011 - I'm A Huge Fan!
Jan. 12th, 2017 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captain_slinkyEarlier today it struck and confounded me that we have no gender-neutral term for "Fanboy"/"Fangirl" in the English language. The Japanese have the word "Otaku" which means "a young person who is obsessed with computers or particular aspects of popular culture to the detriment of their social skills" which is just *perfect*, but c'mon... this is 'MURIKA! We can do better than that!
"Geek", "Nerd", "Dork"... none of those really fit a Fanboy (or Fangirl) as it is completely easy to be any one of those things without any true connection to a fandom. Somebody suggested jut the root term of "Fan", but that doesn't work either; I watch The Flash on TV every week and own a T-Shirt because I'm a FAN, but a FANBOY/FANGIRL catalogs the continuity errors on the show and flies across the country to a convention so they can confront actor Grant Gustin with this information and demand an explanation.
Certain off-the-wall words were suggested, such as "Zealot", "Acolyte" and "Thrall", but those are too *fancy*. I'm looking for something more contemporary, something that's pretty common and slips in just fine with current vocabulary.
Eventually, we found the correct term; "Enthusiast". It has just enough of a creep-factor to it to impart that you are a step beyond the common fan, sitting on the razor-thin line between "Obsessive/Compulsive" and "Stalker". It has just the right amount of gravitas to bring it in step with the gender-specific roles of Fanboy and Fangirl :)
"Geek", "Nerd", "Dork"... none of those really fit a Fanboy (or Fangirl) as it is completely easy to be any one of those things without any true connection to a fandom. Somebody suggested jut the root term of "Fan", but that doesn't work either; I watch The Flash on TV every week and own a T-Shirt because I'm a FAN, but a FANBOY/FANGIRL catalogs the continuity errors on the show and flies across the country to a convention so they can confront actor Grant Gustin with this information and demand an explanation.
Certain off-the-wall words were suggested, such as "Zealot", "Acolyte" and "Thrall", but those are too *fancy*. I'm looking for something more contemporary, something that's pretty common and slips in just fine with current vocabulary.
Eventually, we found the correct term; "Enthusiast". It has just enough of a creep-factor to it to impart that you are a step beyond the common fan, sitting on the razor-thin line between "Obsessive/Compulsive" and "Stalker". It has just the right amount of gravitas to bring it in step with the gender-specific roles of Fanboy and Fangirl :)
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Date: 2017-02-09 10:35 pm (UTC)