Fandoms

Fandoms are communities of people, of fans, who share a common love for something. A fandom is a term that is used to refer to a subculture composed of fans. These subcultures are characterized by feelings of emotional investment, sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fandom

Fan Activities

Members of fandoms often invest much of their time into the fandom community through games, trivia, and by social networking. They strive to learn as much as they can about their interest. Fandoms may surround anything that has a popular fan base. The most common fandoms surround music, movies, and television shows. See http://fandom101.tripod.com/about.html

Other fan activities of note include drawing fan art (i.e., art of characters or situations from the fandom in question), writing fan fiction (writing works of fiction featuring characters from their fandoms, often fixing what they see as defective in the plot, or giving a not-so-fleshed-out character or event a plausible backstory), and role-playing (writing journals/Facebook pages/ et cetera as a character from their fandom and interacting with others who do the same). Some of the most notable archives for fan art and fan fiction online include FanFiction.net and DeviantArt.

Well-Known Fandoms

Star Trek and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic have some of the most well-known fandoms. These fandoms are called “Trekkies” and “Bronies”, respectively. There are also several well-known fandoms for books as well. Harry Potter Fans are also known as "Potterheads." Fans of The Hunger Games were given two choices, The Mockingjays or The Tributes, and voted for their fandom name. The Tributes won by a narrow margin! See http://hungergamesdwtc.net/2011/07/results-of-the-hunger-games-fandom-name-runoff-poll/

Who are members of fandoms?

While many might imagine the members of fandoms to be socially awkward societal misfits who have nothing else to do with their lives and lack basic real world skills, the actual members of fandoms tend to be bright, articulate people with a thirst for knowledge and rabid curiosity. Many fans write "fan-fiction," debate the minutiae of their subject, and follow multiple medias in order to indulge their hobby. The skills used to truly become involved in a fandom are academic skills, and unsurprisingly the fandoms have a disproportionate number of geeks as members. However, beware of stereotypes! Including gender stereotypes! Anyone can develop a passion for a well written story in any media format! Statistics about various fandoms are becoming more and more available as marketing firms begin to exploit these growing markets.

Imagine Dragons Fandom
As fans develop into a larger community, they become what is known as a fandom. See above: Fandoms. It is not uncommon for the fans to name themselves. However, sometimes, the fandom's name is chosen for them by the artist. Imagine Dragons is a band from Las Vegas that has recently gained popularity due to its hit single, "It's Time." On The Imagine Dragons Official Fan Club page, they recently commented on one of their posts that they prefer to call their fans, "Firebreathers." The fans responded to it well and seemed to like it!

http://imaginedragonsfans.com/

https://www.facebook.com/imaginedragonsofficialfanclub

CrossFit, Sports Fandom
Sports can have fandoms as well. CrossFit is a fitness company that was founded by Greg and Lauren Glassman in 2000. It prescribes "constantly varied, high-intensity, functional movements." Each workout is constantly varied, simply meaning that one will never do the same work out twice. Work outs are often short but are delivered at an extremely high intensity level, making them difficult and quite challenging. Interestingly, CrossFitters call themselves "Firebreathers" or "Fire-eaters." http://twintowncrossfit.com/2012/05/fire-breather/ This fandom of Firebreathers is well-known for forming close knit communities, their unique clothing and shoe lines, and for frequently competing with other CrossFit boxes. Firebreathers also recommend eating the Paleo diet, which they commonly refer to as "Eating Clean." [] CrossFit Games, Reebok

Since its early beginnings, CrossFit has gained a lot of its popularity in recent years because of the CrossFit Games. The CrossFit Games, sponsored by Reebok, have also gained in popularity since its start in 2007. When the CrossFit Games first opened in the summer of 2007, winners took home the grand prize of $500.00. Today, the CrossFit Games winners take home the grand prize of $250,000. http://games.crossfit.com/video/awards-ceremony. “Boxes” have started springing up around the country, sporting the CrossFit name and membership in the Firebreather fandom continues to increase!



Pottermaina Pottermain, ship deabtes, wrock, quidditch, "We are Wizards," and the Wizard Rockumentary are just a sample of Harry Potter's fandom actvities and enterainment. While there are numerous Harry Potter sites (i.e. fictionalley.net,fanfiction.net, muggle.net , and dailydot.com ), internet-based or live action, single, couples, children, and adults can gather together to create and/or re-create the experiences of Harry Potter life through podcasts, fan fiction writing, discussions, upcoming convention gatherings, and ship debates.

Little Monsters
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known by her stage name    Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, human rights activist, businesswoman, fashion designer and actress. <span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">Lady Gaga’s fame in the musical industry began in 2008 after the release of her first album. "Mother Monster" as she is known by fans, has a very unique sense of style and unconventional way of presenting herself and her music. <span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Lady Gaga is recognized for her flamboyant, diverse and outré contributions to the music industry through her fashion, performances and music videos. Fans are drawn to the unique artist because of how she supports individuality and encourges young fans to be themselves. She has created an empire based on her activism of being who you are because you're "Born This Way". Her main focus is with the LGBT community. The social networking site littlemonsters.comis devoted to her fans. It is a place for fans to "Share your passion and creativity in a community full of art, acceptance, monsters and Gaga" by promoting positive interaction among her fan base. Fans also unite on various Tumblr pages, on her website ladygaga.com, and through her Twitter (@ladygaga). She is currently one of the top Twitter celebrities with 37,072,943 followers.

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Lady Gaga's You Tube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/LadyGagaVEVO

Are Fandoms ruining chilren?
With all of the fandoms available today, one has to wonder if these followers have nothing else to do with their lives except waste it online. It appears that many of these fans spend more time online blogging, reading, and writing about their fandom than they do in a job. While fandoms are great diversions from life, I think they fail to have any real use in society today. Many individuals spend too much time online interacting with "imaginary" friends instead of developing real relationships with those around them in society. No wonder we are raising children who have an inability to communicate orally, preferring to text instead. ==Fandoms in Education == <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%">Although some may believe that fandoms are ruining children, there may be some benefits for utilizing this concept in the classroom. As a teacher, it is difficult to entertain, challenge, and push the envelope with all of his or her students with the basic resources he or she is given. However, as with anything, if the student is able to choose something they like, they are more likely to connect with the piece and contribute more readily. Fandom in educationcan be a bit daunting, but it can prove to have a positive effect. A teacher can assign a paper over the topic of discussion, but throw in a bit of creativity and allow the student to write different variations of the topic, much like a fandom. The student would then be able to comprehend the topic well enough to provide their own take. Not only would this foster creativity in education, but it allows the student to learn the material on a more complex level, rather than memorization and regurgitation.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%">Future in fandom:Scholarly review