What makes fans tick?

Fandom’s remarkable fusing.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Scottish football fans wearing kilts march down a street singing and waving their arms alogt.

Scotland's Tartan Army of football fans.

"A fat, sarcastic Star Trek fan: you must be a devil with the ladies."

This put down of Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons neatly sums up a prevailing attitude to fans. To be a committed fan is to devote yourself to a niche pastime; to be weird and nerdy and, simply, not cool. At its worst, the fan becomes a fanatic, from which the noun is derived; an obsessive who stalks the object of their passion online and, at its most dangerous, offline.

Times are changing, though, and the internet is chiefly responsible. Where once fans could feel isolated and able only to relate to fellow afficionados slowly via the postal system, now they can find people who share their love in a handful of clicks and build relationships in real time. A lot of anguish is spent on how the internet allows people to find extremist chat rooms where abhorrent behaviour is normalised; less attention is given to the wonder of being able to find fellow lovers online of Massey Ferguson tractors, Australian mullets or Rubik’s Cubes. Many fans feel less alone online, building a new sense of belonging and purpose – a realisation that others will take them seriously.

Yet experienced from the inside, a remarkable bonding is taking place, where fans not only fuse with others, but with the team itself.

In Fans: A Journey into the Psychology of Belonging (Picador, 2024), the academic Michael Bond gives a perceptive and generous insight into the world of fandom. There are Beliebers, Directioners, Trekkers, Swifties, Janeites, Ricardians. For the uninitiated, that’s lovers of Justin Bieber, One Direction, Star Trek, Taylor Swift, Jane Austen, Richard the Third; though strangely one of the biggest bases of all simply goes by the title Star Wars fans. Bond spends some time looking at the phenomenon of Michael Jackson. Professor Gayle Stever has researched the pop star’s fans and found them, like many other fans, to be ‘normal people carrying on normal lives with functioning relationships and jobs, who just had this passion for Michael Jackson’. Despite the discomfort of idolising a celebrity who lived, and died, with serious child abuse allegations made against him, they saw Jackson as ‘the target of racist abuse and unwarranted criticism throughout his career’.

Fans often identify very personally with their idols. Cosplaying conventions allow fans to reinvent themselves and Houston University studies have shown that people can ‘feel less lonely and less anxious in the face of rejection simply by thinking of a favourite TV show’.

But what of football fans? Many find the aggressive tribalism involved hard to accept. I have observed young male fans of London Premier League teams chanting loudly at train stations in a way that made young women nearby shrink away, making me wonder whether my opening line from The Simpsons ought to be re-purposed. The ritualised conduct of football crowds – the fist pumping, jumping and embracing at a goal, the verbal and hand abuse of opposing players and referees, and the chants that defy pre-match announcements about tolerance at games – can look bizarre and scary. Yet experienced from the inside, a remarkable bonding is taking place, where fans not only fuse with others, but with the team itself.

‘... the best of sport is not the earthy moment of victory, but the privilege of watching athletes tilt at divinity.’

Emma John

The deeper the love for a club, the greater the joy and the pain at success and failure. It is a high-risk investment that many stake because it makes them feel so alive. The peerless interpreter of football fandom, Nick Hornby, says that football is a context where watching becomes doing’. Anyone whose leg has involuntarily jerked as a player reaches for the ball will grasp that.

I wonder if some football fans who identify as Christian struggle with the secret reality of uncontrollable mood swings every weekend? Should a win on a football pitch matter that much, when so many things are so much more important? They may aspire to the whimsy of Ecclesiastes (there is a time to win and a time to lose, the author nearly said) but feel the coursing testosterone of Samson instead.

God made us playful, and football is a disarmingly simple game to watch and play. There is also breathtaking beauty in the movements of its finest exponents, like the choreography of Michael Jackson himself. If we are called to life in all its fulness, isn’t this also a part of that fulness (even if some games are a stretch)?

