasts are losing something they enjoy. Loneliness makes sense for some, as attending sports live can be a communal experience. But anger and despair and disgust? You don’t have to live that way. This reminds me of some friends I had when I was a kid. Their dad would be in a bad mood for three days if the University of Texas lost a football game. You don’t have to live that way, either (and your family deserves better).
John Gruber recently wrote of his feelings about decisions that Tim Cook made:
Did Cook’s Oval Office display of fealty and his grotesque golden gift make you feel something? Did it engender an emotional response? Grossed out, perhaps? A little sick? Angry? Offended? Me too. But did you feel good — reassured? proud? — when Cook skipped that Middle East Trump tour in May?
An enthusiast might feel offended or reassured by a CEO’s decisions, but only a fan could feel sick or proud. Of the fans, I ask: How can you justify pride in something you had no part in? And is that pride worth the feelings of sickness?
As bad as this problem is in technology and sports fan circles, its worse with celebrities. Taylor Swift and Joe Rogan and MrBeast are not people in the context of interaction with their fans; they are businesses, and everything above about corporations applies to them just as well. But they come to us in a person-shaped package, pre-anthropromorphized for our convenience. They don’t encourage fandom out of malice (because they are businesses, which are incapable of malice) but because they are incentivized to do so, because they benefit when we tie our identity to theirs.
Fans of these personalities are often described as having “parasocial relationships” with them, which is a description that I think obscures more than it illuminates. The simpler way to say it is in our definition of “fan” from earlier: they have made that celebrity part of their identity. For instance:
I think some people really need to unpack why they feel so betrayed by her not being a “lesbian”...
A celebrity may or may not be deceitful (no comment on this particular case), but only a fan can be betrayed. (Blocked and Reported has a segment in a premium episode with more examples of this particular category of fan reaction.)
Because the fan internalizes the celebrity, whatever the celebrity does becomes something that the fan has to answer for, something that they judge themselves for.
Hello I am a middle schooler NCTzen. First, I apologize for the damages caused by Renjun’s actions. He has been sick and having a hard time lately, so I think his actions came out first. I heard you are receiving much hate from fans despite him admitting his wrongdoing and apologizing. I also apologize for the damage received from thoughtless fans.
An empathetic afficionado might care for victims of a celebrity’s thoughtlessness, but only a fan could personally apologize for it.
Instead, you can opt out. Enjoy Linux or the New England Patriots or Chris Rock without making those things part of who you are. I tend to think those things are just expressions of something deeper anyway, and that that deeper thing can sometimes even be sublime. Two examples:
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I value the tradeoffs that Apple has made to protect my privacy in iOS, because I believe in individual dignity, and privacy is a part of respecting that. I fear that one day Apple might lessen that protection. If my fears are realized, I’ll be frustrated at my diminished choices, but because I’m not a fan of Apple, my sense of self would remain unscathed.
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To me, the protections defined in the US Constitution are truly noble. I don’t need to be a fan of the Founding Fathers to feel stirred by the righteousness of the principles behind that document, and by keeping those flawed humans out of my sense of who I am, I feel no compulsion to explain away their faults, or accept them into myself.
That freedom is enough to make me walk away from a fan identity altogether.