I think Hollywood has seen what fandom can do for a project. You can definitely see that when you go to Comic-con.
Remove every barrier you can to fandom. A fan will be an evangelist for your work.
I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me.
Fandom is about fandom, it's a great big social club.
You'll still get guys with an array of badges to demonstrate their importance, but that just excludes people. I think fandom is more inclusive now.
It is possible to be a fan of reality TV, talent shows and bubblegum pop and still have a brain. You will also see that a great many people know perfectly well how silly and camp and trivial their fandom is. They do not check in their minds when they enter a fan site. Judgement is not necessarily fled to brutish beasts, and men have not quite lost their reason. Which is all a way of questioning whether pop-culture hero worship is really so psychically damaging, so erosive of cognitive faculties, so corrupting of the soul of mankind as we are so often told.
Fandom can keep something alive, and fandom can take it down.
With fantasy and sci-fi, it's based in a real fandom. You're presenting to experts, and their source material is really important to them.