In recent interviews, Nick Hornby has said he couldn’t write Fever Pitch again, his pained love letter to Arsenal FC; middle age has brought a new perspective. Writing in Prospect magazine (May 2024), sports journalist Emma John says: ‘I have observed many of my sports-loving friends follow the same trajectory…the best of sport is not the earthy moment of victory, but the privilege of watching athletes tilt at divinity’.

At least, until the final penalty shoot-out, when for the diehard fan it’s absolutely all about the earthly moment of victory.

Review

Books

Culture

Digital

24 September 2024

4 min read

Filterworld: algorithmic anxiety is flattening our culture

The rule of vanilla lets our unfeeling gadgets decide what’s best for us.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A podcast guest speaks in front of a mic.

What's next on the playlist?

Sebastian Pandelache on Unsplash.

Here’s another diagnosis to add to modern malaise: algorithmic anxiety. It’s described by Kyle Chayka in his excellent book Filterworld (Heligo Books, 2024) as the:

…awareness that we must constantly contend with automated technological processes beyond our understanding and control, whether in our Facebook feeds, Google Maps driving directions, or Amazon product promotions.

We don’t understand algorithms. Even if we did, we wouldn’t know how they actually work on us as every tech company keeps it a secret, lest competitors learn from them. This has led to the algorithm becoming the century’s newest bogeyman, a phantom we can reference in conversation to make us sound tech savvy and culturally knowing even while we remain in the dark.

‘Algorithmic has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimised for attracting attention’.

Kyle Chayka

One of the oddest outcomes of the ascendency of the algorithm is the seemingly diametric effects on politics and culture. In politics it has polarised people, sorting us into opposing camps and then ensuring we hear only good things about our ‘side’ and only maddening things about the ‘opposing’ side. Instead of calmly listening to a different view, we hurl insults, as performative as Prime Minister’s Question Time and about as enlightening.

Something different is happening with culture. Here, the algorithm makes culture more homogenous; in the words of Kyle Chayka, it is ‘flattened’. The basic rule of what he calls Filterworld is that ‘the popular becomes more popular, and the obscure becomes even less visible’. It is a strange re-mix of Jesus for the digital age: ‘to all those who have, more will be given…but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

The life of an Instagram post is said to be determined in the first five minutes. If it has engagement, it can be sure of more; if it gets none, it will sink. Visibility on social media is vital for artists of all kinds, because this is where all publicity begins. Artists try and game the system, figuring out what kind of content the algorithm will promote. In the process, their creative expression is subtly compromised. People begin to write in a style that gets attention, and what gets attention is decided by the algorithm. Those who tweet will know how the short, pared back medium starts to influence their life away from X. Musicians know that art which is safe and mainstream – the public’s crowded middle where performers like Ed Sheeran have thrived – is likely to succeed.

‘Much of culture now has the hollow, vacant feeling of having been made by algorithm’ according to the cultural commentator Dean Kissick. Chayka observes that: ‘algorithmic has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimised for attracting attention’.

It is often at the margins that breakthroughs emerge; art that makes us see this world in a new and divine light.

There is a valid counter to this development. Previously, what we read, heard and saw as cultural consumers was determined by a small set of experts who filtered content for us. These experts were often drawn from a narrow section of society who inevitably brought their own biases to bear. While this may be true, it is hardly a triumph for the public to have an unfeeling gadget decide what’s best for them, based on what we have liked before and what seems to appeal to most people. At the ice cream vendor, this is like reaching for vanilla every time.

The truth is, in necessarily surrendering to the algorithm (for what alternative is there online?) we miss huge volumes of culture that might appeal to us. It is about as effective as deciding what sea life we like based only on what pops up to the surface of the water.

The best art is not always the most popular and there is a risk that the divine spark of invention that the creator God has placed within each of us – the unlimited potential of being made in the image of God – will not be fanned into existence as often as it could be. Chasing likes is no substitute for patient inspiration. It is often at the margins that breakthroughs emerge; art that makes us see this world in a new and divine light.

‘Behold, I am making all things new’ says the one who sits on the throne in Revelation. That algorithms are making all things similar is the reality we are learning to live with.