I have been involved in fandoms for several years now, and one of the things I have come to value most is the amazing people that I have have the good fortune to meet. We share an avid interest in a show, or a writer or an actor but I usually once the initial passion fades, what remains are friendships that can stretch over continents and even oceans.
Sometimes when the show is canceled, the community will fade and dwindle away, but often the connections that people have made, as well as their own love for the story and characters, will keep a group thriving for decades after the show is no longer being aired. It remains to be seen what will happen to our own Supernatural community, since the series is in the middle of it's sixth season and looks likely to be renewed for another season.
The range of people you meet online usually is related to the interest you're following, but the make-up of those people can sometimes be really surprising. For example, one of the shows I follow most intently, Supernatural, is broadcast by a network that caters primarily to teenagers and young adults, with shows like Gossip Girl, 90210 and Smallville, but the story arcs, level of writing and acting and themes presented in Supernatural has drawn instead an older and more educated and sophisticated group of fans.
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in that subgroup, variations can be pretty wild, and there is a whole language connected to fandom including "fanfic" (stories written about the characters by fans), "fanon" (something not necessarily canon but recognized among fans as canon), "slash" (generally refers to same sex relationships among characters that are not canon), and "shipping" (heterosexual relationships among characters that are not canon) just to name a few.Its likely that the last two are some of the reasons why fans tend to receive sidelong looks from other people who aren't as fascinated, or as nerdy! But the image of online fans as unmarried middle-aged white guys sitting in their parent's basement drinking Mountain Dew in their underwear is completely out of date. The vast majority of online fans on the bulletin boards and writing fanfic are college-educated women in her thirties and forties, who have found a community who share their interests, something they are unlikely to find that in their immediate circle of friends.
Fierce and sharp disagreements can, and often do, occur online between groups of fans devoted to one actor or storyline or relationship and those who have a completely perspective on how things should go, whether or not The Powers That Be (TPTB) are destroying a show or driving it in a whole new fresh direction, and if an actor is adding to, or taking away from, in their opinion, the story. Flame wars can occur at a moment's notice and because of the anonymity of the boards, can be much harsher and nastier than any argument normally would be. But the passion people have for these shows are what really drives the discussion on the boards, and the level to which people care can make or break a show, take the drive of the Firefly fans known as Browncoats to have the film Serenity made, or the outcry of Farscape fans for a conclusion to the five year arc when the studio canceled the series at the end of season four.
There is no question that a few online fans are absolutely the stereotypical badly socialized shut-in who need to get a life, but don't be fooled, fandom is the 21st century iteration of people sitting around a campfire sharing stories, or gathered in taverns, listening to songs and tales of adventure. Technology just means that we don't have to be sitting on the same bench to share the experience. Just as romantic relationships online have changed from something to be embarrassed about to something that is recommended to your friends, so too, online fandoms, for all their stigma in the past, will continue to grow in popularity as our lives become increasingly online and bound with technology.
