Superfandom

Frida’s Margaritas

Frida Kahlo is giving away margaritas. They’re churning out of a slushy machine, a lime-green frozen mixture sloshing against the plastic sides of the container. They taste . . . very nice, actually. They would be at home in a nicer college bar on Cinco de Mayo: clean and citrusy. Frida Kahlo Tequila: “100% Blue Agave. Ultra premium tequila in Blanco, Reposado and Añejo captures Frida’s Passion for Life and satisfies your taste buds with the essence of Mexican culture.” The matching website concurs. “You already enjoyed Frida’s iconic paintings. Now enjoy her passion for life. Tequila!”

The artist, iconic and iconoclastic, glares from a poster in her colorful dress and unmistakable black unibrow. Industrial-strength spotlights burn up above. On one pedestal, there’s a plastic Frida Kahlo doll. There’s her signature, printed onto a pair of Converse sneakers. There it is again on a pair of cowboy boots. Glossy brochures show Frida Kahlo–branded beer, Frida Kahlo magnets, Frida Kahlo mouse pads and calendars. A Frida Kahlo corset from La Perla. A Frida Kahlo Mastercard design. Her face on a blouse from the popular clothier Zara. The official slogan, plastered everywhere, reads, “Frida Kahlo: Pasión por la vida!”

The actual Frida Kahlo was a complicated figure: feminist, political activist, Mexican patriot, and, of course, brilliant and tortured artist. Polio, followed by a body-shattering traffic accident, left her in pain for much of her life. A tumultuous marriage to fellow superartist Diego Rivera was rife with intrigue on both sides—she had affairs with numerous men and women; he had affairs with, among others, her sister. She was a devoted Communist and an active supporter of Joseph Stalin, yet she was also the lover of rival Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Through it all, she painted, mainly self-portraits of the tragedies and loneliness of her life: Frida Kahlo as a young girl with a grinning skull instead of a head; Frida Kahlo bleeding from open wounds in her leg and foot; Frida Kahlo wearing a necklace of thorns; Frida Kahlo covered in blood on a hospital bed after a miscarriage. By the time she died at the age of forty-seven—whether from a pulmonary embolism, the official finding, or an overdose is still debated—she had created dozens of these portraits of pain.

“She was very much into aromatherapy,” states the official press release for Frida Kahlo 100% Natural Skin Care. Products such as the company’s signature Omega-3 antiaging and antiwrinkle face creams contain ingredients like rosemary oil and Japanese green tea. In 2007, Naturals Skin Care, Inc. licensed the use of Kahlo’s name from her official brand-name owners, the Frida Kahlo Corporation, along with the company’s “Pasión por la vida” tagline.

It’s the second day of the Licensing Expo * here at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, and today the Frida Kahlo Corporation is hoping to entice other manufacturers to follow in the steps of Natural Skin Care. Tucked into the side of the “Characters and Entertainment” area, the Frida Kahlo booth is bright with colors and imagery direct from Kahlo’s Mexican context. Sales representatives pass out pamphlets and slushies to the crowd as they wander by on their way from the Power Rangers booth to the elevated Sea World platform. “Have you heard of Frida Kahlo? She’s gotten really big with a new generation. She’s actually trending right now on Twitter. We’re having a lot of luck with the eighteen-to-twenty-five age range,” says one of the reps.

Fandoms for Sale

The Las Vegas Licensing Expo fills the entire convention center, positioned next to the Shark Reef, the casino’s showcase 1.6-million-gallon aquarium. Out on the Strip, the heat makes the air shimmer and the entryway is filled with kids pushing their way into the air conditioning and up the escalator to ooh and aah at the fish. Walking in the other direction, thousands of manufacturers, brand owners, and media analysts will head down, past the posters and statues of Thomas & Friends and Bon Jovi, and into the cavernous space that is the south convention hall. Inside it looks like an extremely tasteful flea market, but the commerce here doesn’t require inventory. Despite the visual similarity to pop culture–themed conventions such as the San Diego Comic-Con, the merchandise on sale here is very different.

This is where fandoms are bought and sold.

Licensing is the commercialization of a fandom. For many brands, celebrities, and media properties, their most valuable asset is often not their product; it’s their audience. When an audience grows large enough, it becomes worth quite a lot of money to manufacturers and other brand owners. Licensing offers other businesses the rights to purchase and use a property for a new purpose.

Licensing has become so commonplace that we often don’t even notice it. Placing a Chicago Bears logo or a Mickey Mouse face on a shirt or baseball cap is a win-win for everyone involved. The property licensor gets cash, at rates that are generally anywhere between 3 percent and 22 percent of the product’s wholesale price, with almost no additional work on its behalf. In return, the manufacturer gets an in-demand article of clothing to sell and a built-in fan base to sell it to. Consumers get a trendy tee.

For a movie, a large, enthusiastic fan group with money to spend may be worth much more than ticket sales. The animated feature film Despicable Me was a success at the box office, bringing in $543 million gross worldwide. But at the Licensing Expo, it begins a second incarnation as a licensing property. Two standout items within the movie were runaway hits with consumers: a fluffy unicorn doll (that inspires the young character Agnes to exclaim, “It’s so fluffy I’m gonna die!”) and a group of yellow Minion henchmen who speak gibberish-sounding Minionese. Both have seen new incarnations in a wide variety of merchandise, including Halloween costumes, duct tape, folding chairs, backpacks, Tic-Tac mints, and of course, T-shirts.

