Who are people whose superfandom convinces you your interest in the subject is forever dim by comparison and you should stay in the shallow end of the pool?

I used to regret not taking any architecture classes at school, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the https://mcmansionhell.com/ series by Kate Wagner, whose mania for the subject has convinced me I would have definitely flunked out.

Ditto with typography, the https://typesetinthefuture.com/ pretty much shut down any pretensions of inventing the next monospaced helvetica.

Whose enthusiasm has saved you from a dead end of mediocrity in the field?

Lots of superfans of bands/genres of music I love whose psychotic commitment make my feel like a dilletante (which I probably am).

I have a fair few vintage figurines/toys/bits of ephemera around the house, but every time I feel like I'm on my way to becoming that guy with the crazy collection of cultural kitsch, I see the collection that people like Paul Reubens and Jarvis (son of Norman) Rockwell have/had accrued, and I realize my crap would wind up in a "free-take me" box at either one's garage sale.

So many people on this borad.

A master of one trade is a jack of fuck all else and probably doesn't even realise it.

So many people on this borad.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, March 5, 2024 4:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

I had an illustration teacher who talked about hating helvetica, I said I didn't understand why he hated it so much and he looked at me how I look at people who say they don't mind the recolouring in DC and Marvel reprints.

The people I am most impressed by are those who can retain tremendous enthusiasm for their subject even after becoming experts in it. I find that just when I start feeling like I know enough about something to talk about it with authority, that's when my interest in it starts dropping off.

I look at chomsky still giving interviews at 90+ and thinking wow he's exhausted by the whole thing, but then I remember his interview with Ali G and think oh that's just his normal temperature.

xp: ha, I still like helvetica -- what a rube I am! speaking of comics stuff I thought I was way more interested in than most before an actual enthusiast put up an entire book online for free: https://kleinletters.com/Blog/the-art-and-history-of-lettering-comics/

I’ve reading through 19th century literature, including a lot of influential non-fiction books. But anything to do with mysticism, magic and theosophy got skipped because there are still a lot of folks way into that stuff.

Lily Dale otm

So many people on this borad.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, March 5, 2024 4:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

― budo jeru, Tuesday, March 5, 2024 7:01 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yep.

The people I am most impressed by are those who can retain tremendous enthusiasm for their subject even after becoming experts in it. I find that just when I start feeling like I know enough about something to talk about it with authority, that's when my interest in it starts dropping off.

Having something of an issue relating to this at the moment — got an email yesterday asking me to give a guest lecture to a college class about a subject I published a book on 18 years ago. I'm grateful for the interest, but I just...don't know if I want to go that far backward. Sure, I am a "subject matter expert," but...I'm doing other shit now.

Every time I get back into Magic cards I last about a month before I’m like “ok this is too deep a pool and the people in it too invested” and I quit

All I do is dilettante the shit out of everything so my blanket answer is 'anyone who is able to focus enough on a single thing with enough tenacity to get really good at and/or know a whole lot about that one thing'.

superfandom tends to make me more enthusiastic, not less, one of the reasons I like reading ilm

Every time I get back into Magic cards I last about a month before I’m like “ok this is too deep a pool and the people in it too invested” and I quit

I myself sometimes enjoy playing Armchair Expert for a Day but sooner or later, sooner rather than later, Imposter Syndrome and Swiss Cheese Brain make their presence known again once more.

there's a bar I go to where people play MTG every week, every once in a while I hop in to play Commander. it's still fun but sheesh the complexity really has ramped way up, every time I play I notice all sorts of little triggers and global effects that just get ignored because there's so much going on in each game. also the wealth of online content and fact that there have been like 30000 different cards printed makes it basically impossible/impractical to do anything off the top of your head and still achieve any sort of success. you're right about the art style, it's gotten worse by getting better, though some of the recent weird template stuff has been pretty cool

I heard MTG has incorporated jewish space lasers and other weird stuff.

I wanted to reach out to Quinton Hoover to get him to make some art for a project, but… he’d died in 2013! Awful. I love his artwork so much

And yeah, my buddy has a weekly game of Commander and it sounds so fun, I haven’t made it to a game yet but I intend to

Not that I've ever met anyone who was super passionate about doing taxes, but just the act of doing them this year has shot down any delusions of becoming some kind of rock star CPA.

>>I myself sometimes enjoy playing Armchair Expert for a Day but sooner or later, sooner rather than later, Imposter Syndrome and Swiss Cheese Brain make their presence known again once more.

― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), <<

This is me. Given the number of books and articles I've read about maritime history, Hollywood's golden age, and TV production, I should be an absolute expert on all these things. But I have a bad memory.

I love to talk to superfans of almost anything, as long as they're not gatekeepy and they don't actually make me participate in the thing. Like, I'm not interested in watching most sports, but if you know interesting history and drama about those sports, I want to hear it.

