Superfandom

In the Presence of the Oracle

They come to Omaha. They travel by themselves, or with friends, or with family or coworkers. They come from New York, San Francisco, Capetown, Dakar, and Shanghai, their eyes red from long layovers in London and Atlanta. Private jets and large commercial flights, plane after plane sets off for the middle of America.

For some attendees this is event number twenty or more. Fellow travelers can be identified by their logos and their spontaneous conversation. “Are you going to the convention? Hey, me too!” They greet old acquaintances across the airplane aisle with a “Good to see you, you sonafabitch!” and wave to each other as they disembark. Most hotels in town booked out months earlier, and there’s still enough reservation overflow to fill rooms half an hour away.

The next morning the line outside of the CenturyLink Center wraps around the corner. At least one couple has camped out overnight in a tent in front of the entrance. Excited first-timers begin arriving at four a.m. The doors open at 7:00 and the crowd flows through the metal detectors and into the main hall, a sea of blue plastic badges, pushing, laughing, and gabbling in anticipation. “This is my third year coming!” “I’ve been here fourteen times, what about you?” and above all, “Who do you work for?”

At 8:30, with all three tiers of the arena full and attendees still overflowing into a nearby ballroom, the giant screens show a celebrity-studded video. An altered version of the song “YMCA” blasts from the speakers, and the audience leaps into the aisles shouting the chorus: “We love the man-a-gers at B-R-K-A!” University of Nebraska cheerleaders run through the chairs, their thrashing pompoms held high. Waving and smiling under a multi-story projection of himself, Warren Buffett takes the stage.

It’s called the Woodstock of Capitalism. Every publicly traded company in the United States is required by law to hold a yearly shareholder meeting to vote on corporate policies, but few adopt the approach of Berkshire Hathaway: a three-day extravaganza that’s part religious revival, part rock concert, and part business event. Each spring, tens of thousands of people travel to Omaha, Nebraska, to listen to “the Oracle.”

Warren Buffett is a businessman, philanthropist, and poster child for slow-but-steady financial investing. Lore has it that he got his start selling chewing gum door-to-door as a kid. He’s spent much of his life converting Berkshire Hathaway from a defunct Rhode Island textile manufacturer into the multinational holding conglomerate it is today. As of 2016 it owned, either wholly or partially, more than fifty subsidiaries, including GEICO, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, NetJets, the Kraft Heinz Company, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, American Express, and IBM. And Buffett—chairman, president, and CEO—is among the top five wealthiest humans on earth.

Unlike many corporations, such as the Walt Disney Company, which moved its corporate shareholder meeting away from the Anaheim Disney park in 1998 after a particularly rowdy meeting, Buffett embraces the enthusiasm of his devotees. For some, this will be their biggest vacation of the year. The cost of entry to the annual shareholders meeting is a single Berkshire Hathaway stock certificate, but those without stock can easily buy a ticket, sold on Craigs-list and eBay for $5 to prevent scalping.

“I’ve always known about it. There’s this legend that’s built up around it, but it never occurred to me I could actually go,” says Christian Russo, a banker with a big-name financial company, who has traveled from New York City.*

His girlfriend, an executive at a major investment firm, was so excited at the idea that she bought BRKB stock so they could attend. “We could have just bought a ticket, but we wanted to do it right. It was like: I’m going to take my 401(k) and invest in Berkshire so I can see Warren Buffett. I know it sounds lame but it’s actually really cool. You actually get to see Buffett. You’re actually in the same room with him and 17,000 of your friends for nine hours.”

The crowd in attendance this year is closer to 40,000—albeit not all present at the same time. It’s a mixed group: some are middle-America moms and dads hoping Buffett will say something to make them rich. Some are Wall Street types, here for the networking. Some are here to publicize their own business ventures. A few may actually care about the official corporate business being conducted. Most of them will attend the hours-long Q&A session, where audience members can ask Buffett about everything from his stock picks to his political opinions.

“Imagine you could ask Spider-Man something,” Russo explains. “Here you can actually do it! You just have to stand in line! But in this case it’s not someone playing Warren Buffett, it is Warren Buffett, the actual guy!”

The morning kicks off in the arena with questions from a panel of journalists. They represent the usual financial news sources—Fortune, CNBC, the New York Times—as well as the shareholders themselves. One by one they step to microphones near the front of the room, where Buffett sits next to his partner Charlie Munger at a table laden with Coca-Cola and See’s Candies, both Berkshire holdings. One shareholder asks Buffett to talk about natural gas and energy policy; another asks for Buffett’s opinion on disclosing salaries for the presidents of Berkshire Hathaway’s various subsidiaries. One daring shareholder says he feels like America is off course, and asks Buffett if he can push the president to change direction. Buffett says, “America is doing extraordinarily well,” eliciting applause from the audience. Another question ends in a speech explaining why a college education isn’t necessary for success. The arena explodes with cheers.

Buffett’s answers are thoughtful and funny and can take up to half an hour each. Occasionally, he’ll ask the opinion of Munger, who will usually reply some variation of “I think he handled it very well.”

