Not a fan until you become one…
People would say I'm often on my high horses. My friend says I should stop calling people my fans, that I have none. What he doesn't know is that he is one without even knowing he is. Or maybe he's really not one. I use my WhatsApp status in a way that one would think it's a TV Show. It's always filled with so many statuses and a lot of rants. So one day, I called myself a WhatsApp Influencer and my friend was once again quick to tell me that I should stop feeling so big - it wasn't with a harsh tone though.
A fan is a clipped version of the English word "Fanatic" which can be defined as a person with an obsessive interest in and enthusiasm for a particular activity. According to Google Online Dictionary, supporter and follower are synonyms of the word fan.
But why does it seem like people hate to be identified as fans? Is it because they go with the definition that a fanatic is someone who is excessively and extremely zealous towards a political or religious organisation? They've grown with the notion that fanatic is a radical who'd do just anything to protect the interest of his ideology or icon/idol...
I think people don’t like calling themselves fans nowadays because to them, it is condescending. So, I might like your works and become a staunch enthusiast but I’d never use the word fan. I’m a fan of your works but I’m not your fan. To us, fan means someone who is, who should, as a matter of fact, be subservient. And none of us is going to be labelled that, because that tag means we’re attesting to some other person’s greatness or superiority in one field or the other.
Given that there’s always someone somewhere who looks up to you and is inspired by you, I’d say that you have at least one fan on earth. Generally, our first fans are our parents and siblings - but the world is changing. Family no longer supports family. And you don’t want to sound subservient by calling another your idol/icon because that’ll make your ego shrink by 75%.
But we're all not fans until we become fans. We relate to stuff that we share. We keep the expectations high for new content. We now become subscribed to getting either a daily or weekly dose of that content. Sometimes, we even share and promote like it was ours - like we were paid for doing it. In the end, we've become fans without knowing. We are the word without the tag.
And anytime I write a new article or piece of poetry, I always ask myself this little question: "Will my audience/fans appreciate it and relate to it?" A friend of mine asked me what my intended audience was and I told her that I wasn't sure. Maybe it's because I'm writing more for my fans. Because before reading, they already know that they'll relate. They know they'll live it. You're not a fan until you become one. And even when you become one, you don't know you're one.