“It feels like everybody has a Spider-Man T-shirt. In middle school you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a [comics or cartoon-themed] T-shirt, that was like the kiss of death. But there’s not that level of shame in anybody born 1990 and on. It’s not an embarrassment to them. They embrace this. I think you would almost be ostracized for not having a Captain America T-shirt. It’s become so universally loved and accepted that you’re almost the odd man out for wearing a polo with nothing on it. Or a blazer—God forbid you put on a blazer.” So says Jesse DeStasio of Striker Entertainment. As Vice President of Business Development it’s his job to connect licensees, that is to say, fan object owners, with potential licensors looking for properties with which to brand their products.

“Early on in my career, one of the biggest brands I worked on was the Twilight film saga. Nobody saw it coming. The conventional wisdom said, ‘Girls don’t buy products; girls are going to the mall to meet boys. They’re not going to buy a T-shirt.’ Then it became a huge global phenomenon, and it ended up being highly merchandisable. What [Twilight writer] Stephenie Meyer did is she captured something universal: Twilight is really about the first time you have a crush on someone. That all-encompassing feeling of newness and desire—usually when you’re heading into puberty. And it’s confusing and depressing and obsessive. The way Bella longs after Edward and feels confused about Jacob, we’ve all had that, male or female,” he says.

“Ultimately, girls identified with Bella. I think that they wanted to have a little piece of how they felt when they read the book or saw the movie in their day-to-day life. If you think of the idea of a ‘totem,’ that’s what a consumer product is. It’s a little totem for the brands or the characters that you love, that you need to be reminded of.”

In licensing terms, a movie like The Twilight Saga: New Moon (or Despicable Me) is an advertisement, the bait that draws consumers toward a huge moneymaker: related consumer goods. What may have started with T-shirts and posters now covers nearly every type of product. There are Twilight key chains, rings, necklaces, lunch boxes, jewelry boxes, puzzles, water bottles, purses, wallets, action figures, candles, belts, trading cards, throw pillows, umbrellas, watches, tote bags, duvets, hairdryers, makeup, and an official Twilight wedding dress.

By the time that Minions, the third Despicable Me movie, launched in July 2015, Universal had already seen $2.5 billion in retail sales of products related to the movie franchise. Universal itself sees only a portion of those sales as royalties, but it’s still a formidable number.

Of course, the Holy Grail for both licensors and licensees is the evergreen property—a brand that requires no introduction. “When I think of evergreen stuff, obviously Star Wars comes to mind. Hello Kitty, LEGO I think is pretty much golden, anything they touch is great. It’s always beloved, it will always be on store shelves. It is not dependent upon trends. It will always survive. The brand may ebb and flow but ultimately you’re always going to have the interest of the buyers,” explains DeStasio.

Four hundred and seventy licensors are in attendance, representing the rights to more than 5,000 brand names, celebrities, media properties, art pieces, and anything else a manufacturer might want to turn into a lunch box. Each booth, some of which cost tens of thousands of dollars to construct, shows off the advantages of licensing a particular property. Walls display artwork, statistics about the size and enthusiasm of its fan group, and plans for future expansion and advertising. The Kahlo booth is more approachable than most; many display only a tasteful logo, white walls, and a security guard. Admission into the booth of a sought-after property such as Cartoon Network, BBC Worldwide, Grumpy Cat, or Pokémon usually requires an appointment.

The Characters and Entertainment zone has any number of other celebrities, media properties, and personalities. The Endemol Licensing booth represents the TV shows Big Brother, Deal or No Deal, Fear Factor, and television host and personality Steve Harvey. Core Media Group is trying to license Elvis and Graceland, So You Think You Can Dance, and boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Around the corner, Live Nation Merchandise offers up the rights to Nirvana, Coldplay, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Wu-Tang Clan.

A huge two-story booth by toy manufacturer Hasbro comes complete with crystal chandeliers and custom wood floors. Giant pictures from the My Little Pony animated show dot the walls. In front, two ladies in pastel dresses demonstrate My Little Pony–themed makeovers. A half dozen middle-aged women in corporate suits have lined up to get a pink-and-purple hair extension clipped into their somber curls and pageboy cuts.

Stonyfield Organic is offering to license its name to other food products that need an in with the coveted “mom” demographic. Their licensing agent, Brandgenuity (“Where can we take your brand today?”), is also offering the rights to Playtex feminine products, the History Channel, and the Juilliard School. Coca-Cola, with $1.3 billion in licensed product sales annually, has procured an entire island to itself. Convention-goers crowd around it, holding up cell phones to snap pictures of an a cappella group singing corporate jingles. The video game Tetris shows off its successful licenses for underwear, mugs, stress balls, and scratch-off lottery tickets. The Boy Scouts organization wants new clients to join its 150 existing licensees, who already produce products like granola, cookware, and walking sticks. The very rugged-looking Trademarketing Resources booth (Jeep, HillBilly Beverages, and the National Rifle Association) currently hosts two midriff-flaunting booth girls. They pose for pictures in front of a display of gun-themed pet products, sunglasses, lighters, and a gun safe called the NRA Fatboy Junior.

Walking the padded carpets between the aisles from one end of the Expo to the other can take thirty minutes. As an industry show, the crowd is quiet, businesslike, and middle-aged. The average attendee has a comfortable waistline and fashionable glasses, staring down at padfolios or catalogs as they power-walk from meeting to meeting. Others crouch on the carpets around the power outlets, rumpling their suits in an effort to charge tablets and cell phones. Snatches of conversation float up from the murmuring groups: “Try saying something that isn’t a threat but sounds like a threat, like ‘We will consider avenues outside of the US’ or something” and “Let’s go after Urban Outfitters again.”

