Today's Fandom Behavior Is Not New

Over the weekend, I came across this post on LinkedIn, referring to a recent quote by one of TikTok's brand managers...

Dr. Carroll is right, of course. Even just a cursory knowledge of fandoms highlights this. Honestly, even if you don't study fandoms at all, did you not see news of late night release parties for every one of the Harry Potter books? Did you not see coverage of all those "weirdos" who dress up in costumes and travel to San Diego every year? Are you completely unaware of fantasy football leagues?

I did think, "OK, maybe I'm taking that one statement from Dean out of context." It's part of a larger article, after all. But when I went back to read the original piece, I saw that Dean is also quoted as saying, "We are already seeing broadcasters and streamers provide quick and easy access to data — ball-tracking, player speeds, distance travelled."

Yes, because box scores in baseball haven't been a thing since 1859! Because announcers never mentioned every player's key stats when they came up to bat. Because the back of every baseball card doesn't have any metrics on it. Because fans wouldn't sit with notepads in stadiums and update that information for themselves in real time during games! Yes, those stats are available more quickly and easily to a general population that doesn't pay close attention to every game than they used to be, but for the types of people we would generally call "fans," they've been doing exactly this for over a century!

I don't mention this to call out Dean specifically. I don't know him at all, nor have I ever had even the remotest interest in TikTok as a platform. But this is ultimately the problem with the vast majority of corporations that own/manage brands have trouble with: the people they generally have working at that level aren't fans. And I don't mean they're not fans of that particular brand that they're trying to promote, but they're not fans of anything!

The specifics are different from baseball fans to comic book fans to Star Trek fans, but the root passion of it is all the same. You don't have to understand why an individual loves a particular Lord of the Rings character, but it's not hard to relate if you say they love them in the same way you might love your favorite football player. But if you don't have that type of passion for anything, then you get comments like Dean's, which show a complete obliviousness to the idea. Which is maybe fine if your job is the accounting department or in production or something, but not having a base level understanding when your job is engage -- either directly or indirectly -- with the folks using your product or service seems to me like a massive failure.

Related Items fandom