I Love You More than Love: Fandom and/as Love
What we often feel but don’t say out loud about being a fan is that it’s a bit like falling in love. Just like falling in love, it can be a bit obsessive, a bit all-consuming, a bit annoying to those around us — but it always holds a special place in our hearts and feels important.
Unfortunately, the fact that we don’t have terms or concepts that meaningfully describe fan-love means that it tends to be dismissed as juvenile, delusional, and possibly pathological. The belief is that loving something as a fan isn’t “real” love, and anyone who gives it equal weight and importance in their life must have something wrong with them. Are some fans delusional? Possibly. But most fans aren’t. And by denying fans a more thorough understanding of those particular feelings, we deny them the tools to really understand themselves, to feel the full range of joy and to cope when bad things happen.
It’s important that we continue to work towards dismantling stigmas around fandom and towards better understanding how it can be a joyful and productive part of life. Because, at the end of the day, that’s the impulse that brings most of us into fandom: it’s a source of joy. We enjoy fandom because it is an expression of love and a way to build connection. Humans have a primal need for connection; fandom is one way that this need for connection manifests itself, especially in a time when we are increasingly disconnected and life only seems to offer challenges. We want to connect with people and stories that move and inspire us, and we want to connect with others who are like us and who share our interests.
One stigma around fan-love is that it distracts and takes away from life. This connects to the idea that fandom is primarily a form of escapism: fans are really eager, or perhaps really desperate, to escape their depressing lives by focusing all their energies on something the world, more often than not, deems trivial. Of course, an element of escapism is often part of the fan experience, but it’s also an overly simplistic view that’s dangerously close to the “get a life!” judgments that have long haunted fans. Instead of escaping from life, fandom can be a way to connect more deeply and to feel part of something bigger than ourselves. It’s not about escaping something bad or boring or unsatisfying, it’s connecting with something inspiring and uplifting. The difference might seem semantic, but I think it’s important.
Instead of escaping from life, fandom can be a way to connect more deeply and to feel part of something bigger than ourselves.
In a study about how nontraditional forms of social connection can provide us with “social fuel” and feelings of connection, researchers concluded that our need to belong can be fulfilled by “symbolic social bonds,” such as fictional worlds and characters or para-social relationships with celebrities, artists, or sports teams. Subjects in the study felt the greatest sense of belonging, connection, and meaning from a combination of both traditional (family, friends, romantic relationships) and nontraditional forms of connection:
“Although both traditional and nontraditional social strategies can enhance an individual’s life, nontraditional strategies seem to add extra meaning and depth to the human experience” (Parvati et al., 2020).
The researchers don’t mention fandom per se, but I believe fandom is an increasingly important type of symbolic social bond. It can even become a more traditional form of social connection as fans form friendships with other fans, both on- and offline.
One reason symbolic social bonds like fandom can create strong feelings of meaning is through “collective effervescence.” Collective effervescence is an idea developed by sociologist Émile Durkheim’s in his 1912 book “Elementary Forms of Religious Life.” It is a key part in his theory of religion, which distinguishes between the boredom and mundanity of everyday life and the sacred, high-energy experience when people come together to worship and celebrate the divine.
More recent research has explored how collective effervescence can be a part of modern life without any connection to religion. Collective effervescence is an intense feeling of connection to others, especially during an experience that feels more special and “sacred” than everyday life. It relies on “collectivist bonds,” which are different from the “relational bonds” we share with our family, friends, or romantic partners. Collectivist bonds do not require actual interpersonal knowledge or interactions, but instead are based on shared group memberships and can create a powerful sense of belonging. Attending a concert or a sports event, participating in an online community, or working towards a shared goal can all inspire feelings of collective effervenscence. One study showed that collective effervescence can be experienced in many common, everyday events that inspire feelings of belonging and excitement, and that “experiences of collective effervescence are related to positive outcomes such as life satisfactions, a feeling of awe, social connection, and perceived meaning in life” (Gabriel et al., 2019).
A staple of romantic films, the adage that love makes us want to be a better person is perhaps not so far-fetched when it comes to fan-love.
Another way that fan-love can be a positive and productive part of life is in its ability to be inspiring and transformative. We often become fans of things we admire in some way — whether that’s a character’s resilience or ingenuity, a musician’s talent or lyricism, or a sports team’s work ethic and tenacity. A staple of romantic films, the adage that love makes us want to be a better person is perhaps not so far-fetched when it comes to fan-love. In “Idol Limerence,” author Wallea Eaglehawk theorizes that the intense feelings of infatuation that fans can feel for pop idols (in this case, the Korean idol group BTS) can provide a catalyst for a journey of transformation.
The journey that Eaglehawk describes in “Idol Limerence” requires self-reflection and negotiating multiple selves — the idol, the artist, the fan, the person. It’s a process of discovery as much as it is a process of falling in love. And, ultimately, it’s about transcending the limitations of the fan/idol relationship — the initial rush of infatuation, the shame and self-doubt of caring so much about something society deems trivial, the reality of being part of a capitalist system that seeks to manufacture and control a certain type of devotion — through finding “insperence”:
Insperence is a state of perpetual inspiration which is experienced alongside feelings of limerence. Where the feelings of anxiety due to unequal communications lessen, and love in its purest state is able to freely flow amongst all experiencing limerence, not just between two parties. It is here where BTS and ARMY are deconstructed and reconstructed as true equals that radical social change is possible.
What insperence allows us to realize is that fan-love can be productive, it can be inspiring, it can be revolutionary. And it can flow, purely, in all directions. The fan and the fan object (what Eaglehawk calls the “limerant focus”) can never truly know each other, so any feelings of love — according to normative social understanding — can never be “real.” But fan-love doesn’t have to meet this definition of “real” to be meaningful and powerful. Fan-love, in its most inspired form, can be transformative.
Fan-love is transformative because love is always, at its core, transformative.
It’s not a zero sum game — by loving something as a fan, it doesn’t take away from our ability to love and engage with other areas of life. To the contrary, love begets love. When we engage, without guilt or shame, with the things that inspire us and bring us joy, we also cultivate greater emotional curiosity and openness in all areas of life.
There is a psychological phenomenon called kama muta, which is a Sanskrit phrase meaning “moved by love.” It came out of research that attempted to understand the seemingly universal human impulse of crying out of happiness — “moist eyes or tears, chills or goosebumps, a warm feeling in the body, a feeling of exhilaration and a motivation to help or share” (Zickfeld et al., 2018). The key element of feeling kama muta is “a sudden intensification of a communal–sharing experience” — an intense feeling of oneness, belonging, and connection.
Many experiences can provoke a sense of kama muta, but I’ve felt it most powerfully in fandom. It is a way to describe the way that being a fan, at the best of times, makes us feel part of something magical. The research on kama muta is especially interested in the positive effects that this feeling can generate in other areas of life, with the hope that it “may move the world toward compassion” and “unite people across the many boundaries that divide them.” If fan-love is a way to cultivate kama muta, then fans can literally save the world. Sounds like a good reason to celebrate fan-love.