Granted the guy who runs the blog actually works at ILM, but if hunting down a two-frame ghost face Anakin mystery because your mania demands it is the kind of casual dedication required, I think I'll sheepishly withdraw my resume...
https://fxrant.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-movie-mistake-mystery-from-revenge.html

We’ve got employees here?

no matter what interest I have, I know I'm a dabbler compared to the true obsessive fanatics and all I can say is thank god for that.

Paul Hilcoff, the Husker Du superfan and authority, is also like 80 years old

I thought I spent a lot of time on Star Trek but did not account for German Star Trek fans...
https://ironicsans.ghost.io/proof-that-patrick-stewart-exists-in-the-star-trek-universe/

haha, that is really cool

music fans

film fans

tv fans

reading fans

in all cases, with any subject imaginable, there is always a group of people who know everything of all time and are crawling the digital and analog realms of the universe to gather up new information on the subject

in all cases, i know like 4 things and i'm really into those 4 things

I've been soaking up as much obscure 80s-90s indie as possible and have very desirable physical and digital (due to the rare tape rips and other hard to find files) collections, but I am still not great at the trivia aspect imo. It's more of an obsessive curation than it is something scholarly I suppose. It means I can sniff out extremely special and rare items when crate digging or internet sleuthing even if I'm not a great historian about it compared to other hobbyists. Doing my best though!

there are a large number of doctor who fans (some of whom post here, or at least used to) whose superfandom convinces me that my fandom is shallow. my fandom absolutely is not shallow, for the record - it's probably my deepest special interest. that particular rabbithole just goes _very, very deep_.

What's interesting to me about "fandom" as a concept is the line between "enjoying a thing" and "enjoying knowing everything about a thing." I am definitely not in the latter category about any subject, including people I've written entire books about.

a significant part of the fun of enjoying something for me is mystery and speculation

I definitely enjoy _not_ knowing everything about a thing! I was reading this Doctor Who iceberg chart I found and there's some weird stuff on there. At least some of it is probably libellous. Some of it also probably references some extremely arcane Wiki drama that I'm much happier not knowing about. Even the stuff that maybe isn't Wiki drama... I hope I never learn what "Power of Kroll infertility paint incident" refers to.

Mainly if I'm a fan of something I want to be able to nerd out about it. And some of the stuff I'm a fan of... I either know so much less than the person I'm wanting to nerd out with, or I know so much more than them, that it becomes nearly impossible for me to intelligibly talk about. I keep picking up new special interests, like the history of Top 30 Radio in the 1960s and 1970s in New York and LA, because i don't know how to talk to people about my existing special interests.

I’ve always found that no matter how much I’m into something—music, comics, guitar, etc.—there’s someone else that’s into it to a degree that I’m a little weirded out by them.

Sometimes conversation turns to what your specialist subject would be on Mastermind, and there isn't one thing I know enough about that I could answer Mastermind questions on it. I wonder if there's a website where they're all listed so I could check.

I thought I spent a lot of time on Star Trek but did not account for German Star Trek fans...

What a great interview.

I think ILX attracts ppl who, while obsessive in their thirst for knowledge, also tend away from specialization - most of us found this via a generalist music forum and if that's not you, well, ILE is eveb less focused.

I know that when I first started going online I was very confused by the concept of forums for specific works or artists - I was then at the height of my Springsteen fandom for instance, but still couldn't imagine logging on to talk about him, and just him, day after day.

that tracks with my experience also, as does Lily Dale's comment upthread about losing interest as I start to reach "expert" level. sometimes i do think that I'm fundamentally a generalist, which is not really ideal for an academic. but then I zoom out and, a) there are totally a handful of things where I do enjoy continuing to learn more and more, and b) from the outside, the level of knowledge where i start to get bored is still pretty deep, in absolute terms.

knowing that other people like/know about something more than me… that is just life, why would it stop me from pursuing hobbies that I enjoy?

I collect and read everything I can on Marcel Proust. He's the only artist where I enter into "read everything" superfan territory. But I also don't feel like I'm doing so in order to know everything or resolve the mysteries of his work. I see it as an endless subject. If anything, I'm more and more confused the more I read.

Yeah, to the thread question: without speaking for Philip Nunez or anyone else itt, when I encounter this kind of thinking/impulse in myself, I do associate it with my own impostor syndrome, or Salieri syndrome or what have you. Like my brain is looking for proof that I'm not good enough at something and should just stop now. When in reality, someone else being deeper into something is not actually a reason why I can't also be into it, at whatever depth I want to be. And anyway, being into something isn't even the same as being good at something! But clearly these concepts get mushed together sometimes in my mind, in a way that can become a mental block to just enjoying something at whatever level I want to enjoy it at.