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Oct 31, 2023Liked by Monia Ali

One thing that's interesting to me about these fandom cultures is that they tend to be focused on art (mostly pop music), but the aesthetic value of the music in question doesn't really correlate with the level of devotion. It reminds me of Gustave Flaubert's beautiful short story from 1877, "A Simple Heart." In the story, a lonely servant girl, Félicité, has nobody to love. So she redirects her devotion toward her pet parrot. I won't spoil the ending, but Flaubert shows Félicité beginning to associate the parrot with God, with the Holy Ghost.

When I read this story, I always wonder: is Flaubert making fun of Félicité, this poor lonely soul who has a ridiculous passion for a parrot? Or is he ultimately sympathetic, concluding that Félicité's passion and love for this creature is beautiful, regardless of whether the parrot itself is worthy of that love? Because the ending is so haunting, so deeply felt, I usually go with the second option, but perhaps that's because I'm a sap. We need to love like we need water, so perhaps there is no shame in loving something silly.

To bring it back to fandom: at the same time that I find the trends you write about here kind of upsetting, there's something beautiful and human about the forms of devotion that fans express for, say, One Direction, even when the object of that veneration is so clearly (well, to me, at least) undeserving. Like Félicité and her parrot, there's something both very silly and very sacred about this kind of love. What is clearly bad, as you point out, is the rather heartless harnessing of this sort of thing for the profit motive. If you're OK with long and meandering 3-hours interviews by comedians, you might want to listen to Bo Burnham's 2016 interview with Pete Holmes on the podcast "You Made It Weird." I think he's got some perceptive things to say about this.

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Your analogy in "converting" to a fandom is so apt. I definitely had that experience with regards to various fandoms participated in over the years, even recently with my dive into 90sBandom (Backstreet in particular for some reason). I even still remember particular moments I got "converted" and the kind of emotional highs I was riding afterwards. The limerence is also very apt since I definitely noticed the parallels with certain figures I ended up latching onto throughout my different fandoms and my actual experience with limerence irl.

I cannot help but feel a little worried about myself and also other people in similar scenarios. I definitely am "in love with love" and seem to latch myself onto people/things that fulfil certain fantastical ideals in my head about the kind of person I want to be with. It's one thing if people grow out of it or find a healthy way to deal with those feelings, but it's another thing when people are actively encouraged to sink deeper into these kind of feelings and emotions, especially by a larger "community" of individuals who are the same type of person. It's a little scary, NGL.

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