I’ve Been Thinking a Lot About Fandom Lately

So I’ve been thinking a lot recently about fandom, for a couple of reasons.

One is that I have, for a long time, been really invested in being a fan of various K-pop groups. In December, I went to a concert of a group I really like, and I had this sort of existential crisis where I realized I was spending an incredible amount of money – shirts, extra passes, good seats, membership – for this group. Even though I do really like them, I wasn’t necessarily making the most rational financial decisions. I went to the show and I had this moment where I was like, why am I doing all of this? I am a mother. I have responsibilities. Why am I doing this to see this group?

And I started thinking about how women in particular aren’t really allowed to indulge in fan behavior. Like, if you met a middle-aged man who had decorated his whole den or basement for a particular sports team, that seems within the realm of normal. But somehow for women, being fans of things isn’t as socially acceptable – there’s a gendered dimension to how we judge fannish enthusiasm, who gets to be a “real fan” versus who is dismissed as hysterical or frivolous. So I was feeling some shame about liking this group and going to see them, but also some difficult feelings about the amount of money I was spending.

Three fandoms at once

Around the same time, the Heated Rivalry show came out. I saw TikToks about it before it aired, watched it the night of the premiere, really got into it, and very quickly all of my social media algorithms became heavily oriented toward Heated Rivalry. It’s a great show – I love that it’s Canadian, it’s more low budget, the actors were just waiters a few months ago, they don’t have Botox so you can actually see the expressions on their faces. The story is compelling and I like that there’s gay representation on screen.

But something I’ve observed over the last couple of months is that, for the first time I can remember, I’m seeing massive amounts of adult women engaging in fandom in a way that I see within K-pop but don’t often see women engage in elsewhere. There’s something happening here around women and participatory culture that feels worth paying attention to.

And then there’s the Seattle Torrent – the new professional women’s hockey team that started this fall. I’ve gone to a couple of games and I love them. I’m so excited that there’s a women’s hockey league. The vibes are really good. And something interesting I’ve noticed is that it’s really difficult to get Torrent merch. People on the various social media groups are sharing things like “I found a jersey at the sporting goods store” or “they restocked at this store” because it’s so hard to get. I guess they didn’t understand this team was going to be so popular. To see adults so aggressively going after t-shirts and stuff was just really interesting to me.

The pull of belonging

So I have some thoughts about what’s going on here. Right now, people really want something to root for and something to feel like they belong to. There’s a lot of research on sense of community and belonging – the feeling that you’re part of something larger than yourself, that you matter to a group and they matter to you. Fandom has always provided this, but I think the conditions right now are making it particularly potent.

With the Seattle Torrent, for example, it feels really good to support women’s sports. There’s something feminist about it, a sense of participating in something meaningful. It’s a new team, so it’s easy to get into on day one – there’s no barrier of needing to know years of history. The tickets are pretty affordable compared to professional men’s sports. And when you’re there, it’s just good vibes.

I went to a game this week and Malala was there, which was so cool. The camera went on her and the whole crowd stood up and gave her a standing ovation—even while the puck was in play, which is kind of surprising. And I thought, yeah, I’m in a room full of people who think that Malala deserves a standing ovation. These are my people. It’s that feeling of shared values, of being in community with people who see the world the way you do. That’s powerful.

What K-pop taught me about fandom management

Reflecting on my new fandom for the Torrent, going to this K-pop show, and thinking about Heated Rivalry – I have a lot of experience with K-pop, and if you don’t know, K-pop companies are extremely, extremely good at fandom management. It’s different than Western music. The members do a lot more to cultivate a parasocial relationship with fans – that one-sided sense of intimacy and connection that audiences develop with media figures. The companies have a lot of ways to keep you engaged.

For example, the different record companies have their own social networking sites. The groups also post on Instagram and TikTok, but the best content and the first content and the live content is on these proprietary apps, so you pretty much have to be on there. When a certain group member goes live, it’s a big deal—millions of people get in there. This creates what feels like exclusive access, a sense of closeness and intimacy that’s carefully manufactured.

And then there are the merch launches. Constant merch launches in K-pop that basically make it so you’re always wanting to buy stuff, and they’re usually limited drops, so it feels exclusive – scarcity drives desire. Another thing they do that’s interesting is that the group members themselves often wear the t-shirts in pictures. So it feels even better that you’re buying it—you’re like, oh, this is just like what so-and-so wore. At the end of a concert, for the encore, they come out wearing concert shirts that you can buy. The parasocial connection gets linked directly to consumption.

I had this experience at the concert in December where I saw on the app that there was a special photo card giveaway, and you had to go find this person at the concert to get one. So I found her, and she was like, “your outfit is one of the best I’ve seen all night.” And it certainly was not. But this person who worked for the record company was just so good at making fans happy – it’s affective labor in service of brand loyalty. She took my picture and said it might be on the app or on other social channels, and I was like, oh my god, that’s so exciting. It really made me feel special.

Algorithmic fandom and the attention economy

So to bring this to what I’m thinking about in terms of what’s happening in the U.S. – it’s nothing new to have really good relations with a fandom. But I think a couple of things are different now.

