Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Fandumb

Sometimes, fans go beyond enjoying something and descend into what can only be described as...

Fandumb.

This is what happens when fans take themselves and what they love too seriously. For example:

During the Twilight craze, a group of girls at the school I work at decided that they wanted to be werewolves--so they went around barking at people. They barked at their classmates, at me (so I banned them from the library), at their teachers, at security, at the principal, and even at a visiting cop (he looked very confused). They finally stopped (maybe from boredom, maybe from getting tired of being mocked by their classmates and sent to the office by their teachers).

At about that same time, two girls got into a fight in the middle of the library over who was better--Edward or Jacob. The Jacob fan tore open the bag of the Edward fan, found a copy of a Twilight novel, and started beating her opponent with it, screaming that she had "stolen Edward from her." When security broke the fight up, I picked up the book and discovered that it was a copy that belonged to the library (and which had not been checked out). The girl who had it in her bag screamed at me that it was hers and added a couple of threats for good measure.

At the end of this past school year, I broke up a fight between two boys over which villain was cooler--Loki or the Joker. The Loki fan was incensed when I followed them to the office and said that the Joker was cooler. The Joker fan was angry when I said Loki was entertaining, too.

I've also seen plenty of Fandumb on the Internet, but that would take more time to write than I've got.

Anyone else seen any good examples of Fandumb? Has it ever erupted on this board?

How sad. It is incidents like that that give fandom in general a bad name among "mundanes."

There has been nothing like that on this site since I joined a few years ago; I can't speak to what the boards were like before that.

Joy,
Lynn

I took my reluctant husband, who doesn't think much of fandom, to a Star Trek convention years ago. We attended a talk by John de Lancie (Q). Lots of people were waving their hands, anxious to ask questions but he asked them to wait until the end. He started by telling the audience about how he got the role of Q on Next Generation. One audience member kept waving her hand throughout his entire talk. Finally, he selected her. What does she ask? "How did you get the role of Q?" Talk about making fans look dumb. Even John de Lancie was rolling his eyes.

Joan

That's really sad. Clearly, they didn't understand Jacob and the characters of the werewolves at all. Perhaps they should have been sent to remedial reading classes until they could understand to bark like dogs "to be a werewolf" would be as insulting to the Quileute tribe as much as biting people would be insulting to Edward Cullen's family.

I often see people acting like animals and superheroes / villains, but I spend my days around children under the age of 10. At least, their play is more in the homage stage. My kids (or any of their friends) have never actually believed they WERE animals or heroes (as we often hear about in books, movies, tv, and news). Even when I say, "Okay, Superman, where did you fly to today?" I get told, "Mom, I'm not *really* Superman. It's just a costume and I can't fly. I'm just pretending."

When I lived in L.A., actors would sometimes come into the bookstore where I worked. It was my belief that it was better to treat celebrities like everyone else and not mob them (even if they came in for a book or music signing). There's a real person under their fame, and like Clark Kent, just wants to have a life. I'm one of these people who never asks for autographs, never acknowledged their fame more than sometimes mentioning a short, "I really enjoy your show" or "Thank you for entertaining me." I cannot say the same of my co-workers or other customers, who weren't always so respectful.

I was in NY City years ago, and my city bus driver followed Michael Douglas *down the street* WITH THE CITY BUS, yelling out the window: "Michael Douglas! Michael Douglas! I'm an actor! Hire me for your movie!" (I think Michael Douglas was working on 'The Game' at the time.) - That's the worst of FanDUMB I've ever experienced.

It's because nobody knows how to listen.
It isn't just in fandumb either. We were on a guided tour of the William K. Vanderbilt house on Long Island. They have a museum, and aquarium and a planetarium.
In the beginning the more than middle-aged tour guide asked everyone to hold their questions until the end. There was a twelve year old or so boy who had "jumping-jack" hands and wouldn't be still even though his mother was there and tried to control him. This goes on for the 1 and 1/2 hour tour as we go to the bedrooms, drawing rooms, lavish dining rooms, list of famous people who stayed with the Vanderbilts, etc. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and thorough. Finally, she called on him as we were ending the tour. His question? "Who owned this big house?"
The 20 people in the tour all rolled their eyes. He had not listened to one single word. What was most important to him was to be called on and *ask* a question.