“You can tell he doesn’t get paid by the word,” quips Buffett, as laughter rolls through the crowd, echoing off the arena’s ceiling.

Two seats away, a man in his early thirties is diligently tapping each question verbatim into an iPad. He’s an investment advisory company employee based in Kansas. “I’m already part of the problem—I took, like, thirty pictures of him when he was in the hallway. Here, look,” he says pulling out his phone and zooming in on the screen. “That’s Warren, you see him?”

“I’ve been to the Grammys and to the Oscars. There’s always a few empty seats. Here there are no empty seats,” says another man nearby. “I feel wealthier already, just being here.”

“Warren and Charlie we love you!” screams a middle-aged man from the upper stands.

In the convention hall next door, the other business of the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting is well underway, in a commercial space the size of two football fields. Berkshire Hathaway boxers. Berkshire Hathaway cuff links. Berkshire Hathaway money clips, running shoes, bras, scarves, baseball gloves, cowboy boots, and aprons. A BRK-themed diamond pendant costs upwards of $500. There’s a silver tray etched with Buffett’s words, “It’s not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.” A Pandora bracelet, a silver circle with a custom-made Berkshire Hathaway bead, sold out yesterday. So did Berkshire Hathaway pajama bottoms printed with logos and dollar signs.

Each of the more recognizable Berkshire brand names has its own booth here, with its own version of Berkshire Hathaway paraphernalia for sale. Most have a line of shoppers down the corridor. At Heinz, devotees can buy Warren Buffett– or Charlie Munger–branded ketchup bottles and Buffett-themed boxes of macaroni and cheese. Oriental Trading is selling Warren and Charlie rubber duckies. At GEICO, shareholders can take a picture with a giant gecko mascot. Photos taken at Fruit of the Loom are overlaid so that they look like Warren Buffett is posing at the same table. The rolling ice cream carts of Dairy Queen are doing a brisk business.

The shelves at the 200-foot-long See’s Candies booth are being stripped bare. Frantic stockers are shelving peanut brittle boxes as fast as they can. “It’s always like this,” says a blond, middle-aged stockperson as she rips open a new case. She throws the empty to the side and grabs another. By the time its contents are unloaded, the previous boxes are already gone. “People want it because it’s Warren Buffett’s favorite,” she pants.

“This is what he eats? Are you sure?” asks a balding middle-aged man reaching for a box.

A tattooed twenty-something with multiple lip piercings mumbles his order to the cashier. A Buddhist monk in gold-colored robes wanders through the booth. A retiree in a wheelchair has so many purchases hanging from his push handles that it looks as though he might tip backwards.

Convention-goers are spread along the walls, sitting on the concrete floors in khaki trousers, power suits, yoga pants, and heels or flip flops as they chew through their rubbery sandwiches and pretzels, clogging the corridors and comparing loot. A shy teenager with a black T-shirt that reads “The Next Warren Buffett” blushes as she murmurs, “My dad bought it for me last year, so this time I had to come.”

In his annual letter to shareholders in February, Warren Buffett congratulated attendees on their commercial zeal. “Last year, you did your part, and most locations racked up record sales.” A blond woman stumbles by with two enormous cases of ketchup. An Asian businessman pulls down a whole shelf full of Berkshire Hathaway polo shirts. By late afternoon, the See’s Candies booth is bare, almost completely sold out.

While events in the convention center wind down, some attendees crowd outside Buffett’s modest house in the Dundee-Happy Hollow Historic District to take pictures. That night there’s a barbecue at Berkshire Hathaway’s Nebraska Furniture Mart, complete with dueling pianos and “Berkshire Weekend” discount prices. This is their biggest weekend of the year, to the tune of $40 million. Over a million dollars’ worth of mattresses alone will walk out the door.

Meanwhile, competition is tight for Gorat’s and Piccolo’s, two of Buffett’s favorite steakhouses. This weekend they’re largely full of shareholders. In the weeks leading up to the event, the exact time he might be seen at each location is a carefully guarded secret. Rumor has it he’s promised that he’ll eat at both restaurants at some point and most diners are hoping to get lucky and overlap with his arrival. Reservations for Gorat’s opened one month ago and within minutes callers could not get through. For the lucky few who did snag a table, many order Buffett’s favorite: a T-bone, cooked rare, a double portion of hash browns, and a Cherry Coke, served on a Warren Buffett coaster. Some diners steal both the coaster and the menu when they’re done.

“Only sissies get the small one,” opines Buffett about Piccolo’s root beer floats.

The next morning is the Berkshire 5K Fun Run, where participants are encouraged to show off their limited-edition Berkshire Hathaway PureCadence 2 commemorative running shoes. The starting gate is a giant cartoon of Warren Buffett in running sweats, topped with the words “Invest in Yourself.” Warren Buffett himself fires the starting gun, and shareholders run alongside Berkshire Hathaway staff. All participants get a medal at the end before they leave.