To find out what is actually going on inside the private meeting rooms nearby, it’s necessary to read the daily convention newsletter. Peanuts and sports brand Umbro will be making Snoopy-themed soccer wear. Sega Europe has high hopes for the retro appeal of Sonic the Hedgehog. 1928 Jewelry has just signed on to create a line of necklaces and earrings based on Downton Abbey. The animal-welfare activists at the ASPCA are hoping to put their logo on a wide variety of toys, housewares, and jewelry. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has made a speech about the importance of taking brands global. “My hope is that we’ll continue to reach more people in more places with things we love and want to share,” says the pull quote.

“A licensed product is likely a guarantee that you’re going to sell ten times the amount, just by virtue of recognition, just by virtue of being able to get in front of the buyers of retail stores,” observes DeStasio. “Every single product and every single package and every item that’s put on a shelf is a little tiny billboard for your brand. Just having somebody walk past the shelf at a Hot Topic and seeing your logo, that face-to-face interaction, that’s extremely valuable. Especially in an increasingly digital world.”

The winners here are rarely unexpected. In 2015 the top-grossing licensor was Disney, with $45 billion in sales, and the top-ten list is peppered with the likes of Mattel, Sanrio, Warner Brothers, and Major League Baseball. Car manufacturers like General Motors and Ferrari do well, as does health guru Dr. Andrew Weil’s Weil Lifestyle, to the tune of hundreds of millions each.

For licensors, the Expo is their best chance to buy a new personality for themselves. They must choose with care the products to associate with; these are the coattails on which their brand will ride for the next year. While each contract is an attempt to borrow the fans of the licensor brand, it also changes what the brand means. Nerds candy is a box of sugar crystals covered with acidic candy coating, but with one signed clothing contract, Nerds is also a fashion statement.

Rounding a corner on the north side of the Convention Center is a spacious white booth. It sports a wall-sized photo of Pope Francis and the tagline “End of the World Pope.” A number of attractive Italian ladies in matching skirts and pumps are eager to be helpful. “This is our big reveal. I think it’s bringing people together who wouldn’t be into it,” says one. The pope is listed in the directory under “Characters and Entertainment.” He is licensing his name, signature, picture, and official slogan (“Pray for me”) as it pertains to—and as a benefit for—his favorite football team, San Lorenzo. His likeness graces backpacks, shirts, sweatshirts, notebooks, and rubber bracelets.

It might feel a little disquieting to see a dollar value placed on our enthusiasms, memories, loyalties, and even spirituality. These properties, and what they stand for, are deeply personal to many people. It’s our first time watching Star Wars or taking that spring-break trip to Disney World. It’s a memory of baking Toll House cookies with a grandmother. It’s our community or spirituality. It can feel dystopian to think of all of these personal associations in terms of their commercial value, as something that can be sold to the highest bidder. It’s easy to imagine shadowy figures conspiring in a boardroom to decide what we will love and cherish next year. But that’s not exactly the case.

“I just bought a pair of slippers off of Instagram. They’re the best shoes I’ve ever owned. Would I have been more inclined to buy them if they were Metal Gear Solid branded slippers? 100 percent. I couldn’t have clicked that button quicker,” says DeStasio.

“We live in a chaotic world where we are at the mercy of any number of variables. We are not in control of whether we live or die. This collective compulsion, the idea of displaying and curating things, is a way of having order in a universe where there is no order,” he muses. “It’s a reminder of what that brand evokes in you.”

In one sense, it’s true that one of the main purposes of our beloved fandoms is to provide positive emotional associations for other products that we otherwise wouldn’t look at twice. And yet, fan experiences and feelings of identity and membership are very real. The fact that those same experiences are sometimes the result of a handshake between businesspeople rarely has any impact on the way they make fans feel. Fans are experts in taking what they want from a property and interpreting it for their own purposes. What a fandom means to people, and the important role it plays in helping them express themselves, is deeply personal and authentic even if the origin may be more contrived.

Saving Great Britain

Populations pass in and out of fandoms depending on what they need at various points in their own personal development. Scholar Matt Hills even postulates a fandom autobiography—a chart showing how someone’s deepest fandoms line up with periods of personal change, strife, and growth. We might become fans of heavy metal in a reaction to the first wave of hormones in our early teen years, fans of baby-toy brand Skip Hop when looking for guidance as a first-time parent, and fans of Harison’s Yellow, an early American breed of rose, as a way to spend our time in retirement.

Fandoms can be temporary or permanent, but they are always timely. In this context, fandoms become almost a form of self-help, a way to work through or experience new periods in life. A way to “become a better you.”

Great Britain’s relationship with the memory of World War II is complicated. While the fighting didn’t finish Great Britain off, it did add a touch of humiliation to an already tragic situation. A country with a strong ethos of cultural superiority had barely survived annihilation by an enemy that was inarguably better equipped, trained, and organized. And their rescue came thanks to an uncultured upstart of a former colony, at that. Great Britain was a traumatized nation, its people shorn of their sunny supporting lands, sifting through the rubble of their homes, reliant on foreign aid for the very food they ate.

And then, then something wonderful happened: onto the gray bitterness of 1950s British literature arrived James Bond. Bond, the archetypal superspy. Bond, the international traveler. Bond, the master of lethal, ultra-advanced weaponry. Bond, the well dressed, the epicure of fine food and wine, the seducer of women, the powerful and well-trained strategist, the winner against all odds. Most of Casino Royale, the first book in the Bond series, takes place in France—a trip that would have been financially out of reach for most Britons. Bond enters a poker tournament, and an American gladly hands over a bulging envelope of cash in deference to his superior skill. In one scene of lavish extravagance, he even eats an avocado.