Artemis

Well, that makes me feel a little better; at least I'm in good company. If I had a nickel for every question a student asked me which I had just answered less than five minutes previously, I could retire.

It's one of the things teachers get used to after a while, but it is still discouraging.

Joy,
Lynn

At the time of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, there were a lot of magazine articles about it. One April morning, two boys sat in the library looking at a National Geographic article on the Titanic. They were debating whether or not the Titanic had been real. When they finally asked me, I told them that yes, it was real, and was still rusting on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. When one was still skeptical, I added that I'd been to a couple of exhibits and seen the artifacts. Two minutes later, I got this question:

"Were you on the Titanic?" :rolleyes:

Right...I'm over a hundred years old and still get carded when buying alcohol.

I had a class at work where the instructor asked, "What is the opposite of talking?" The answer, "listening" was immediately rejected. There was a lot of discussion before the he gave us his answer, "Waiting to talk." It was a good class but this is probably the most valuable thing I took away from the course. It's unfortunately true more often than it should be.

Let's see, I have 2 different stories, both at conventions.

The first was at Visionscon in Springfield, MO (not VisionCon of Chicago, this one is a lot smaller and fan-run) about 14 years ago. The con was at a Quality Inn, and pretty much took over the entire hotel. There was programming overnight (mostly RPGs) and so we had a mix of Trek, SW, BSG (old!), Buck Rogers, and D&D fans.

The FanDumb came from the LARP group (live action role playing), who apparently thought they *were* vampires and didn't need to eat or sleep. They would rush up and down the halls at 3 AM, and lurk in room doorways, etc. I can't tell you how many times we'd open the door to the room and *trip* over someone sitting right in front of the door. There was at least one kid who passed out and had to be transported by ambulance to the ER because he was dehydrated and hypoglycemic.

We finally got them to stop after a large group of guys dressed up as Klingons started stuffing them into the hospitality suite to make them eat/drink and to get them out of the halls. These were mostly friends of mine (Star Trek geek here) and dubbed themselves the Klingon Vampire Hunters. Most of the 'vampires' were passed out all over the suite on Saturdaqy night. Twas fun rounding them up.

And I thought Trekkies were bad.

The second one came from GateCon up in Vancouver about 10 years ago. It was the first year that Michael Shanks was a guest, and I was a volunteer lead - I managed the traffic inside and outside the main room, so I was on my feet from 7 AM till about midnight for 4 days. He was a big draw - we had a ton of Daniel fans that would follow him around the hotel, out to his car, to the restaurant, and so on. They also fought for seating in the first 8 rows of the main room, and they all hated me because I was the Room Nazi and told them they couldn't sit on the floor at the edge of the stage, or save seats for 16 of their friends, etc. Yeah, it was fun. :rolleyes: Did I mention that these were mostly grown women, between 25 and 60? Not kids. I knew of at least one who'd brought a cane to the con so she could get seated in the front because she was 'disabled'. She only used it to get into the panels ahead of everyone else. I know, because she was seen jogging around the hotel pool Thursday morning. Gee, where's your limp?

Anyway, while he was fielding questions from the audience, someone asked him about a certain scene in a certain episode of the show. Now, I was a big fan of the show, and was rather...OCDish when it came to details of each ep - where it was filmed, the title, the production order, who directed, and so on. I *also* know that when people who WORK on the show are working, the episodes tend to run together, and a lot of actors know the episode *better* by production number and not title because of the scripts. So this fangirl asks this question, and I had to roll my eyes because it had to do with a visual effect that the actors would never have seen while filming - it was a 3D projection of a pyramid with glowing, flashing and spinning symbols on it. Nice holographic special effect. The fan asked about the symbols on the pyramid. I'd bent over to tie my shoe and was laughing while Shanks kinda blankly looked at the fan, so I said, a little loudly, "'Seth', Season 3 episode 2..." He stopped and looked around and said "Who said that?" I stood up and waved, he muttered "You little smart***...." looked at the fan, pointed at me, and said "Ask her, she knows the answer to that one." That got a laugh from the back of the room - but glares from the fangirls at the front of the room.

Did I mention I'm not really a Shanks fan? He remembered me for the rest of the convention, however! I'm still officially the 'smart***' of my SG-1 fandom group.

People can be stooopid. I'm sure we have people out there who think that Dean can fly...or that he's from Krypton!

Hmmmm. Klingon Vampire Hunters? I'd watch that movie. Buffy would confuse them for monsters, but none of her weapons would work on them. I could so see Giles hitting the books trying to figure out who they are.

Maybe we should put the hypoglycemic vampires and the barking werewolves together and have them take each other out?

I'd go for that! We can send them to Spoons, New Hampshire or something...

My mom once told me that she saw Elvis at a gas station in the 60's. Mom was never one to be a squealing fangirl, so she didn't gush over him. In fact, she barely noticed him until someone else who was at the station saw a cigarette butt that Elvis had dropped, grabbed it, and screeched that she had something his lips had touched. :rolleyes:

I witnessed a rather amazing case of fandumb this morning. I put an issue of Seventeen magazine on the rack that had a picture of the members of One Direction on the cover. Five minutes later, two girls were fighting over the magazine, both screaming that One Direction (and the magazine) belonged to them. I grabbed my safety whistle and blew on it to distract them, which did exactly nothing. Security arrived and broke them up, by which time the magazine was in several pieces. Ten minutes later, I walked into the front office to find the principal trying to separate them--one girl also liked Justin Bieber, and the other was of the opinion that it was impossible to like both, so they'd started fighting again.

Most of the fandumb things i've heard about are 2nd or 3rd hand from way back in my teens when boybands were big thing (New Kids on The Block specifically).

Generally i'd hear about girls who'd stalk them at their homes, take hotel plates that they ate off of.. crazy things like tear at their clothing, their hair.. even their grass just to have a piece of them.

I can't imagine doing any of that stuff, mostly because my parents would've killed me

I bet they're embarrassed by that behavior, now.

My youngest sister had a shrine to Hanson. She'd get mad if anyone said they didn't like Hanson. She even named a puppy after Zac Hanson (the puppy turned out to be female, so the official name was changed to Zacarena).

I found a book about the Hanson brothers in a box of donations a couple of years ago. Since it was too old and tattered for the library, I sent it to my sister for old times' sake. Her then-boyfriend saw it and thought it was hilarious that she used to worship Hanson.

Wow--brings back memories! They were definitely 'the thing' when I was in my preteen years...and while I didn't take it to a scary level, I admit--I did have all of their cassette tapes (and knew all the words to their songs)

Laura

I was a big (huge) Duranie in the day (in middle school). /stupidest thing I remember wanting to waste money on was a Japanese release of a book, The Sing Blue Silver, even though I don't know a word of Japanese... Solely for the photos and the different cover. Thankfully, I was too poor to buy it./ I was at a concert once and stopped to people watch everyone around me. All of the girls were reaching towards the stage and screaming as if they could touch the band, even though we were up in the nose-bleeders seats. I thought then that it was kind of stupid being that the band was a good 100 yards away (or about as far away from the stage as one could get). Of course, that might have had to do with us being up in the nose-bleeder seats where we could have been exposed to, let's say, second hand... /cough/ pot /cough/... smoke.

(....and had two HUGE 2x3 ft posters, a few books, a t-shirt--or was that my sisters?, and some various taped tv appearances ).

And then I switched over to Boyz II Men (who, I think, really were talented--and I still, secretly, kinda like ).

And then--for the last 20 years or so, Lois & Clark--which really, after all this time, I don't think will ever be 'topped' )

Laura

They might've been embarrassed.. i don't know. I just thought it was kinda silly to steal something like grass from their lawns. I was never the stalker type fan, just not my thing.

p.s. I also like Boyz II Men and was bummed that i missed the NKOTB,98 Degrees & Boyz II Men concert due to being sick that week...would've been the 1st time i had seen BIIM in concert, 3rd time for NKOTB and 1st time for 98 Degrees.