At the Berkshire-owned Borsheim’s Fine Jewelry and Gifts, a security phalanx watches the door. A shareholder’s badge is the only entry ticket and the guards theatrically check each set of credentials before waving the lucky bearer through. The effect is one of exclusivity and privilege: this person is allowed in because she is special. At one point Buffett will take over as a clerk and shareholders can haggle with the guru himself. Twenty-six loose diamonds are for sale, each laser-etched with Warren Buffett’s signature and priced anywhere from the equivalent of a used Toyota Corolla to a brand new Ferrari.

The adjacent mall has been largely shut down. There’s a magician entertaining a small crowd, while over by the Pottery Barn, professional table-tennis players demonstrate their paddle prowess. Later on, Buffett will team up with Berkshire board member Bill Gates to play an exhibition match against US Olympic ping-pong player Ariel Hsing. Sweat-pants-clad retirees and families with strollers mix with swarms of sorority girls from the nearby college.

“We’ve come every year for the last thirteen years. This is a family affair,” says one gray-haired Chicago patriarch, gesturing to his wife and three kids. “It’s like a rock concert. It’s the rock concert of capitalism. It’s like going on spring break, but when you went on spring break you didn’t have money.”

“Afterwards we’re going to Pitch Pizza,” says his wife. “[Buffett’s daughter] Susie goes there. If there’s a place the Buffetts go, it’s gotta be good.” She surveys the crowd, her lip curled in disdain. “A lot of people just bought one share of stock to come here. Look at these women, just here to pick up some high-finance dudes.”

“Are you rich?” asks a man in his mid-forties. His name is Tommy, and he’s making small talk while waiting to clear security. He’s here with his small investment group. “We’re similar to what Warren did, but I’m not as smart as him. I made my wife read a lot of his books. I told all of my friends, just follow this! There’s no way you can’t be rich if you just follow this! Everyone wanted to come, so we turned it into a big road trip. I was going to bring my copy of some of his books to get autographed, but I was too shy to get up in front of him.

“No hot tips that you can give us, eh?” he adds.†

Warren Buffett is eighty-three. “There’s a certain, not desperation, but maybe urgency that’s taking over the people who go. You’re experiencing something that’s not going to happen again. In a couple of years it will be over. This could be the last year,” observes Christian Russo. On the way to the airport, Russo and his girlfriend will stop at a Dairy Queen.

Fans, Consumers, and Knowing the Difference

Technically, the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting is a legally required corporate triviality. No shareholder is obligated to attend, with the possible exception of the few petitioners who file official resolutions to try to steer the company. And even they arrive knowing that their requests will almost certainly be denied. All the financial information relayed during these three days is included in the company’s annual reports and financial briefings. Any pearls of wisdom Buffett drops are live-blogged by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal or conveyed by the Fox News headquarters set up across the street. While ketchup might be slightly less expensive on the convention floor than at the local Kroger, the price is certainly offset by the cost of a plane ticket and lodging.

So these attendees aren’t consumers. Or at least, they aren’t only consumers.

A consumer of Tide Plus Bleach clothing detergent may love the brand. She may love the fresh sudsy smell and the whitening action’s effect on their towels. And she may loyally buy Tide and only Tide for all her towel-cleaning needs. But if Tide changes its recipe to a smell the consumer doesn’t like, that consumer will shrug and start looking for a new brand. Consumer interaction of this sort has a single outlet: if people like a product, they buy it. If they don’t, they won’t.

To bother branding a multinational corporate holding company at all is a little unusual. To brand it to this level is downright odd. Berkshire Hathaway attendees don’t only appreciate the brand for what it does for them and their metaphorical towels; they’ve also reinterpreted what holding Berkshire stock means. It means financial freedom. Plucky American ingenuity. A chance to socialize with others like themselves. Vacation. Exclusivity. If the value of Berkshire stock decreases, they are unlikely to start shopping around for a better one. In fact, during the Great Recession in 2008, a common gripe among shareholders was that they didn’t have enough resources to buy still more. The piece of paper that says “Berkshire Hathaway stock” is proof of an investment, but it also embodies a goal or even a mythos. It’s something to believe in.

Consumers care about the product. Fans care about what that product stands for. These two groups of people have very different wants and needs. In 2010, a giant Dairy Queen spoon signed by Warren Buffett was auctioned to fans for $4,500. It’s unlikely that the winner was planning to eat a giant sundae with it.

The Battle for Washington Square Park

Halfway across the country, the Sith are in deep trouble. They’ve gathered in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park on a muggy August evening to challenge their eternal enemy, the Jedi. The odds don’t look good.

The Facebook event page for “Lightsaber Battle NYC 2014” has almost 2,000 participants listed, and a sizable portion of those who RSVP’d have shown up. Hundreds of spectators stand on top of the cement benches that ring the park’s main fountain, carefully out of range of the glowing plastic weapons flailed around by the crowd inside. Some of the swords are homemade, made of glow-sticks and tin foil, but most are a cheap telescoping plastic model dispensed from the back of a U-Haul truck on the north side of the park for $10 each. A number of participants have duct-taped two swords together to make a double-bladed saberstaff. They mill about under the light of the streetlamps. From the east side of the park there are chants of “Va-der! Va-der!” and from the west, “O-bi-wan!” as they await the signal to begin. The crowd is diverse—there are little girls dressed as Leia and tall men in kimonos and Darth Vader helmets. A number of fashionable women, stilettoes spread wide for balance, carry tiny dogs wearing Yoda sweatshirts.