“Casino Royale was to the beleaguered nation a salve,” argues author and historian Simon Winder, in his book The Man Who Saved Britain. It wasn’t just escapism; James Bond introduced an alternative narrative of British power. Espionage—fast, exciting, honorable—is the opposite of the grinding war of attrition that eventually won World War II. In this new version of British supremacy, the United Kingdom might be little, but unbeknownst to everyone it was still doing amazing things. Not for Bond the parades and public accolades of heroes like Superman or John Wayne’s cowboy characters. He worked in secret, behind the scenes. “Bond may have been a one-man band, but as he toured the colonies that Britain had ceded to America, readers at home were reassured that at least we’d retained our sense of style. He epitomized the cozy fiction of the lopsided Anglo-American alliance. The Yanks might have become the masters, but only the Brits really knew how to behave,” wrote William Cook in the New Statesman.

It’s hard to overestimate the reviving effect Ian Fleming’s creation had on British culture. He was the right man, at the right time, and certainly in the right place. He offered a reason to go on.

Humanity has always asked questions about the way the world works, and how we should act to survive and succeed there. How should we behave? Where do we belong? What’s happening to us? These questions have traditionally been answered with mythology, the stories and warnings supplied by religion, local community, and family. Myths are an easy shorthand for teaching cultural norms. Knocking on wood to warn off the jealous fairy folk reminds us, “Don’t take your good luck for granted!”

Modernity isn’t satisfied with these answers. In a time when transportation is ubiquitous and changing location is common, sources like extended family groups, traditional geographic community relationships, and religion have become a weaker influence than in past generations. We understand now that no single information source is infallible. For many, rebelling against their family, hometown, or childhood spirituality is an important part of their “becoming an adult” process. As traditional mythologies give way, it makes sense that we should look to other sources for answers to these very human questions.

The 1986 fantasy movie Labyrinth is a cult favorite among many a Generation Xer. The story of a young woman’s fight to free her brother from the clutches of the evil Goblin King is simple and charming, and its heroine Sarah was a first crush for many. The online repository fanfiction.net has almost ten thousand Labyrinth and Labyrinth crossover pieces of fan fiction—derivative stories detailing the further adventures of Sarah and her brave band of misfit friends.

It doesn’t take long to notice a trend. For every fan-made story about the characters fighting a new villain, there are five that detail Sarah’s struggles with everyday problems. Moving to a new goblin town. Dealing with elf bullies. Sexuality. Depression. Anxiety. Abuse. By the time we get to stories describing Sarah’s nervousness about complications in her first elf-pregnancy, and how she feels about the goblin doctor’s insistence on bed rest, it’s obvious that whatever is going on here is a lot more personal than a mere adventure story.

It is no secret why Ian Fleming created James Bond when he did; he himself was active in the war, and the bleak new world that emerged from it was hardly a victor’s prize. “If Fleming was born when the British Empire was at its apex,” wrote Cook, “Bond was born just as its power began to wane.” James Bond hit the English national psyche at a time when it needed a realistic hero for its new reality.

Something becomes a fan object by filling a deep-seated need in a fan’s life. Maybe the fan is looking for a new philosophy or perspective, or a new friend group, or just a new way to spend time. In this sense, fandom is very much tied to fans’ current situations and feelings about their lives. It will ebb and flow as a fan’s life changes and evolves. Fan objects offer modern mythologies, the stories that tell us how we should approach the world right now, at this point in our personal history.

Fandom Is Healthy

How much agency do we have in choosing our fan groups? How much conscious control do we have when it comes to the things we like? Most of us likely don’t care about the underlying nature of our affiliations, just as we may never consciously consider the physical, psychological, or social benefits we receive from them. It’s easy to read purposefulness into the choosing of new fandoms during times of uncertainty, but in reality the process is often subconscious. Our own brains know what we need, and our brains find it for us.

In the mid-2000s, researcher Daniel L. Wann and his collaborators conducted a number of studies into the advantages of sports fandom membership. In one, Wann surveyed 155 university students in Kentucky (59 male, 96 female) about their level of involvement and identification with the fan group for a local sports team. Then he asked them questions about their social self-esteem and general satisfaction with their lives, rating their feelings on a scale of low to high. As a control, the students were also asked about their feelings for a distant sports team, one they cared about but, for geographic reasons, could not engage with its fan groups as fully.

The results were clear. High team identification, that is, “the extent to which the fan views the team as an extension of his or herself,” leads to higher levels of social and personal self-esteem and well being, and higher levels of positive emotions. Fans are less likely to feel alienated or angry overall, and less likely to report emotions of loneliness, depression, or fatigue. These results aren’t just a side effect of a general interest in sports. Fans who care about a team, and are able to access a group of fellow fans such as themselves, are truly happier, more well-balanced people. And that’s even more true when the team is on a winning streak.

Daniel Wann posits a complex feedback interaction, which he calls the “Team Identification–Social Psychological Health Model,” that allows sports fans to use their affiliation to live happier, fuller lives without ever consciously choosing to do so. These are the feelings of belongingness and camaraderie triggered by following a local team. It’s easy to locate fellow fans of the Ravens in the team’s hometown of Baltimore. Many people on the street wear jerseys and hats with the logo on it, and the team’s activities often come up in conversation. Many local habits are formed around rituals involving the Ravens, such as going to games, tailgating, or hosting viewing events. “In environments such as this, fans of a local team can feel part of something grander than the self. They gain vital connections to others in their community and a feeling of camaraderie,” explains Wann.

