A pitiful state of affairs is gleefully described in a recent Wall Street Journal piece by Rachel Feintzeig: “What Superfans Know That the Rest of Us Should Learn.” The gist is that many superfans can teach the rest of us how to live a fulfilling life by filling the void left by an absence of religion with obsessions for Star Wars, Taylor Swift, Disney, or Harry Potter.
As Feintzeig explains,
From the outside, it’s easy to roll our eyes at devotees of everything from Taylor Swift to ‘Star Trek.’ We deem them nerdy or frivolous, judge their costumes, the time they waste on Reddit, the money they spend on concert tickets.She tells the story of a couple who had a Star Wars themed wedding on May the fourth, “exiting the ceremony to music from the original 1977 film, under an arch of glowing lightsabers held aloft by their guests.” Not surprisingly, the photo of the couple leaving the wedding chapel shows a wall bereft of any religious imagery behind the presiding minister (rather, galactic emperor).
What if they’ve figured out something the rest of us haven’t?
After all, so many of us lack community. Data from Cigna finds 58% of Americans are lonely. Religion is fading. Work doesn’t love us back. Maybe letting ourselves be obsessed with that highly specific and possibly weird thing we love is the answer.
Then there is, “May Naidoo, a British Ph.D. student and content creator, traveled to Japan, Paris and Chicago as part of his quest to see real-life versions of famed artworks featured in his favorite Nintendo game, ‘Animal Crossing,’” and Tara Block who was so infatuated with Harry Potter books that she got a Harry Potter tattoo and took flying broomstick lessons at a castle in England.
This made me realize that the twenty-something and otherwise businesslike man I recently saw with a Pokemon tattoo covering his forearm was much more normal than I took him to be (and here I mean “normal” in the most discouraging sense).
Under the heading “Hobbies Overtake Religion,” Feintzeig goes on to explain,
More than six in 10 Americans said hobbies or recreational activities were extremely or very important to them, according to a 2023 poll from Gallup. That’s up from 48% in 2001 and 2002. Meanwhile, the share of people who said the same about religion dropped 7 percentage points, to 58%.One point worth noting about the difference between superfandom and religion is that religion does enable people to align their beliefs and lifestyles with what is actually true, beautiful, and just. This can be appealing for those eccentrics who have an interest in that kind of thing.
Toward the end of the article an insight is given as to why adult people choose to anesthetize themselves with infantile fandom, but the insight is given (unintentionally) in the form of an Orwellian truth inversion:
And yet joining in requires vulnerability. Fandom asks us to latch ourselves to something outside of us, to allow a person or object we don’t have control over to become part of our identities. How much easier to stay cool and removed, rather than risk having our enthusiasm batted down or betrayed.The kind of fandom in question does not ask us to latch ourselves to anything outside our ourselves. It is pure self-indulgence, demanding nothing from a person that isn’t fun and reassuring. On the other hand, the pursuit of truth about God and real purpose is difficult and demanding. It causes tension, within one’s self and occasionally with others. And unlike God, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter will never make burdensome demands on a person’s spending habits or sex life.
Why subject one’s self to the demands of study, prayer, debate, and contemplation in pursuit of the true purpose of life when you can have a Star Wars marathon or make snacks from the Hogwarts cook book? The path out of the cave of ignorance into the light of reality is difficult, so some judge that it’s best not to take it. The super fans described in the article seem to be living illustrations of Chesterton’s famous quip that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, but found difficult and left untried.
I’m all for having fun with hobbies, and I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy stories, but obsessing over these as a substitute for religion is like obsessing over the silouette of palm trees printed on a ticket to Hawaii instead of actually boarding the plane to go there. Fantasy stories are valuable because they stoke in us a desire for the ultimate realities for which those stories are sign posts. What a pititful thing it is when people are satisfied with the sign posts with no concern for the destination.