At 9:20, a man dressed as Han Solo climbs onto a bench. As both sides shout their defiance, he nods at the Sith side and comments, “Wow, you guys are really outmatched!” Then, “3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . go!”

“Oh my god, people are really going to die,” mutters a voice from the benches.

The two groups come together with the sound of a million bouncing plastic bottles, the front lines chopping at each other with a happy up-down motion. There’s no room for finesse with bodies pressed so tightly together; most of the action happens in the air over their heads. The goal seems to be to come into contact with as many swords as possible. “Use the force!” shouts a woman. Off in the distance the crowd groans at a melodramatic death. A grinning elderly white man charges past in a wheelchair, sword aglow. “I think I’m dead maybe ten times!” Pieces of plastic fly through the air.

It’s easy to pigeonhole fandom as the side effect of nostalgia. But even if this were true, the phenomenon’s economic impact remains staggering. Almost all of the top ten movies of 2015, ranked by worldwide gross, were heavily fan-driven properties: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Minions, Spectre, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2. Every single one was based on preexisting comics or sci-fi/fantasy books, or media franchises that already had huge fan bases before these movies ever launched.

Disney’s $4 billion acquisition, and subsequent massive expansion, of the Star Wars franchise is a direct result of fan-supported activities. At the time of the sale in 2012 there were 17,000 characters listed in the Holocron, the Lucasfilm-maintained bible of all things Star Wars. The value of such a pantheon isn’t in individual characters; it’s in their huge variety. Robert Iger, CEO of Walt Disney, has focused on acquiring properties that have a wide-ranging mix of characters and backstories that can be used across all of the company’s various channels. The TV shows and spin-off movies, the toys (both kids’ dolls and adult action figures), the theme-park rides they can brand, the pins, the clothes. There’s enough diversity of both character and recreation here to appeal to every member of an immense and engaged fan base.

Disney will not make a cent from the plastic fencers at tonight’s event. Many of the “lightsabers” are unbranded and most of the outfits are homemade or bought for other occasions. None of the Star Wars movies are even shown. Like the attendees at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting, these Washington Square Park warriors aren’t acting like consumers. Yet, on this hot summer night, their display is one of the most valuable brand-building activities possible, and Disney is getting it for free.

I Fan/You Fan/He, She, and It Fans

Fandom does not describe what someone is—it’s something they do. It’s a set of noncommercial undertakings in which enthusiasts participate. Fan-created performances such as the Light-saber Battle make a product relevant and attractive to a broader audience. Their value is in the experience of participating. In fact, participation helps to differentiate between a fan and a consumer. Consumers give their money to a brand. Fans give their energy and time.

While there’s often overlap between fans (who engage in activities) and consumers (who buy things), buying is not always a requirement. Active fans of the DeLorean automobile, made popular as the car-turned-time machine from the Back to the Future trilogy, are very unlikely to also be consumers: there are only around 6,500 DeLorean DMC-12s left in existence, and the company has been bankrupt for several decades. But that doesn’t stop thousands of fans from flocking to DeLorean car shows, chatting on DeLorean message boards, and putting up DeLorean-spotting websites. A significant number of the more than 1 million annual visitors to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin are young kids, an audience that (at least theoretically) has never sampled the alcoholic products being showcased.

There’s a basic human instinct to form communities with other individuals around the things they have in common such as geographic location, religion, gender, or class. Whether it’s for the purpose of entrepreneurship, self-improvement, or to have a good time, humans find excuses to come together. Today, their commonality is just as likely to be a shared love of The Empire Strikes Back, a shared enjoyment of kickball, or, for that matter, a shared fascination with videos of cute cats doing quirky things.

Such common focal points are known as fan objects—a celebrity, brand, organization, pastime, or piece of media such as a movie, book, or music that functions as a nexus of emotion and activities. They are an important core, a center of gravity that both pulls a group of people together and gives them something shared to bond over.

Sometimes these fan objects bring with them a fan text—an official piece of media that allows fans to directly experience the fan object. Sometimes the fan object is the fan text itself, such as in the case of a beloved movie or book. Sometimes the relationship is less direct; fans of a musician can listen to the fan text of their songs, watch the fan text of their official music videos, or read the fan text of their biography. Sometimes there’s no fan text at all. Many activities, such as swimming, don’t have much in the way of media available to help fans directly feel close to their fan object. It’s difficult to be a hardcore swimmer without occasionally swimming.

