What is a Fan? What Makes a Community?

What is a fan?

A fan can be described as someone who has an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking and enthusiasm for a sporting club, person, group of persons, company, product, work of art, idea, or trend.

But what makes a community?

Could a community be a group that loves and supports, as fans, but for a higher cause or meaning? Or supports someone or something because it inspires them? And what inspires a fandom to become a community?

I think it is a dream.

That is why we love to loose ourselves in the pages of a good book, or follow people’s lives in a darkened theatre, watching their stories unfold on a screen. Or hear the anguish or happiness in an amazing song and be able to relate.

People want something to believe in. Something to grasp, take hold of and make their own. It is a rarity that a fandom becomes a community.

So many times the goals get lost and the experience turns dark. But a community is all about the common goal. Circling the wagons if you will. Creating un-breakable bonds and friendships all because they found something together.

Together, sharing and a feeling of belonging. We all crave it. Accpetance, love, respect, it all ties together. But the respect of a community is born from a spirit, a promise to take a journey and find something utterly amazing at the end.

I was involved in an amazing community when I followed the show Farscape. Promised a fifth season, the show was cut off at the knees after four seasons, leaving the fans with a killer cliffhanger.

But smart, saavy fans rallied around a common cause. They wanted their show back. They pulled from many different backgrounds to create a marketing plan and two years later a mini-series, to tie up loose ends, was born. It is an impressive story, and though others have copied it, no one else can touch the massive undertaking.

But I saw a glimmer of that begin to take root in the fans following Hilarie Burton's Southern Gothic Productions Blog site. The SGP team may have taken that first step alone, but now they can look in all directions, and see so many beside them offering help, love and support.

My friend Velva Carter says "Fans are the new Hollywood Moguls" and I believe her. Check out her comments on this part of her site: http://www.agypsylife.com/fans.html

You know that feeling when something big is about to happen and you are standing at the precipice? I get that feeling with the Southern Gothic Productions people. They are on the eve of something very special.

And they asks fans, who have become a community, to come along. How cool is that?

NEW FAVE LYRIC QUOTE: "I want to live my life in video so I can rewind the parts I like the best." - Modern Trick by Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles