Fandom as Substitute Religion

Sep 9, 2024 by

By Mike Mitchell, Juicy Ecumenism.

The kind of fandom in question does not ask us to latch ourselves to anything outside ourselves. It is pure self-indulgence, demanding nothing from a person that isn’t fun and reassuring. On the other hand, the pursuit of truth about God and real purpose is difficult and demanding.

A recent Wall Street Journal piece by Rachel Feintzeig, “What Superfans Know That the Rest of Us Should Learn,” gleefully describes a pitiful state of affairs in which some people try to find meaning in life by substituting entertainment for the only thing that can truly give meaning to life.

The gist is that many “superfans” can teach the rest of us how to live a fulfilling life by filling the void left by an absence of religion with obsessions for Star Wars, Taylor Swift, Disney, or Harry Potter.

As Feintzeig explains,

“From the outside, it’s easy to roll our eyes at devotees of everything from Taylor Swift to ‘Star Trek.’ We deem them nerdy or frivolous, judge their costumes, the time they waste on Reddit, the money they spend on concert tickets. What if they’ve figured out something the rest of us haven’t? After all, so many of us lack community. Data from Cigna finds 58% of Americans are lonely. Religion is fading. Work doesn’t love us back. Maybe letting ourselves be obsessed with that highly specific and possibly weird thing we love is the answer.”

She tells the story of a couple who had a Star Wars themed wedding on May the fourth, “exiting the ceremony to music from the original 1977 film, under an arch of glowing lightsabers held aloft by their guests.” Not surprisingly, the photo of the couple leaving the wedding chapel shows a wall bereft of any religious imagery behind the presiding minister (rather, galactic emperor).

Then there is, “May Naidoo, a British Ph.D. student and content creator, traveled to Japan, Paris and Chicago as part of his quest to see real-life versions of famed artworks featured in his favorite Nintendo game, ‘Animal Crossing,’” and Tara Block who was so infatuated with Harry Potter books that she got a Harry Potter tattoo and took flying broomstick lessons at a castle in England. This made me realize that the twenty-something and otherwise businesslike man I recently saw with a Pokemon tattoo covering his forearm was much more normal than I took him to be (and here I mean “normal” in the most discouraging sense).

Read here.

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