A Sith arriving to a deserted Washington Square Park to challenge the Jedi would be a disappointed fan. She could wave a sword around by herself, but it wouldn’t be the same. Our natural urges toward self-expression and interaction, for showing off who we are, are all predilections we can only fully explore in the company of others. As a result, fandom is inherently social: a performance needs an audience. Even though fandom often feels intensely personal, the activities that constitute it almost always exist as part of a shared experience. The image of a secret fan acting alone with no outside influence or interaction is largely a myth. Secret fans are more often still socializing and engaging with their fellow fans, but without involving their more mainstream social group. True solitary fandom rarely survives for long.

The most effective way to make fans out of mere consumers is by inspiring the audience to participate in activities, preferably ones that are separate from the mere consumption of a product, where they can identify as part of a larger group. These fanlike activities are the backbone of fandom.

Pilgrimages

Attendees of the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in Omaha are participating in perhaps the oldest fanlike activity, older even than Chaucer’s fourteenth-century travelers on their way to Canterbury. A pilgrimage describes a journey to a place, not because of its beauty or location or any other intrinsic value, but for what it represents. Its holiness. Warren Buffett’s modest five-bedroom stucco house isn’t particularly attractive despite belonging to a multibillionaire. There are a few security cameras and an unmarked security car parked outside, but those are the only signs of affluence. Yet even when he’s away, fans can be found milling around on the sidewalk, seeking closeness to the guru by proxy. Gorat’s Steak House has three stars on Yelp, and many of the reviews question Buffett’s culinary judgment. It’s very possible that without the Buffett connection the restaurant would not be selling out reservations weeks in advance. Many Lightsaber Battle participants traveled from New Jersey and Connecticut, a tedious feat on a late summer evening. The view of the World Cup through a high-def television is always going to be better than the view from the bleachers, but that doesn’t stop the event from being one of the most sought-after sporting tickets in the world.

All fandom tends toward in-person interactions, whether it’s attending the convention, standing in line for the book signing, seeing the singer in concert, finding the original brewery, or visiting the celebrity’s childhood home. We want to prove to ourselves that this thing we care about is, at least in some sense, real.

Content Creation

During the winter holiday, some revelers decorate a tree. At Thanksgiving we roast turkeys, and on Valentine’s Day we make cards. We bake a cake for birthdays and prepare our famous barbeque recipe on the Fourth of July. The making of personal works of creativity around patriotic and religious themes is such a natural activity that few of us really give it any thought.

Creative works by amateurs—a drawing, photo, piece of writing, or website—used to be easy to identify. The better the quality, the more likely it was to be officially sanctioned. But with increased access to professional-grade tools, that divide is shrinking. Fan-cut trailers for popular movies are often indistinguishable in quality from the original. The English band Radiohead actively encourages fan-made remixes of its music. The title sequence for Season 8 of the popular television show Doctor Who is based almost entirely on a fan-created video uploaded to YouTube.

Evangelization

“My club is awesome. You should totally join too.” Almost every group, be it political, religious, or social, has some type of formal or informal recruitment system. Fan groups have the benefit of true believers, that core group of people with a deep emotional connection to the fan object. Fan evangelization follows many of the same impulses that drive religious recruitment. The fan who believes he has found the best ever Icelandic Death Metal rarely wants to keep that information to himself. For someone who’s recently discovered the funniest TV show ever, convincing others to watch it too comes naturally. Many Berkshire Hathaway attendees have brought along spouses, friends, and coworkers in the hope of infecting them with Buffett fever. Part of the enjoyment of finding a new fan object is in the status it grants finders in the eyes of their peers. And of course, participating in a fan group is more fun with friends. For one thing it creates more fans to discuss it with.

Over the years a number of organizations have attempted to automate these evangelical urges. Early Facebook pages sometimes “like-gated” their content, so that potential fans couldn’t gain access without first clicking the “Like” button. Facebook outlawed this sort of page design years ago, but we still contend with a legacy of “Like,” “Tweet,” “Pin,” and “Email this” buttons today, scattered across the web like so many pieces of sticky digital candy. Games such as the infamous Candy Crush and FarmVille encourage evangelization as part of their game play by requiring a friend’s input to unlock extra lives or abilities. And there are always websites and mobile apps that want to take the principle a step further, logging into our social networks either with or without our knowledge to evangelize our friends on our behalf. “Share your purchase,” suggests the Amazon checkout confirmation page, along with a helpfully prewritten tweet and Facebook post.

Socialization

Interaction in a social group can feel like a challenge for some, and fan objects represent a powerful social lubricant and medium for self-expression.

A group of people with a passion for a specific fan object are likely to have other shared interests. Fans of a vegan lifestyle may also have a shared love of biking or yoga. Fans of English author Terry Pratchett’s satirical fantasy novels are more likely to enjoy humorous Monty Python skits or movies directed by Mel Brooks. Commonalities like these offer jumping off points for discussions, friendships, and building a personal network. Using a fan object as a vehicle to discuss experiences and feelings can diffuse otherwise potentially awkward social situations. With a shared fan object, there is always a default topic of conversation. Interacting with strangers can be hard, but people wearing the same Star Wars outfits, holding the same lightsabers, and shouting mutually recognizable movie quotes aren’t strangers in the traditional sense.

