Toxicity

Fandom is a strange thing. It is a love for a thing or a person that can border on obsessive so that the fan wants to smother the thing or creator with their devotion. The fandom, the love, becomes more important than why it was created, what it might mean, and who made it. 

It’s the personal connection one has that is more important. 

That is all-consuming. 

We want so desperately to be seen, to be heard, to be felt and when we feel any of those things by someone we admire, or by an art we love, we want to smother it. 

Consume it. 

And as soon as it fails to live up to the pedestal we built for it, we’re more than happy to tear it all down. 

We’re having a moment right now.
That’s clear. 

You are seeing it with live performances, where people want to be part of the show. They want to be part of the spectacle. You see it at theater productions where people are scream-singing. Where they are making scenes. And you are seeing it at concerts where people are throwing things on stage at the performers, or are paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars to be at an event being hyped as not to miss. 

When at shows we spend more time filming them than experiencing them, often making sure to stop to shoot some footage that shows ourselves as well, so we can prove we are a part of the show. 

There’s a brokenness to all of it. 

Something spurred by Covid but which was always there. 

Expensive concerts are not new, they were just never this expensive. It’s a mix of huge performers making rare tours and having shows as big as their imaginations. The days of a band taking a stage, playing some meaningful music, and calling it good, feel almost over. Everyone is expected to have a SHOW, a  PERFORMANCE. It’s not enough to play the music live. You have to make us all part of it. Have to have a stage show. 

Which is funny because I saw Iron Maiden in 1992 and they had those things, they had a big show, they had a STAGE show, and it was amazing. 

Again, none of this is new. 

It’s our DEMAND and need that is new and that the performers are happy to oblige as some are able to create whatever their hearts desire. 

There’s an argument to be made that by making things so outlandishly big that the music takes second stage. 

Maybe. 

Maybe not. 

I think it can serve as an extension of the music, like a video. 

It’s just that we’re so desperate to feel after Covid that everything is hyper-focused for us. 

We can’t just be fans we have to be FANS. 

We have to be the best fans. 

The most dedicated and loyal. 

Because we want to be seen. 

Even even just by other fans. 

Music itself is such an emotional art and can be so personal that it makes sense. It often says what we feel and cannot put into words. When someone does that, it feels special. And it feels as if they are speaking to us. 

But we can be so ugly too. 

Crying SELL OUT when someone we like gets popular. 

Making fun of them when they fail to live up to our personal expectations. 

We saw Tori Amos last night and it was amazing. 

She was amazing. 

It’s fascinating to see an artist that is legendary but has rarely gotten radio play. She, like so many, has made herself. 

While she never had the breakthrough that Taylor Swift or others have had, she is beloved by her rabid fandom. I cannot imagine that pressure, even at that level. To have fans constantly asking for this, requesting that, and needing these. 

To keep feeding a beast that is never full. 

It’s a balancing act few can keep up – to be intimate with the fandom yet keep your distance. 

To keep enough of your personal life behind curtains so as to shelter yourself and retain some mystery. 

We may want everything, every last detail of your life, every morsel of it, but we don’t deserve it. 

And those same fans can turn catty and caustic, dissecting every album, every performance, and every interview. 

Judging their looks, and sound, and how they played something. 

The thing is though that the same fans that scream and cry at the shows, so moved by the performance or music, are the ones that are throwing things at the performers and pushing past boundaries. 

I saw Nirvana on their last tour and someone threw a show and hit singer Kurt Cobain in the face. 

Why would you do that?

Because. 

That’s why. 

You don’t pay the kind of money, even back then, that you do to attend a concert to be a jerk.
That’s idiocy. 

No. 

Fans want to be seen, they want attention, and like a toddler still learning self-control, they give in to whims and notions. It’s the idea of throwing flowers or tokens of affection on stage, taken too far.
Because we don’t understand limits anymore. 

And we don’t respect the boundaries of the famous. 

We think we possess them. 

Own them. 

We think they are their brand and that as consumers, we have a right to it. 

To them. 

Humans are in a strange place. 

We are caustically sick in our hearts and feelings and are trying to force things to mean more than maybe they do. 

It’s normal to take pictures at a show but filming the entire thing, while not new, is robbing yourself of that intimacy and performance you were so desperate for. 

You are ruining the vibe. 

It’s as if you are making a sex tape of the performance. 

You want to possess it, to re-live it, but never really lived it in the first place because you didn’t let yourself experience it. 

Live shows, like love and everything good, are ephemeral and that is what makes them special. 

I fear that we are not yet at the worst of our behavior yet. 

We can get worse. 

We have seen the worst, randomly, but we’re seeing more and more boundaries crossed, and more outrageous behavior and in the end, it will simply take the performers away from us and put them behind plexiglass for their safety, thus robbing us of some of that intimacy we craved. 

It’s the human way though. 

We can’t help ourselves but to try to consume that which we love, even if it makes us sick in the end. 

…c…

The Haunted Bookstore