COMPLETE Side note: the mentions of Sabine Baring-Gould made me dig out my copy of the Book of Werewolves to re-read it.
Star Trek fandom took a hit between the end of *Star Trek: Enterprise *in 2005 and the premiere of Star Trek(the film directed by J.J. Abrams) in 2009. Reaction to Star Trek: Enterprise was mixed among the Trekkies I know; the reboot film caused a lot of them to stop caring about anything new being created and just focus on the previous works. Some just moved on completely.
Also I have to nominate pro wrestling fans as another fanatical fanbase. At least the so called “smart fans” who obsess over rating the matches and argue endlessly about it.
Objection: K-pop’s not a fad, it’s been a musical style for decades. Its popularity in North America may be a fad, but considering how much money and work the South Korean government is putting into promoting it, chances are it’ll be around for a while.
Some KISS fans are pretty fanatical…I’m sure some of them will be shelling out $18.5K for a Paul Stanley stage-played guitar on the upcoming tour. (Guitar strap is $2.5K extra)
I agree! And even if it wasn’t, I’m still with the show until the end - or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first. Still, while I may be a fan, I’m not a fan, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, maybe I worded the OP a little too vaguely; fine that K-Pop fans are dedicated, or that KISS fans would pay a lot for an autographed guitar, and that does for sure qualify as “fanatical”. So apologies if my question was too vague; what I meant was, which fandom would run dizzying circles around the average person with knowledge of backstory, details, etc. Like, they would know what size pants Spock wears or the average height of a Stormtrooper or which brand of tobacco that Sherlock Holmes prefers. That sort of thing.
As someone on the edge of furry fandom I know they have a tendency to categorize different types of furry. Somebody who went to a furry convention claims they’re welcoming to outsiders, though.
I’ve got a feeling about what you’re really getting at and all I have to say is it’s just another type of sexual fetish just like any other type of sexual fetish.
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It’s the future; they MUST have perfected one-size-fits-all, right?
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Somewhat taller than Mark Hamill.
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Don’t believe a brand or blend is ever specified, but if it isn’t stored in a Persian slipper, get right out of town.
He smokes a cheap and foul black shag.
But individual boy bands are a flash-in-the-pan fad, just like New Boys 2 Men In Synch On The Block in the US.
The Walking Dead enjoyed a fanatical fandom for awhile.
So did the Grateful Dead.
An author named Tony Horowitz wrote a book called Confederates In The Attic, about the persistence of Confederate iconography in the South. He hung out with some frighteningly dedicated CSA re-enactors, who made him leave some apples behind, because they were a modern varietal that didn’t exist in the 1860s.
True, many are. In addition to the fickleness of fashion and fame, an issue particular to South Korean boy bands is how the draft causes them to lose members to military service on a regular basis. (And then there’s scandals when certain popular stars get away with very lax service.) But just like some of the bands you mashed up have done, there’s often the possibility of comeback tours or solo projects.
the musical Rent by the late Jonathan Larson had really dedicated RENTheads for a while.
I guess it is a commentary on my age, but I am a little surprised not to see The Beatles mentiined. My childhood babysitters knew every discernible fact about them and would jealously hoarde any new info they could lay hands on.
From what I could tell, it wasn’t so much the film that messed it up, it was the fact that as the various *Trek *series went on, they got more and more polarizing, with Enterprise topping that cake. Then you had a four year gap, a single feature length movie essentially setting up a parallel canon, and then another 4 year gap, a second movie, and then a 3 year gap, and a third.
So in 14 years, we’ve had a total of six hours of content that’s not even in the established **Trek **universe. There’s been a 14 year gap in the old canon- prior to this, the longest single gap was between the end of the animated series in 1974 and the premiere of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Otherwise there were usually either 2-3 year gaps, or from about 1987-2005, there was at least one Trek show showing continuously, with DS9 and Voyager overlapping from 1995-1999.
I think that it’s not so much that the fandom has lapsed, but rather that they’re not hungry, as it were. Anyone interested in Trek has 755 television episodes and 10 feature films in the old canon, and three films in the new one, plus lots of novels out there which may or may not be canonical. Things have come a long way from when there were 79 original episodes, and people just wanted MORE! (which incidentally, is my theory for the genesis of serious fandoms- they have to be left wanting in some way)
That’s it exactly with the Silent Hill and Fallout fandoms. Years go by between installments. WRT Silent Hill, theparent companyno longergives a shit about the franchise, or video games in general, so the fandom is YF. For Fallout, Bethesda wants fat stacks of Benjies with minimal effort. They don’t give a wet shit about continuity or canon or even bringing a playable game to market.
I think this has died down now, but in its heyday, American Idol generated a fandom that was (in some cases it seemed literally) insane. I had never seen it until the year that the “Glamberts” took up for Adam Lambert. I took an interest in it that year, and followed some of the websites and of course it was all over Twitter. It was fascinating. Grown women frothing at the mouth hysterical with hate for their special snowflake’s competitors, it was crazy. I heard Clay Aiken’s fans had a crazed element too.