I look at fan capital in the wild so you don’t have to. This roundup gathers the stories that stood out to me and what they say about how fandom actually works.
fandom hates an ending
A fake NBA playoff series happened last month (I’m about a month behind on commenting on everything I’ve seen while I’m traveling). I came across this via Reddit via my husband. I love when people send me fandom-related links!!
The whole thing started with a 19-year-old Memphis Grizzlies fan named Zinzy jokingly live-tweeting an imaginary playoff matchup between the Grizzlies and Warriors after Memphis missed the postseason. It started as a small bit between fans and escalated into massive improv. And other fan accounts joined in. Fake stats started circulating. People debated fake coaching decisions. Even real-life sightings of players sitting courtside at unrelated playoff games became folded into the joke. Fans posted things like “Don’t they have a game tomorrow?” as if the fictional series was fully real.
Despite Twitter being something I personally don’t use anymore, I love that it caught on quickly. Nobody needed the joke explained. Fans simply agreed to participate in a shared imaginary reality together. It felt a lot like fanfiction or Tumblr-era roleplay culture than the typical sports discourse.
This reddit comment made me chuckle
And this story confirms something I already know to be true: fandom hates an ending.
The Grizzlies season ended, but emotionally the fans were not done yet. Instead of moving on, they collectively extended the narrative themselves. Fans do this constantly across music, movies, sports, products, and internet culture. They write alternate endings, preserve old versions, keep canceled shows alive, archive media, and continue inhabiting worlds long after official “canon” stops. The internet trains us to move onto the next thing instantly, but fandom often behaves the opposite way. Sometimes it even invents an entire playoff series just to keep the feeling alive a little longer.
before the mythology sets in
Joan Didion’s notes about The Grateful Dead
Written notes were recently pulled from Joan Didion’s archives at the New York Public Library and captures her visiting The Grateful Dead during the Summer of Love era, years before they became one of the most devoted fandom ecosystems in music history.
Reading through her notes really made me realize how small and local everything still felt then. Nobody seems particularly concerned with becoming historically important. The band members complain about over-programmed venues, discuss park politics, and casually describe the entire San Francisco music scene as “like a family.”
We know what happened next. The Grateful Dead eventually become one of the largest and longest-running fandom communities, complete with touring subcultures, archives, bootlegs, iconography, rituals, parking lot economies, and generations of fans organizing their lives around the band. But in this piece, none of that infrastructure exists yet. We get to see the scene before it fully understands itself.
Fandom often begins inside ordinary, chiilllllll environments that later become mythologized. Fans are always trying to get “closer” to the original energy of something. This Didion essay captures that exact feeling in real time before anyone knew there would someday be thousands of people trying to reconstruct and preserve it. You can’t! But fans will put in the time to try…
a little bit about my own fans
I grew up with fans before I understood what fandom even was. When I say fans, I mean people who genuinely encouraged my creativity before there was any proof it would become something useful or successful or sustainable.
My parents saved up to buy me art supplies. My family contributed, paid for classes, and made it possible. Family friends and strangers bought paintings from me. Teachers told me my work mattered. Strangers showed up to student art competitions and fairs and awarded me for something I made with my own hands.
me winning an en plein air painting competition in my hometown (i went with oil paints)
I don’t think I realized at the time how much that impacts a person.
When someone buys your artwork as a kid, something clicks. You start understanding that creativity is not just a private thing you do alone in your bedroom. Honestly, I think a huge reason I became comfortable charging money for creative work as an adult is because people normalized valuing my creativity early. They taught me that art was not frivolous. It was worthy of investment.
That’s a big reason why I joined the board of All People Arts (APA) in 2021.
APA provides affordable workshops, exhibitions, youth programming, murals, art kits, and paid opportunities for artists on the Southside of Columbus. Since launching, the organization has exhibited 266 artists and invested tens of thousands of dollars directly back into artists and arts programming with an incredibly small team and budget.
The reality is that arts organizations are having a really difficult time right now. At our recent board meeting, it became very clear how urgently support is needed to sustain the work moving forward.
So this is my personal ask.
If Huge Fan, my work, or my perspective on creativity and fandom has meant something to you, I’d deeply appreciate you supporting APA if you’re able. Even $30, our lowest tier, means so much. Donations can happen through our Eventbrite fundraiser page (you do not need to attend the event to donate) or directly through our foundation link.
Many people shaped my life simply by being early fans of my creativity. Supporting the ecosystem around artists matters because sometimes you’re not just funding a workshop or an organization…you’re helping someone imagine a future for themselves they may not have otherwise believed was possible.