One is that with algorithmically-driven social media, you’re getting fan-related content 24/7, all the time, even if the group isn’t on tour, even if they don’t have a new album out. There is constant content that makes you feel like you’re a member of this fandom even when the team isn’t playing or the band isn’t performing. You’re always part of the fandom in a way that just wasn’t the same in the past. And I say this as a veteran fan of groups in the pre-internet era. The algorithm doesn’t let you drift away – it keeps feeding you content, maintaining that sense of belonging and connection continuously.

There’s also the more exclusive, more private and intimate access – you can follow individuals and see what they as individuals are doing. Social media creates what feels like direct, unmediated connection, even though it’s highly mediated and often strategically managed.

But what I really worry about is that this creates a different kind of relationship, a different sense of being a fan, one that’s more tied to consumption and capitalistic behavior. The attention economy meets fan culture, and what emerges is a system where engagement and purchasing become intertwined. I feel like the 24/7 feed of content—Heated Rivalry or Seattle Torrent or whatever – is driving people, including myself, to feel like in order to be a fan, or a good fan, I have to engage in consuming products.

This week, BTS’s new tickets came out, and it was a big deal. There was a lot of “if you’re a real fan, you’re going to buy these tickets,” and they’re really expensive, and they’re not in every city so it involves travel. Authenticity as a fan gets measured through willingness to spend.

Enjoyment without exploitation

So one of the things I’ve been thinking about for myself, and what I would say to other people, is this: when you’re engaging in algorithmically-driven fandom, it’s cool. It feels good to belong. It feels good to be able to indulge in something, especially as women who are not typically allowed to indulge in this way. So do it. If it feels good, do it.

However. When it involves spending money, remember that the feeling you’re getting from that sense of belonging, that good feeling from being a good fan – companies and other people are leveraging that, taking advantage of that, in order to make money. The affective dimensions of fandom are being monetized.

With Heated Rivalry, one of the actors, François Arnaud, made this point that the NHL is notoriously homophobic, and yet all these hockey teams are utilizing Heated Rivalry as part of their social media campaigns. But they’re not having Pride nights. Gay players don’t feel safe to come out. He said that’s kind of hypocritical. I think that’s a really good illustration – corporations will extract value from fan communities and their identities without actually supporting those communities. If you see businesses starting to encroach upon or utilize the fandom, that might mean there are more extractive dynamics at play.

I’m not saying that every person making Seattle Torrent beanie hats or Heated Rivalry t-shirts and selling them on Etsy isn’t a real fan. Maybe most of them are. But people – both the companies producing this content and others associated with it – are utilizing this to make money. And so I just have to remind myself that I can be a good fan, I can enjoy the content, without engaging in potentially wasteful or irresponsible consumerism. Belonging doesn’t require buying.

The FYP made physical

One of the more interesting aspects of all this is the Heated Rivalry club nights. If you don’t know about them – it started in LA, it seems, and there’s a company that does this – people go to a dance club and up on the screen are the fan edits. If you don’t know what a fan edit is, it’s these little clips from a show or movie, set to music, that are usually pretty hot pictures of somebody. They’re kind of fun to watch. Probably as I describe it, if you didn’t know what I was talking about, you do now, because you’ve probably seen some.

So the club night is just showing fan edits in the background. People are going there to be in community with other people who like Heated Rivalry, which is fine, great, the music is good. And potentially these are people who have similar values. That’s cool.

But it’s sort of like one’s FYP made physical, right? Your TikTok feed up on the screen in a physical space. There’s something strange about the way digital fan culture is now being re-embodied – we take the algorithmically-curated content that we consume alone on our phones and project it onto a wall to consume together. These clips have a life of their own – there are ones that are particularly well known, or too hot for TikTok that circulate in other ways. It’s strange to walk into a club and have it be like your own personal For You Page showing up there. The boundary between online and offline fan experience is dissolving in interesting ways.

The intoxication of belonging

One last thing I want to say. This is something I’ve discussed in my scholarly work, but a little bit differently. In Azerbaijan, I talked to some young dissidents, and there’s an intoxication to being involved in dissent—but specifically tied to the friendships they make. In Azerbaijan, traditionally, friendships are based on families, or being in school together, or living in the same neighborhood. For a lot of these young dissidents, this was one of their first experiences with having friendships based on shared values rather than proximity or circumstance.

And that was so intoxicating for some of them that they were sometimes engaging in behaviors and activities that were riskier than maybe they would have otherwise. The intoxication of the friendship, the power of finally finding your people, made it difficult for them to think rationally about the choices they were making.

The fandom examples I’m giving here aren’t as severe – the choices people are making are not the same as those in Azerbaijan, the stakes are entirely different. But I think it’s a similar underlying process: the feeling of belonging is so powerful that it can shape decision-making in ways we don’t fully recognize. It feels so good to belong that sometimes people aren’t fully thinking through the implications of the choices they’re making and what they’re doing. And that’s worth being aware of – not to stop ourselves from enjoying fandom, but to be a little more conscious of when that good feeling is being leveraged for someone else’s benefit.