I'm really kind of weirded out by the "it's all about popularity" vibes I keep getting off of random people in fandom lately. Like it somehow proves your worth as a person if you get x number of feedbacks or have x number of people friend your LJ, and that other people daring to draw attention away from you or to convince others to hold a different opinion from yours are doing you some horrible injury equivalent to throwing bricks through your windows. It just leaves me scratching my head.

I occasionally wonder if I'm just old. If maybe there's a difference in perspective between people who got into this stuff pre-internet vs younger people, or what. I just so vividly remember being that lonely geek kid in junior high school, when it absolutely meant the world to me to find three people who actually wanted to talk about the stuff I was interested in, never mind attracting hordes of admirers and being the Fannish Prom Queen. I just honestly don't get why people care about the six billion people who aren't interested in talking to them once they've found the precious handful who are on their same wavelength.

To me, fandom was a place to get away from the stupid popularity games of high school and find people with whom I could have passionate debates about the Prime Directive or whatever. It would never in a zillion years have occurred to me that the goal was to become a BNF, or that there was something unsatisfying about being unknown outside your own personal circle of friends.