When a fan takes an online Sex and the City quiz and posts the result to her Facebook timeline, she’s telling the world that she’s a “Carrie,” the driven-but-sensitive heroine of the series. In a regular conversation this person might have trouble announcing that she’s looking for romance and excitement, but by publicly identifying with Carrie the fan’s post subtly asks for commentary and approval from her fellow fans. It’s probably just a matter of time before someone comments back, “Oh you so are, girl!”

Impersonation

Our bodies are a canvas we use to project signals about who we are and what we feel strongly about. Traditionally, flashing a group’s “tribal colors” shows off our cultural affiliations. Face paint might provide clues about family origin and social status. The shape of a necklace pendant might signal others in the same religious community. In many cultures the color and cut of jewelry and clothing contains carefully coded information about the wearer’s age, gender, profession, and relationship status. Few people would proposition a woman clad in a white wedding gown.

As our cultural affiliations have become broader, tribal colors have expanded to include new enthusiasms. Face paint can mean that the wearer is a Baltimore Ravens fan or obsessed with the band KISS. Wearing a replica of a “time turner,” Hermione’s golden necklace from the Harry Potter franchise, identifies the wearer as a devotee to other fans. And clothing, through screen and dye-sublimation printing, can identify the teams we want to win, the cars we wish to drive, the bands we’ve seen, our preferred beer, and our favorite BBQ joint. A truly subtle fan might even wear her fan object’s signature perfume, sending out the signal that she admires Kim Kardashian odiferously.

Although some fans take their dress-up to the extreme by fully embodying the characters they love with cosplay, the art of constructing and wearing elaborate costumes based on favorite characters, it doesn’t require going the full Elvis to tell the world about what we like. Sometimes it just takes a T-shirt with the right picture. Very few attendees at the Lightsaber Battle fail to wear at least some kind of Star Wars gear, even if it’s just a colorful pin. A number of them even have Star Wars–themed tattoos.

Over the last decade, impersonation in the United States has taken over Halloween. There are still generic angels, policemen, and sexy kitties, but a large portion of the $2.5 billion spent on costumes in the US annually goes toward licensed properties. The Google Frightgeist costume search tracker reported that for 2016, three of the top five costumes were officially licensed: Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman, and the Joker. There are also costumes portraying corporate mascots like the Svedka vodka girls and Berkshire Hathaway’s own GEICO Gecko, as well as products themselves, like a Crayola crayon or a Hostess Chocolate Cupcake. Progressive Insurance has a website devoted to dressing like its mascot, Flo the Progressive Girl, for Halloween, complete with links to download her signature buttons and nameplate.

Rituals and Traditions

Do something once and it’s innovation; do it again and it’s tradition. Fans excel at developing their own activities and practices to help them feel close to the object of their affection, often creating a customized vocabulary and rules for participation in the process.

Justin Bieber fans sometimes organize “buyouts” at the release of each new CD. Members of the million-strong Bieber Army rampage through Kmarts and Best Buys in a coordinated attempt to rocket the album to the top of the charts. And there’s always the possibility that Bieber himself might notice and make an appearance. Very few of this thirteen- to eighteen-year-old age group have ever owned a CD player—they’ve come of age in an era where Pandora, iTunes, Spotify, and other digital services are the norm—so at the end of each shopping spree most of the CDs are collected and donated to charity.

But fan-made rituals and customs don’t have to be so extreme. A book club that meets once a month; a tailgating party in the parking lot before each big game; dousing the coach of a winning team with Gatorade; the weekly screening of a specific cult classic movie—all serve the same purpose. They give members a sense of belonging and bind fans closer to a fan object by helping them incorporate it into the rhythm of their lives. Once something becomes habit, it is that much easier to maintain.

Creating Collections

When Bieber fans stage a buyout, or when Berkshire Hathaway shareholders buy bottles of ketchup with Warren Buffett’s picture on them, they are engaged in ritual consumption. They are buying products for what they mean instead of what they do. For a consumer, the value of an object is in the purpose it serves. Tide Plus Bleach will make towels smell nice. But for a fan, the collection of objects such as toys, posters, ticket stubs, autographs, and other “proofs of participation” are valued for what they symbolize. A complete collection of rare Tide Plus Bleach bottles would probably be worth more if they were unopened. These are talismans of ownership. Fan collections are not unlike a voodoo doll: a product that’s representative of a distant fan object can impart a feeling of ownership and closeness with the actual beloved celebrity, movie, book, or brand.

Fan collections can absorb vast amounts of time and money, and often are prized for qualities like completeness, quirkiness, or the rarity of the objects. A collection of Star Wars–related products is great, but a collection of Star Wars–related PEZ dispensers is better. A complete collection of limited-edition Star Wars PEZ dispensers sold during the initial theatrical release of Return of the Jedi in 1983 might be the best, at least for someone who is looking to feel deeply engaged with her fan object. This is one of the few areas where social status in a fan group can be “bought.” Fans feel even closer to their fan objects by engaging in possession rituals—organizing and maintaining the collection, positioning objects to best effect, documenting them, and creating display systems. Collections allow fans to relive high points in their own fan histories. A concert ticket stub is just a piece of paper, but seeing it carefully preserved in a scrapbook brings back memories of what it was like to be there long afterwards.

Why Do We Fan?

Rituals that directly involve spending money, such as the Bieber buyouts, are pretty rare. With the exception of licensed products such as costumes and toys, fanlike activities are technically valueless, at least when it comes to money. Very few fanlike activities are specifically intended to put cash into the fan object’s pocket. The interplay between fanlike activities and monetization is much more complex than that found in a traditional buyer-seller relationship, but it’s a strong one.

A 2013 study of Bud Light fans found that an increase in fan activity does lead to an uptick in sales, sometimes a larger one than would be expected from a standard advertising campaign. Over a one-month period, fans saw and were encouraged to share beer-related images on Bud Light’s Facebook page, driving evangelization and socialization activities. The pictures were silly: one showed a hand picking beer bottles from a tree as though they were fruit, another showed beer pouring from a picture of a bottle on a smart phone. None had an overt marketing agenda in the old-fashioned sense of highlighting the product’s advantages, price, or where to buy it. Nonetheless the four-week fandom-centric campaign led directly to a 3.3 percent increase in sales compared to a control group. It’s a sizable figure for a brand whose parent company in 2013 spent $1.56 billion purely on advertising.

Turning Consumers into Fans

Sometimes the relationship between fanlike activities and fans’ wallets is subtler still.

In theory, crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe use the power of fan groups to raise funding for future projects. Each campaign allows users to pledge a certain amount of money and to receive tokens of appreciation in return. But in practice they often function like “preorder” systems: a Kickstarter to raise money for a book promises the fan a copy when it’s completed. The fan has in essence bought the book, with the caveat that she likely won’t receive it for months. Often as a thank-you fans will receive a bonus like free shipping.

From the point of view of a fan acting out of love, these kinds of discounts can be counterproductive. Sometimes they allow fans to feel like they are helping out a cause that they care about. But sometimes, instead of engaging with a fan’s urge to participate in fanlike activities, they’ve only engaged with their old-fashioned consumer instinct.

Alternative and independent writers, musicians, and artists comprise an industry that has seemingly tried every possible type of commercial relationship between creators and fans, with varying levels of success. Micropayments, charging pennies for each piece of content, are annoying. Paywalls, requiring a subscription to view content, prevent the curious from discovering material that could make them serious supporters. Advertising—selling banner ads and other sponsored space—has experienced a significant decline as ad spends are nudged away from hosting platforms and toward social media. Swag—selling branded shirts, mugs, stuffed animals, and tote bags—can help, but with less and less return as closets fill up. A person only needs so many tote bags.

Jack Conte, sometimes labeled in album reviews as the guy doing “all of those instruments,” is a San Francisco–based musician and videographer. His personal style, both in his own work and as a member of his two-person band Pomplamoose, is aggressively indie. But despite a strong YouTube following, a weekly podcast, and a good tour schedule, by early 2013 he had yet to see the type of financial support he wanted. So he cofounded Patreon.

Instead of funding content creation through the sale of fan-text vehicles such as CDs, books, newspapers, swag, or ad space, Patreon adopts the patronage model: I admire what you do. Take this money and use it how you will. It’s not exactly a donation, but it’s certainly not a purchase.

“Art became fundamentally tied to commerce because art became tied to physical things that could be sold,” observes Conte. It’s a surreal marriage. A music fan who wants to show a band his appreciation and love might have only one option to support it: to click on the advertisement for American Apparel that appears on the band’s website. The catchphrases “Shut up and take my money!” and “I’m throwing money at the screen but nothing is happening!” are often repeated in fan forums and on platforms like Facebook and Reddit. They represent real frustration: I want to help you, why won’t you give me an outlet to do so?

“The desire to want to support an artist because their work speaks to you is an intrinsic emotional thing,” says Conte. “I have over 120 subscriptions on YouTube, and occasionally, a video will pop up and I’ll watch it and feel like it’s a game changer in my life. If there were a button to give that person $1,000, I would press it.”

Unlike Kickstarter and other crowdsourcing sites, Patreon primarily funds creators engaged in long-term, sometimes lifelong, works rather than one-off projects. Fan texts, which are often released for free to the broader population, are funded as they are made. Only dedicated fans will opt to financially support something they otherwise can get for free—so the commercial relationship fans have with their fan object is, in some ways, the least important one. Yet, as of 2016, the Patreon website has over a million active pledges going to content creators, to the tune of over $6 million per month in support.

Patreon isn’t the only organization to take advantage of the fan mentality for funding purposes. National Public Radio has been doing it for decades. A local NPR station is always free, but a portion of its revenue stream comes from “listeners like you.” Historically, this works because its core audience is geographically centralized, which creates a group united around supporting the local station. Hometown pride is a strong motivator. But that’s a fundamentally different audience from, say, a video creator with fans spread throughout the world. While there might be 100,000 people visiting the website daily, they’re generally only engaged for as long as it takes to watch today’s clip. Fans need to be encouraged to think of themselves as part of a group bigger than themselves, a group that’s counting on each of them to do their part.

“People have been asking for something like this for years. [They say] I don’t really wear T-shirts because I work in an office, and I don’t really have room in my apartment for stuffed animals. I just want to support you.” So says Jon Rosenberg, creator of the popular webcomics Scenes from a Multiverse and Goats, who has been using Patreon since late 2013.

Prior to the switchover Rosenberg sold advertising on his website, created toys and T-shirts to sell, printed compilations of his work, and appeared at comics conventions, all with diminishing returns. Selling to readers wasn’t working, but appealing to their fanlike nature was intimidating. “I didn’t want to use it as leverage against the audience, and I didn’t want to guilt people—I didn’t want to make it an unpleasant thing,” he explains. “It’s a delicate balance. You’re asking people for their help but you’re kind of demanding it too because you’re saying: I’m not going to do this anymore if I can’t get the support.” He currently makes $3,094 a month through Patreon—enough, with the addition of his other revenue activities, to take care of his three kids, pay his mortgage, and draw full time.

“I would not be full-time employed by my comics if not for the generosity of my readers right now. It changes the comics from a loss leader into the product,” he says.

Selling the Intangible

Convincing readers that their dollars are better spent as a pledge than a purchase is not a trivial task. More often than not, rewards are digital goods or exclusive access to the artist rather than paraphernalia. Products like the promise of extra videos, posts, or personalized haikus are popular. For $5 a month, fans get access to ongoing Google Hangouts with Rosenberg and to live streams of him drawing. For $100 a month, Rosenberg’s fans get to have a beer with him at the Peculiar Pub on Bleecker Street in New York City. It’s a level of access that’s normally sacrosanct, but it’s available as a Patreon perk to those who want it enough to pay. About one in ten of Rosenberg’s 1000+ supporters support at this level or higher.

For the fans who aren’t craving the opportunity for a traditional fanlike activity such as a pilgrimage or in-person meeting, the motivations are more varied. For example, some Patreon-style campaigns can offer opportunities for self-improvement. Corridor Digital, a team of YouTube video creators, offers supporters at the $20-per-video level “VFX school on a budget.” They get a live-streamed tutorial about how to do video effects and a downloadable collection of related files.

Often, the interactions take on very personal meanings. Rosenberg’s $2,000 milestone goal was entitled “Operation Kiddie Freedom.” It was the threshold he needed to send his three kids to day care so that he would have more time to draw for fans. At the moment, Conte’s personal Patreon page promises: “When I hit $7,000, I’ll buy a new DSLR camera, and my videos will look awesomer.” Patrons aren’t just supporting art; they are sponsoring the creation of more of what they like.

“It’s a self-identified crew of people who want to support and help us. Those people get a special place in my schedule and my mind as people who I really want to make sure are happy,” says Conte. Fans buy the feeling of participation in an act of creation without having a direct role in what’s being created. “In a sense, it’s like walking into the San Francisco Opera and seeing a plate on the wall honoring someone who donated $4 million,” he says.

Just as medieval patronage benefited the social standing of the patron, sponsoring creators on Patreon increases the social standing of the supporter, as public a badge as carrying a NPR umbrella. It’s hard to overstate the importance of bragging rights among fellow fans. “Being a patron denotes some type of relationship, whereas a tip jar doesn’t,” says Conte. Most patrons have publicly viewable pages where they can show off which artists they support.

A lucky few Patreon artists are supported by superfans, those dedicated and serious members of a fandom who are willing to commit real time, energy, and attention to assisting and improving the fandom that they love. It is great to be supported by consumers, who want to buy the “extras” the artist is offering, and by fans, who want a feeling of closer engagement, self-improvement, or any one of a number of other personal motivations. But to have the support of superfans is valuable indeed.

Would Berkshire Hathaway superfans buy into a patronage model to support the multinational conglomerate corporation they adore? In a way they already do. Despite the vast amount of commerce that takes place on the convention floor, buying swag is not the prime motivation for most shareholders’ attendance. Neither is ensuring that they remember their investment gains or losses; any financial app or budgeting website could accomplish that.

Like many Patreon patrons, a large number of Berkshire Hathaway attendees are looking for the chance to live vicariously through a person they support and admire. Some are there for personal growth. They use the experience as a learning opportunity to better themselves through a philosophy and a lifestyle they hope to attain someday. Others are looking for social status—bragging rights to hold over the friends and colleagues who stayed back home. The T-shirt they can wear to next year’s event that will prove they’re no longer newbies.

But everywhere in Omaha on this spring weekend, fans engage in a dozen different types of activities meant to strengthen an emotional connection with the fan object they love. And it’s that active pursuit of closeness, not the number of times that they flash their credit card, that makes them truly valuable.

* Christian Russo is a pseudonym: his employer forbids him from being quoted on-the-record about these kinds of events.

† All events occurred during the 2014 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders meeting, but some quotations come from the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders meeting.