Teams lose, coaches leave, scandals occur. In a group setting, fans learn valuable psychological compensation techniques. These are practices such as how to distance themselves from stressors. How to engage in “retroactive pessimism” (revising their memory of how hopeful they were after a disappointment), and outgroup derogation (taking out frustrations on a ritual enemy instead of on themselves or each other). In a group setting, they can feel good about themselves when their team is successful and learn how to control their feelings when it isn’t.

We are descendants of apelike creatures who survived because they were willing to identify as part of a larger group with a shared purpose. As we have become more sophisticated, those urges haven’t gone away. Identifying with a social organization helps individuals form the connections that lead to better mental health. While few people today feel the need to invoke religion to summon the tribes for mating or mammoth-hunting purposes, tight communities of friends based around shared commonalities—what sociologists call “families of choice”—still have huge tactical advantages.

As described in chapter 1, socialization is one of the most basic of fanlike activities. Using the existing framework of a subculture is a fast way to quickly build trust, gain acceptance, pass on important information, and learn new skills in a safe environment. And as anyone who has ever been to a fan convention can attest, it can certainly provide valuable mating opportunities.

Marketing professors Bernard Cova, Robert Kozinets, and Avi Shankar call this a transcendence in conformity, the romance of feeling like part of something bigger than ourselves. It’s an exhilarating yet comforting feeling. And it’s one that can be triggered by becoming a member of a new religion or a new political movement, becoming more involved with a local sports team, or by joining the Corgi Nation (fans of the little stubby-legged herding dog from Wales). All these groups exploit this feedback loop from our ape-ancestor brains. It’s no wonder that they bestow similar positive psychological benefits.

We’re All Individuals Together

In an episode of the animated TV series South Park, the elementary-school character Stan asks a group of Goth kids how he can defy mainstream society and become a nonconformist like them. Between flips of dyed black hair they tell him, “If you want to be one of the nonconformists, all you have to do is dress just like us and listen to the same music we do.” While it’s written for laughs, there is truth here. There are few actions more fiercely individualistic than choosing an unexpected group with whom to conform. It’s a whole lot easier to express our unique individuality if there’s a larger community backing us up, reassuring us we’re still socially acceptable.

Fandom emerges from two very different motivations—the need to identify with a fan object on an individual, personal level, and the urge to feel like part of a larger group where members share similar traits and goals. We want a sense that we are unique and special, but we also want a sense of belonging. Fandom spans this paradox nicely. It allows us to show off our unique individuality while at the same time feeling protected by a larger, supportive group.

Identity leisure describes the process of trying on different personalities to find the best fit. It’s not uncommon to pass through dozens of different subcultural identities during our lives: a Goth phase, a hippie phase, an indie music phase, and probably a dozen others, before our personalities settle down (at least until the next period of upheaval).

Fandom involves identifying with different fan objects, each of which comes with a new social group, new activities, and new ethics, social norms, and values. Experimenting with various fandoms is a way to answer the question “Where do I fit in?” It lets us move quickly from one concept of self to another and allows us to experiment with new philosophies, politics, love, friendship, and rebellion, in a series of supportive environments.

Showing fellow community members that we too belong to the same group as they do is an important part of identity building. As we choose fandoms with which to link our sense of self, even temporarily, we look for ways to express our affiliations to the outside world. While die-hard fans may go out of their way to create homemade fan tributes—clothing, accessories, artwork—most traditional consumers prefer to purchase their tribal colors.

The Licensing Expo provides them. Those purveyors of fandom are counting on the group loyalties of fans to sell their T-shirts, posters, earrings, wallets, belts, toys, and frozen food. The fans are counting on the purveyors to give them thoughtful products they can use to show off those same affiliations.

Harry Potter and the Fair Trade Chocolate

As fandom becomes a central part of identity, it’s natural for fans to begin experimenting with the meaning and purpose of their groups. What that identity, in fact, means. A shared identity is a very powerful, empowering thing.

Call it a side effect of fandom as utopia—so many fan groups have internal mythologies that revolve around idealism that they become a natural jumping-off point for Good Works. Just as community groups like the Shriners, Kiwanis, and even the Freemasons often find social causes to rally around and support that are largely unrelated to their core activities, fan groups have become unexpected rallying places for seemingly completely unrelated social causes.

When the social-justice issue benefits the fan object this is no bad thing. Pop singer Lady Gaga has doubtless gained at least some audience share through her status as an icon of the LGBTQ civil rights movement, as did the performer Madonna before her. In these cases, the fact that their fan groups grew beyond their original brand identity has positive potential benefits.

Chocolate slavery—the use of forced child labor in the production and harvesting of cocoa beans—is awful stuff. Kids as young as five are abducted or sold as a workforce on the West African cacao plantations that feed the rest of the world’s candy bar cravings. Chocolate is a $100 billion industry, and activists and journalists who attempt to report on the practice are sometimes targets for intimidation or violence. Yet, in late 2014, one organization, the Harry Potter Alliance, did manage to make some headway. Their campaign was called “Not in Harry’s Name.”

At first glance, the connection between cocoa farms and the Harry Potter media empire seems tenuous. Warner Brothers, which owns the licensing rights for the Harry Potter movie franchise, sells Harry Potter–themed “chocolate frogs” in some of its stores and theme parks. Harry Potter fans go to theme parks, and they also sometimes eat chocolate. It’s not the most obvious correlation. Nevertheless, for almost half a decade the Harry Potter Alliance had been engaged in a vigorous crusade to persuade Warner Brothers to make chocolate frogs—and other Harry Potter–themed chocolate merchandise—fair trade.

Reading Harry Potter for the first time was a defining moment for many millennials. It’s a true world-based fandom; its context is fantastically broad. Almost anyone can relate to it in almost any way they want. There’s something in it for underdogs, overdogs, costumers, cooks, craftspeople, thespians, academics, athletes, rebels, romantics, and shy wallflowers alike. This is a fandom that, for a couple of years in the mid-2000s, inspired an honest-to-goodness religion based around the character Severus Snape, complete with visions, divinations, sexual rituals, and an order of completely earnest nunlike disciples. The rest of the fandom nicknamed them the Snapewives.

The HPA was founded in 2005 by a group of Harry Potter superfans, including comedian Andrew Slack and members of the tribute band Harry and the Potters (known for such songs as “Voldemort can’t stop the rock” and “The economics of the wizarding world don’t make sense”). Their stated intention is to help spread the high morals and ideals as found in the Harry Potter books. They run a conference called the Granger Leadership Academy, named after in-canon do-gooder Hermione Granger. “Your entire life you’ve been told stories about great heroes—now it’s time to become one” promises their website.

Paul DeGeorge is one of the cofounders. “We’re not specific to one issue. The Harry Potter Alliance is not an organization that just works strictly on LGBTQ rights or something. We’re a multi-issue org, and we look for that connection to the work, and our reason why the fandom should be invested in it.”

The relationship between the HPA and the Harry Potter franchise is a complicated one. Fans want to have an impact, but they don’t necessarily want to oppose the brand on a consumer level, say through a boycott. To outsiders it might seem like a situation of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, but that’s not quite the case. For consumers, making themselves heard is just a matter of choosing the next best product until demands are met. Fans don’t always have that option.

The HPA encouraged Warner Brothers to look into the labor practices. Warner Brothers replied that they had a report saying the practices were fine. The HPA demanded to see the report. Warner Brothers, possibly sensing a slippery slope, refused. There was a widespread petition and video campaign. “Albus Dumbledore asked us to choose between what is right and what is easy. We ask you to do the same. Show us the report,” the petition demanded. Lawyers were contacted. Even J. K. Rowling was pulled into the fray.

On December 22, Warner Brothers wrote a letter to the HPA acquiescing. The letter was short and terse. “Thank you for your partnership throughout our discussions on this important issue. We value and appreciate the collective voice of the Harry Potter Alliance members, and Harry Potter fans all over the world, and their enthusiasm and love for the world of Harry Potter.” All future chocolate would be UTZ or Fair Trade certified.

“WE WON!” crowed HPA’s blog post announcing the victory.

Warner Brothers is a huge, multibillion-dollar behemoth of a company, and Harry Potter–themed chocolate barely even rates a mention on their lengthy list of monetization activities. They can afford to be responsive to fans seeking to change a small portion of their business model. It’s a small price to pay for keeping millions of engaged and loyal Harry Potter fanatics flocking to their theme parks, using their key chains, wearing their necklaces, bracelets, and T-shirts, waving their replica wands, watching their movies, and, of course, eating their chocolate.

You Like The Smiths? I Like The Smiths!

“Do you like the Smiths, Morrissey, and/or making out and stuff? If you answered yes to just one of these questions, then you should totally come to ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable,’ a magical night combining Smiths and Morrissey music with speed dating. . . .”

Thus begins the pitch for what may be a uniquely Brooklyn phenomenon (the pitch ends, “come or I will stab you”). Speed dating, the act of spending a few minutes with each of a large number of potential mates, round-robin style, is a staple of romantic comedies and sitcoms. There’s Jewish speed dating, speed dating for athletes, speed dating for ballroom dancers, speed dating for chefs, and at least one theme park that has speed dating on a roller coaster. Dates there last as long as the coaster ride: forty-nine seconds.

A speed-dating event aimed at fans of melancholy rocker Steven Morrissey is hardly the most unusual of the bunch, but it may be one of the few that that makes serious romantic sense. While it’s not impossible to imagine roller-coaster riders falling in love based on a shared appreciation for an increased level of G-force, Smiths fans are, at least potentially, self-selected to share a reasonable number of traits.

The crowd at this particular event was tattooed, awkward, and unapologetically hipster. In other words, a demographic potentially too shy to congregate without an excuse. Some potential daters had crossed two rivers to travel there from distant New Jersey. The participants traded quips, trivia, and quotes. At least one couple bonded over stories about crying.

Music-based dating is an extremely niche field, but the concept of using our fandoms to prescreen a population for kindred spirits is not.

Christian Rudder is a co-founder of OkCupid, one of the largest and most active dating websites in the world. When creating the tools that eventually became OkCupid, he and his co-founders particularly wanted to match people based on subtle but important personality traits that might not be apparent from a standard profile. The result was a series of personality quizzes and questions to help coax out what makes each user tick.

In the profile area, daters are encouraged to fill out responses under “Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food,” “I’m really good at,” and “The six things I could never do without” to showcase their personality. This leads to a dating profile that’s lighter on self-description (“I’m nice, I’m funny, I like to travel”) and heavier on proving it (“I volunteer in soup kitchens, I do amateur standup comedy, I just got back from trekking Mongolia”). It’s what an elementary-school writing teacher might call “show, don’t tell.”

