What Makes A Fandom A Fandom?

While I was making my fandom self-ethnography, I kept running into a problem. I couldn't decide what in my history counted as a fandom or not. It's much easier to designate works or franchises that definitively have fandoms - LOTR, Star Trek, Star Wars - than it is to delineate personal fandoms. There's a strong argument that fandom, like porn or queerness, doesn't fit in a box and isn't a checklist of traits. It's not worth debating over because every relationship to a show is different. I agree with this theory but I still always find myself questioning what fandom really is anyway (see: my Little Fandom Switch). As someone who really enjoys movies and TV outside of fandom contexts, is there a significant difference?

The best example I have of this is Boy Meets World. I first watched the senior year and college episodes during TGIF with my sister, then found out the cast started much younger when reruns were constant on ABC Family. I really enjoyed the show, I watched it whenever it was on, and a few jokes made it into my personal lexicon ("they WANT you to take the rolls!") At some point in my 20s I decided I would watch through the show from the beginning, to fill in any gaps I had missed, especially from the early seasons. When I started watching I came to the realization….I have seen every single episode. Multiple times. (Except the one where Shawn becomes alcoholic because it got banned from ABC Family.)

I think this is common with sitcoms, successful ones develop followings that aren't necessarily "fandoms" but are very dedicated. It's a mixture of the familiarity over time and the enjoyment of watching something funny regularly. Boy does have crossovers into other fandom territory for me though, surprisingly - three out of four Monkees memorably guested (some of my favorite episodes and jokes before I even knew it was them), Will Friedle is part of D&D actual play universe, Rider Strong has/had a literary podcast that I find delightful.

(Side note: does fandom HAVE to be tied to science fiction & fantasy/something nerdy like D&D? That seems like an easy yes but S&H was significant in its time for not being in those categories.)

I met Friedle at a comic con where he was extremely nice to me, let me hug him, and also made fun of the writing notes I had made in the journal I had given to him to sign (it was a bad script, he had the right.) He is PARTLY the reason why Wheel of Time has been on my list for so very long, with me finally just finishing the second book a decade or so years later.

So the line feels kind of blurred. I don't think of Boy Meets World as a fandom - I might get a popular quote sticker, but I'm not going to make a pilgimage to a set location. But I've spent more hours with these characters than many, many other shows. The shows that are baked into your DNA feel like a sort of fandom of the self.

The complexity is what makes it difficult to communicate my feelings toward a property. When I have to give an elevator pitch about myself I have to get the gist of what I'm into across in as few words as possible - if I say 'fandom' people will assume MCU and Star Wars, not Gregory Peck. If I say older film, they will think Antonioni. Slash doesn't even come up until I force it (which I almost always do). Definitions are as equally helpful as they are restrictive and I've been spending a good amount of time considering just where I want to land on describing what I do and what I love.

• For my birthday weekend I watched Josie & the Pussycats, 3 episodes of Heated Rivalry, and "Murder on Stage 17" of Starsky & Hutch. Pretty pretty good.
• I also did some youtube diving.:

Here is David Soul on American Bandstand (featuring CCR)

And here he is calling into Swap Shop from a hospital bed with the full ski accident story:

And here he is as an absent father: