Today Dave Campbell has a fantastic post about fannish jackassery titled “Fandamentalism.” Campbell defines fandumentalists as people, “who feel personally insulted or attacked when their favorite comics, cartoon, or whatever are changed or translated into another medium. They lack perspective and decorum and exhibit a sense of entitlement that borders on pathology. Many of them are dicks.” I did a Google search to see if anyone had used the word fandumentalist or fandamentalism in this context before and I found a couple of instances from Kung Fu Monkey. Every other instance I looked at was a misspelling of fundamentalism or fundamentalist. One was even making a joke about putting the fun in fandamentalism. I might have pulled a spit-take on that one.
As I was reading the paraphrasing of the email from j*******@gmail.com I kept thinking, “Jeeze. Don’t get your panties in a wad.” (I would like to point out that j*******@gmail.com is not me for those of you who know my other gmail address.) Then it occurred to me that j******@gmail.com was probably a guy and therefore not wearing panties at all but rather his fanties, which are the particularly tight underpants worn by scifi fans which seem to make them prematurely crotchety and confrontational. Fanties are also exclusionary underoos which prevent you from being a fan of more than one thing. For instance if you are wearing your Trekkie fanties, you cannot do anything but look down on Star Wars and particularly those wearing Star Wars fanties. I think you guys get the gist.
Back to Campbell’s discussion of fan-dickery. He ends with what should almost be a cliché defense for the geek set. At least, even when being completely unreasonable, we aren’t as bad as the sports fan who seem to feel the need to celebrate a championship with the traditional riot. Something which did not happen here in Houston when we managed to eek out two NBA championships back in the ‘90s.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment