Via Pinterest

Orion Peyrol

Co-Editor in Chief

Once a week, I sit on a wooden bench to feel a little less lonely. No matter if the sun is setting or if the world is getting colder, it will always be there for me, just waiting for me to sit back down. When I eventually do, as I always will, the beats of a wellworn story envelop me. However, my pews are not placed within the confines of an institution; rather, they exist in spaces carved out by fellow fans on the internet— my fandom.

Religion, like all socially constructed concepts, has a purpose for its existence; it speaks to human beings’ various needs. Religion serves to instill a sense of meaning to life, a place to feel close to our community, to gather and to learn from others. More importantly, especially for the comparison I am preparing to draw, it also serves as a common ground for people to understand each other, a springboard for other conversations to be had. All of which has become rarer and rarer as religion becomes further and further removed from most of our lives and loses its place as a cultural touchstone.

The principle of separating religion from state and public life, or secularism, is a very old concept which has only grown in fervor and ubiquity in the past few decades. Secularism is a vast and complicated debate, and for the purpose of this conversation, not a deeply relevant one; it is undeniable that religion has a purpose and a reason for existing, and its absence in a lot of our lives has left a gap that it once occupied.

I, however, do not think that that many of us feel a deep chasm left by its dearth, because most of us have already filled it with another meaning-creating and community-building theology: the Doctrine of Fandom, gaining followers by the day!

And if you are feeling the loss of religion in some way, feeling lonely, purposeless, like creativity doesn’t come to you like it used to: join a fandom! Fandoms are genuinely, at their best, places that promote creativity, reading, literacy skills, debate and argumentation (if you know anything about fandoms, you know those arguments can get pretty heated) and most of all, a feeling of togetherness. Fandom speaks to something we all have and feel — a want for connection. Common interests are the easiest way to make friends, and a shared love for a piece of media to discuss is what I would call the grown up version of running up to someone and asking if they want to be friends.

Fandoms are the way they are because of the original modern fandom, Star Trek. Fans of the series made what we consider the closest equivalent to contemporary fanfiction, a fan zine (a fanmade magazine) called Spockanalia which launched in 1967 and used to be physically mailed to fans. It is credited with a large part of the growth of the Star Trek fandom and subsequently fandoms as a whole. Itsf ormat encouraged fans to collaborate in its creation, allowing them to contribute their own works, respond to each other, and spark a decades-strong culture and love for media.

Fandom has been accepted into the cultural consciousness as a normal way of interacting with media. It is no longer such an odd thing to discuss your fervent love for a piece of media on main.

What started out as being seen as a dirty little secret is now so mainstream that it’s become our way to make friends in real life.

I’d say, fandom occupies the same space as religion once did— even if you’re only a passive practicant of fandom, you may still make references to Brooklyn 99 or Breaking Bad to your coworkers on a slow day. We no longer need to compliment somebody’s shoelaces to signal our “in-crowd” status as was once tradition on tumblr; the in-crowd is everyone.

I’d actually go even further with my comparison: fandom not only fills the role that religion once did but it does so by mimicking the structure of Abrahamic religions. The main practice of those religions, boiled down to the simplest version, is for followers of a central manuscript to gather around routinely to discuss and enjoy said manuscript in ritualistic and communal practices. Fandom even has resemblance to the way religions further divides itself based on interpretations of their manuscripts: within a fandom, people will disagree based on ships (fans either inventing or heavily supporting a romantic relationship between characters), character interpretation, and headcannons (traits or ideas attributed to a character by fans that are not present in the original piece of media).

Fandom can give and, for many of us, has given so much. It occupies such an incredibly unique position within culture. It’s still relatively new enough to not have much academic research done about it and yet it fills such archaic needs within us. I invite you to crack open AO3, type in a piece of media you enjoy, and spend a night surrounding yourself with some pure, unfiltered joy just for the sake of it.