Not a fangirl, a flowseeker: a unified theory of the fandom-prone personality
Years and years ago, I went to an incredible talk by a woman named Sacha Judd called “what you love matters”. It really struck a chord with me, so much so that I still vividly remember parts of it 8 years later. You can read her full explanation of the talk here, but the gist is: people (predominantly young women) who participate in online fandoms have incredible creative and technical skills that the tech industry overlooks because they’ve been honed in service of something socially embarrassing. Think: One Direction, The Lord of the Rings, or My Little Pony.
Her point was that people in the tech sector like to moan about the state of the ‘talent pipeline’ while also refusing to value skills developed through unconventional means — like developing an app to gamify BTS music streaming or building an 800k-strong online community of people who need up-to-the-minute info about the Eras Tour.
I totally agree with her—although these skills are more likely to be acknowledged today thanks to the undeniable economic value of the creator economy—but that’s not what tonight’s adventure is about.
I’ve been thinking about people, like me, who are drawn to these communities of belonging known as fandoms. People who have ‘obsessive’ personalities – who love things so hard that it can be incomprehensible to the people around them. The only real descriptor we have for the millions of people who fit into this behavioural spectrum is: fangirl. Let’s be clear, that’s a derogatory term. In our society, adding ‘girl’ to anything comes with an intent to belittle, infantalise, undermine. I used it in the byline for this blog simply because there was no other word to use.
It has never been cool to love things deeply, and yet people like me do, anyway. We overcome public pressure and shame to love the things we love, or we do it in secret. Perhaps that’s why fandom communities are so strong, they knit together either as secret societies or to withstand the onslaught of derision from all the cool people in the world.
My fangirl life has never been about ‘not caring what people think of me’ — if anything it’s the opposite. I’ve always been hyper-aware of other’s judgement of my taste (one of the reasons why reaching the give-less-fucks era of middle-age has been such a relief). In fact, I think I’ve said before that all the skills I’ve learned throughout my fangirl life — writing, graphic design, digital marketing, web-building and code — I’ve mastered them all for the sole purpose of trying to convince people to like what I like and see what I see. I am a people-pleaser to the core, for better or worse.
But the joy I get from being too intense about things has always been worth the risk of losing peoples’ good opinion. Given the option, I’d choose ‘fangirl’ over ‘cool girl’ every time. I don’t think that makes me special. I think it makes me normal within a certain category of humanity. But what is that category, exactly?
I was talking to a friend about this the other day and I said to her, “I guess it could be a form of adult ADHD?”
She laughed and replied, “isn’t it so millennial of us to need a diagnosis for everything?”
She’s right. I don’t need a diagnosis because I’m not looking for a cure. I just want a better word than ‘fangirl’ to use to describe myself. I’ve been reading an excellent book called Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Read, and the protagonist clearly fits my definition of this as-yet-unnamed personality type:
“Joan so loved the beauty in this world: showing people the stars, spotting the fuzzy glimmer of the Orion nebula with just her eyes, the rare moments when auroras were visible even in the southern states because of intense geomagnetic storms, trying one more time to really nail Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor, rereading The Awakening, listening to Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush, drawing for so long, so late into the night that her palm cramped, running so far she forgot to think…”
I felt an intense sense of recognition when I read that passage. I thought: that’s exactly what I feel like when I’m deep-diving into my latest ‘thing’.
I believe the experience of fandom is fundamentally creative, particularly in the age of the internet. Whether that creation comes in the form of a reel, stitch, podcast, blog, hilarious little comment, cosplay costume, work of fan art or fan fic — modern fandoms are always creating in response to the things they love. This is amusing because I appreciate that from the outside, it often looks like pure consumerism.
When I studied psychology at Uni there were a few branches of the science that really captured me and shaped who I am and how I act in the world: the humanists, particularly Carl Rogers’ theory of Unconditional Positive Regard; and the positive psychologists, popularised by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of Flow.
Here’s what Csikszentmihalyi says in the preface to his book on the subject:
“This book summarises, for a general audience, decades of research on the positive aspects of human experience—joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life I call flow.”
And further on in chapter one:
“What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can by or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and de-fended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as one can come to being happy.”
This. This is what the experience of fandom is, for me. A condition I prepare for, cultivate, and defend. An inner experience that enhances the quality of my life.
The key principles for achieving a flow state according to Csikszentmihalyi’s theory are:
1. Clear goals - You know exactly what you’re trying to do.
2. Immediate feedback - You can instantly tell whether you’re doing well or not.
3. A balance between challenges and skills – The task is hard enough to stretch you but not so hard that it overwhelms you.
4. Merging of action and awareness - You become so absorbed that doing the task feels automatic and seamless.
5. Concentration on the task at hand - You feel capable and able to influence what’s happening, even if the task is demanding. You have a sense of control.
6. Loss of self-consciousness - You stop thinking about yourself and disappear into the doing.
7. Transformation of time - Time feels distorted — it either races by or slows down dramatically.
From the outside, you might see me watching 35 hours of BTS YouTube on top of my normal working and parenting week and think, “but why?”, but I see 35 hours of time well spent in a zone of pure creativity and inspiration. Some of us make funny little video edits, some of us write blogs about parasocial relationships 🤷♀️.
I don’t think tying the theory of Flow to modern fandom can work without also acknowledging Vallerand’s Dualistic Model of Passion, because I don’t want to pretend that all fan experiences are this wholesome. Large proportions of online fandoms are akin to digital dumpster fires.
Vallerand defines passion as “a strong inclination toward an activity that people like, find important, and in which they invest time and energy.”
He then splits passion into two groups:
Harmonious Passion (HP) — when an activity is freely chosen, integrated into your identity, and remains in harmony with other areas of your life. It comes from autonomous internalisation; you choose it because it feels aligned with who you are. It leads to outcomes Vallerand calls flexibility, flow, well-being, and adaptive functioning.
In a nutshell: you stay in control of the activity; it doesn’t control you.
Obsessive Passion (OP) — Ugggghhhh I have such an aversion to this word… but this is when the activity becomes pressured, rigid, and tied to self-esteem or internalised expectations. E.g. you feel you have to engage or you’ll feel anxious, guilty, or unworthy. It leads to conflict with other life domains like work and family.
In a nutshell: the activity starts to control you.
I see quite a few examples of OP online in the BTS Army. Comments like, “JK whyyyyy did you stream for 6 hours straight I have to sleep,” or people from one shipping community (let’s say #jikook) getting into a ridiculous war of artfully edited videos with another shipping community (#taekook) to prove which fictional BTS relationship is real.
You also don’t need to look far to see examples of stalking behaviour in modern celebrity culture. That’s probably an outcome of a cluster of individual issues, but it seems likely that OP could act as a trigger.
There have been times in my life (when I’ve been depressed, anxious, lonely) that I’ve strayed close to OP territory, but for the most part, my fan life has been about harmonious passion. Finding creative inspiration and flow. It’s just that, for people who don’t identify with or understand this personality inclination, it’s difficult to see the difference between HP and OP—which is why the word ‘obsessive’ has been so casually used, by both myself and my family, to make sense of my behaviour.
My clear goal for tonight’s flow state was to find a replacement word for ‘fangirl’, and I’ve settled on it: flowseeker. It’s just the right level of corny.
Here’s another excerpt from Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow which can act as both descriptor and definition:
“We have seen how people describe the common characteristics of optimal experience: a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear cues as to how well one is performing. Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or worry about problems. Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted. An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous.”
I’m an incorrigable flowseeker and I will be for life. Stoked about it tbh.