Stuff from the Old Blog: Why Do People Hate Fanatics?

Ahh, fangirls.

The world has an unjustified hatred for the fanatic. There are so many different breeds of fan: comic book guys who dress like Spiderman at Comic-Con, the dudes who wear Spock ears at Trekkie conventions, the tweens who scream at the Jonas Brothers and have “marry me” posters and the cougar mom using her daughter as an excuse to be outside Taylor Lautner’s hotel during the filming of Eclipse. Regardless of the type of fanatic you are, you are forced to deal with an onslaught of articles and and message board posts telling you how stupid you are for loving what you love. Star Wars nerds hate Trekkies, comic nerds hate Twihards and so on. It’s a vicious cycle; no matter what your unhealthy obsession, it is never good enough for the people obsessed with other things.


Why do we lash out against the fanboys and fangirls of other obsession-worthy material? The most common argument I hear is that other varieties of fanatic don’t understand the appeal to my guilty pleasure. OF COURSE YOU DON’T! If you are a straight 25 year old male and you understand why girls love Robert Pattinson, you might be lying to yourself. The fact is that most of these fan-poisons are the same to each group as the other. I think Star Wars had terrible dialogue. I think the same thing about the Twilight movies. But something about these films appeals to a little piece of our heart that wants to be a Jedi or fall in love with a brooding vampire. When the little switch flips in our souls and we get obsessed, we decide to take the bad with the good. Somehow, in the love of the source material or the idea behind the story, we gain the ultimate tolerance of mediocre movie adaptations, i.e. X-Men 3, Spiderman 3, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Watchmen, Batman and Robin, etc. What we fail to understand about the deepest loves of other fanatics is hat they love the same things about their obsessions that we do about ours. We fall in love with a sensitive werewolf, they fall for an orphaned Jedi princess. It’s all relative.


What we need to do is stop trying to discount the things that people find appealing. Don’t even try to understand why people love these things. Somewhere deep down, you do understand, in a way. Just allow people their obsessions. We all have them. We have to find a way to coexist at Comic-Con and The LA Film Festival. It may be a hard thing to admit, but we are all crazy. Who cares what it is we’re crazy about?