Fandom Is a Disease

Yes, this is one of those things where there's some online discourse that piques my interest (in this case, the conversation about whether it's bad, or how bad it is, to continue being a Harry Potter fan in light of J. K. Rowling's ongoing embrace of international supervillainy) but I don't get around to writing about it until weeks later when everybody else has moved on. In this case, I wasn't sure I should write about it at all, because my thesis is obnoxious and probably unconstructive, but whatever, it's fun, here we go.

And yes, “Fandom Is a Disease” is a needlessly provocative title. But still. Fandom isn't a terrible disease, in the big scheme of things. It's hardly ever terminal. But it is a disease, a disorder. At its usual worst, it's like leprosy used to be back in the bad old days, where nobody who doesn't also have it wants to interact with you and you end up living in a sad little colony of similarly afflicted outcasts. More often, it's like herpes is nowadays, where if you do a good and conscientious job of managing it, most people don't even need to know that you have it, although maybe you're still most comfortable in congress with other folks who do. Some people find community in their afflictions; some people even find merit in them. Tuberculosis used to be sexy. It made you fetchingly wan and enervated!

This metaphor, it should be clear, has legs. Fandom is contagious, it's sometimes debilitating, it can be embarrassing (particularly when sex is involved), some people are more susceptible to it than others, and it's generally curable but every now and then some poor soul gets a particularly stubborn case, maybe a drug-resistant strain, and just has to live with it forever. But for the most part, it comes and goes. Some people get recurring cases, or lifelong cases, often of rare and obscure conditions. Some people are prone to catching everything all the time. Most people catch something at least every once in a while—if you never catch anything, ever, you're probably living in a bubble. You need to get out more.

Like many people, especially people my age, I caught the Star Wars bug as a kid. It was ubiquitous back then, and there was no known treatment. I had a very grave case of it for many years. In my early teens, we got it under control for a while, but I had a serious flare-up when The Phantom Menace hit theaters. Thing is, at that point I was a little older, a little stronger, and the second epidemic strain was a lot weaker than the first. My immune system was up to the challenge. The prequel-trilogy relapse wasn't nearly as severe a case as my childhood bout with the original trilogy and the Expanded Universe, and in fact, when it eventually abated, I was thoroughly inoculated. I had a bit of a fever when The Force Awakens came out, but it broke quickly; I never even bothered watching The Rise of Skywalker. I was cured. (Do I still have fondness for Star Wars? Sure. Did I still watch, and love, Andor? Absolutely. But I enjoyed it for itself, on its own terms, rather than as a Star Wars fan.)

Harry Potter fandom is like conjunctivitis. It's normal enough for kids to get it, although it's still pretty gross; it's pretty weird to keep getting it as an adult. It's really weird to have it all the time. The chronic forms are absolutely treatable. There's no excuse for living with it for longer than a week. Yes, some kinds of conjunctivitis don't come from touching shit. But this one does. This is a case of pink eye that you keep getting via contact with shit from the world's most influential and committed transphobe. Grow up, wash your hands of her, and stop touching that shit.