Engine42 is a male looking for females.† He wants the world to know how much he loves Clint Eastwood movies. Lately he’s been reading books about Chinese medicine, and dabbling in Thoreau, Kerouac, and Hunter S. Thompson. Circuiter says he spends a lot of time thinking about the politics of Batman. Unicornlvr hosts gaming conventions and owns a Google Glass, but he’s quick to clarify he’s also profeminist. THEDOCTORW sports a Doctor Who–themed T-shirt in his profile picture. Watcher75 is at a Yankees game. IDeeJay is DJing. Says Hightek34, “If you still watch the Matrix like it was the first time and wonder if you will ever meet anyone who understands the philosophy behind the Matrix I am your woman :).”

This is not an accident, says Rudder: “Pictures at Machu Picchu or in front of the Egyptian pyramids is a shorthand to announce to potential dates that ‘I love to travel’ or ‘I’m willing to go on an adventure.’ When people are sharing their passions, there is a lot of potential for connection.”

A casual study in 2012 found that men spend just under a minute reviewing a dating profile, while women spend a bit under a minute and a half. It’s barely longer than roller-coaster speed dating.

The rise of the social web has exponentially increased the number of new people we encounter every day. A century ago, outside of urban centers, the arrival of a stranger in town might be rare enough to merit discussion for weeks afterward. On OkCupid, with fast enough fingers, it’s possible to “meet” hundreds of strangers in an hour. But at the same time that the number of new meetings is skyrocketing, the amount of exposure we have to each new person has significantly decreased.

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the main character, Elizabeth Bennet, spends months trying to discern the true natures of the young gentlemen newly arrived in the neighborhood. The result is a series of gossips, letters, whispers, quips, proposals, and long, elegant conversations. Eventually, with the help of an aunt and uncle, four sisters, a few close friends, some helpful servants, and her parents, she figures it out. The modern romantic has a couple of pictures, a few lines of text, and, if the 2012 study is correct, about sixty seconds. Communicating enough detail to attract someone in such a short amount of time requires a bit of help.

Fandom as Identity Shorthand

During hunting season, orange jackets help separate a hiker from a deer. In many parts of the world, some type of leg covering is necessary for heat-retention or antichafing purposes. Baseball caps protect the wearer from the sun; even the fanciest watch also helps the wearer keep track of time. Parabolic skis are better at carving snow than straight skis, which are better than planks of wood strapped to someone’s feet (which in turn are better than just falling down a mountain).

But aside from the pure utilitarian purpose of a product’s colors and design, the main objective of most individual taste is to declare and maintain position within a group. We pick the products with which we surround ourselves based on the story they tell the world. Any shirt can help us avoid hypothermia. A NASA logo shirt identifies us as the type of person who supports science, exploration, or possibly, ironic retro hipsterdom. The value isn’t in the thing itself; it’s in the story it tells the world. A headscarf, bindi, or six-sided star pendant announces a very specific type of affiliation. So does black lipstick, a Green Bay Packers jersey, or a Hermès Birkin bag.

Aside from any utilitarian issues (a T-shirt would need to become pretty extreme before it stopped doing the basic job of covering the wearer’s chest), purchasing decisions are a highly personal form of self-expression. Knowing which brands, logos, and styles to associate with acts as an important form of currency, but it’s also a chance to flaunt those all-important badges of membership that tell the world, and ourselves, who we are.

Brand paraphernalia, the products that make up the commercial base of many a fandom, act as tokens of identity and membership. They are tickets of entry, proof that the owner understands enough about a subculture to bear its mark. These “functional artifacts” are the tribal colors by which a group can identify fellow members. And, unlike traditional tattoos and other markings of tribal membership that must be earned through rites of passage, these are tribal colors that can literally be bought.

Identity shorthand is a term that refers to a quick, efficient way to communicate who we are to the outside world at large. It’s not a new concept, but the Internet has universalized it. Online, the more traditional markers of age, class, wealth, education, politics, and geographic location disappear. Our likes have become stand-ins for the self we wish to present to others. A curated list of favorite media is more than a conversation starter; it’s a bite-sized encapsulation of how we picture ourselves, or at least who we want to be.

Jane Austen herself spent many a paragraph capturing her plucky heroine Elizabeth Bennet’s personality: “She had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous,” she is “considered a local beauty” with “fine eyes” and a “light and pleasing” figure. Faced with a modern reduced word count, we might instead encapsulate this as, “She was into Archer, beauty blogging, and yoga.” When it comes to naming our favorite book, a choice like Pride and Prejudice is meant to send a very different message about the profile holder than, say, Atlas Shrugged or the Bible.

One of social media’s great successes has been what scholar Clay Shirky calls the “obsessive dollhouse pleasure” of getting our profiles to look just right. We curate the digital version of ourselves, picking and choosing the items it displays with as much care and concentration as Miss Bennet ever gave her exciting young gentlemen. This is particularly true on sites like Facebook, which literally asks us to tell the world who we are based on our “likes.”

With so much emphasis placed on seeking to break down stereotypes, it’s ironic that one of the main purposes of many subcultures is to provide access to a potential group of friends about whom certain assumptions might be made. To put it another way, fans use their hobbies as a way to prescreen for the type of people they’d like to meet. After all, if we already have this in common, what other opinions and lifestyle choices might we also share?

Of course, identity shorthand also weeds out people who might be a waste of time. As Christian Rudder puts it, “If World of Warcraft is really important to you, you shouldn’t hide that fact. It’s counterproductive. There are plenty of people that don’t like World of Warcraft, [and] those people aren’t going to like you when push comes to shove. The dating pool is big, so the more specific you are, the better off you’ll be, whether it’s weightlifting or traveling a lot, or World of Warcraft or BDSM or whatever.”

As with all fandom displays, it’s a balancing game between extremes. A profile can try to catch as many potential matches as possible by leaving out potentially stigmatizing obsessions (such as a deep and abiding passion for Jane Austen), or it can let the freak flag fly. A fandom that is too generic tells prospective partners almost nothing. Too specific, and the fan risks being pigeonholed. The latter approach might mean a lower number of potential dates, but the ones it does attract are more likely to be compatible. It’s a trade-off. “I think you should put your best foot forward on online dating profiles. You should make sure that it’s your foot though, that it’s not some made-up fictitious version of yourself,” says Rudder.

In one well-documented anecdote, a World Champion player of the fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering made the grave blunder of daring to leave his pastime out of his OkCupid profile. Even though he was personally attractive, professionally successful, and socially active, one of his dates was so mortified that she wrote an indignant tell-all about her ordeal for the tech blog Gizmodo. It’s almost too easy to imagine a similar story set in the early civil rights era when a date suddenly learns she has been “tricked” into dinner with someone of an unacceptable race, religion, or class. Whatever the reason, the lesson is clear: it’s often better to weed out the judgmental majority long before things progress to the level of an in-person experience.

Fans often pick branded goods that represent stereotypes they want to associate with. A profile picture of a woman wearing a Han Solo tank top might come with a set of assumptions. She’s a sci-fi fan, but a bit edgy. There’s a chance that she’s tech savvy. She values independence. A woman wearing a Captain Picard shirt, from Star Trek, may be trying to give off a slightly different set of signals. Her fandom is a less mainstream option, so, even though she’s still a sci-fi fan, there’s a chance she’s a bit more geeky. Less trendy. She also may be more idealistic. Perhaps she’s into science. Or, as licensing agent Jesse DeStasio puts it, “You’ll probably have a different assumption if you see a girl wearing a Dallas Mavericks T-shirt versus a girl wearing a Batman T-shirt.”

“There’s a code that you’re relaying in your dating profile,” says Virginia Roberts, a.k.a. The Heartographer. She almost always prefers letting the dirty laundry, whatever it may be, all hang out. Roberts has made a career out of helping the romantically awkward bait their online dating profiles to catch just the kind of people they’re fishing for.

One trick is the Easter egg method—to pepper a profile with fandom references that an insider would immediately understand but an outsider wouldn’t necessarily notice. A hardcore vegan might mention how much she likes seitan. A rabid Apple fan might slyly reference receiving blue iPhone messages. Such a note establishes the person as Team Apple without sounding like a boring tech blogger about it. Fans of the cult TV show Arrested Development might drop a quote like “There’s always money in the banana stand.” Calling out fan elements is a signal that says, “We probably have something in common.”

As long as there are new studies about what exactly causes the sparks d’amour, daters will continue to tweak the faces they choose to show the world. OkTrends, the data blog that analyzes the statistical dating behavior of OkCupid’s user base, recently announced that profile pictures contributed to a much larger percentage of reader opinion than previously thought. Or, as they put it, “So, your picture is worth that fabled thousand words, but your actual words are worth . . . almost nothing.” It’s no wonder that so many users have felt inspired to embed their all-important fandoms directly into their primary profile image, the first photo a prospective mate might see.

In his profile picture, Cosmic-space sports a NASA T-shirt. He’s looking for a liberal left-wing lady who’s searching for knowledge.

Making Fandoms Worthy

Dating—and socialization in general—takes fandom-as-identity to its furthest extremes. It’s the difference between buying something that the wearer finds funny, and buying something that the wearer hopes will tell other people that they know it’s funny.

Not all fandoms, even the very popular ones, have enough je ne sais quoi in them to serve as an identity for their followers. The ones that work have been carefully curated to do so, with just enough insider context to communicate through the limited medium of a T-shirt, quotation, or logo. For fan-object owners, getting to this stage is the final goal. It requires a fan group dedicated enough to bring their own context along with them. After all, without a bruised and yearning British population to inspire, James Bond is just a rather mean bureaucrat.

Media properties, imbued with detailed characters and vibrant stories, are relatively easy identity fits. Their stories of rebellion and exceptionalism offer a way to align ourselves against our own perceived challenges. Character assortments let us pick whose traits we find most appealing: the rebellious pilot or the dutiful captain. But all fan objects have the potential to be identity-building. Sports-team fandom often merges a storied history with characteristics of the local community. Each celebrity has a personal narrative with which we might feel an affinity. Every choice comes with its own built-in set of characteristics for us to broadcast to the world.

Building fandoms that can be worn like a badge of membership requires a detailed context. Just like the best dating profiles, they find that sweet spot between being so generic that a brand means nothing and being so hyperspecific that no one other than the wearer can interpret the qualities represented. And they embrace the context the fans have bestowed upon them. It’s that fan meaning that sells the T-shirt.

Back at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, men and women in business suits are haggling over what logos will grace T-shirts, hats, necklaces, watches, and lunch boxes over the next year. Little House on the Prairie has agreed to put its name on a line of quilting fabric. Pokémon’s Pikachu will be offered in Build-a-Bear workshops. Skater legend Tony Hawk’s name will appear on boys’ clothing, shoes, and accessories at Walmart. Everywhere there’s the quiet bustle of contracts being signed and money changing hands, the logos practically arcing through the air as they jump from buyer to buyer. Three and a half million OkCupid users are counting on them to pick the right ones.

* The majority of Licensing Expo events described are from the 2014 conference, but some quotations and specific events occurred during the 2013 Expo.

† Names and logins here are modified to protect the users’ privacy.