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The reconstruction of idol worship culture is evident with the rise of virtual personas, especially within the realm of AI-powered entities. It is important to consider cultural specificities, particularly in regions like China, where unique fan culture practices intersect with the proliferation of AI technology. Virtual idols, born from digital media technologies, authentically emulate real idols in performances and human interactions. While existing research primarily focuses on real-life idols in the interaction between celebrities and fans, limited attention has been given to understanding why fans gravitate toward virtual idols. Adopting the perspective of parasocial relationships (PSRs) and employing the survey method, this study explores the factors that drive fan community participation in virtual idol fandom within the context of Chinese society. The findings reveal that both interpersonal attractiveness and feelings of loneliness significantly influence the development of parasocial relationships between virtual idols and fans, and these PSRs positively impact fan community participation. Furthermore, this study elucidates that both the perceived interpersonal attractiveness of virtual idols and the loneliness experienced by fans directly contribute to increased fan community participation through the mediating effect of PSRs. This investigation scrutinizes the pivotal factors sustaining the relationship between virtual idols and fans, particularly in an era where AI-powered entities increasingly mirror human-like qualities and adeptly engage with audiences. This study highlights the characteristics of Chinese subculture and provides evidence for the “de-stigmatization” of subcultures in the era of AI, which contributes to a broader discourse on the impact of AI on diverse cultural practices. It underscores the necessity for global and contextual approaches in comprehending the evolving dynamics between virtual idols and their fan communities, enriching our understanding of AI’s influence on cultural phenomena.

This essay examines the decline of the male movie fan in the early 1910s in relation to one of silent film's first serial franchises—G. M. Anderson's Broncho Billy series. Much has been written in recent years about the rise of the female fan during this period, but few scholars have sought to explain why studios and other media so actively courted the female spectator in favor of the male audience that had sustained early hobbyist and fan publications. Looking at a Broncho Billy–inspired shooting from 1914, I argue that the decline of male fans (as subjects to whom the film industry at large, and Essanay Studios in particular, appealed) was intimately related to anxieties over feeblemindedness, mental illness, juvenile delinquency, and adolescent violence.

Despite their notable popularity, fan-made movies or fanfilms have received little scholarly attention compared to written, graphic, performative or even audiovisual fanworks, to the point that one could say that they are a somewhat \"uncomfortable category.\" While fans' audiovisual practices such as vidding, remixes, recuts or machinima are well adjusted to fandom theories, fanfilms tend to recreate a narrative canon, as well as some values of production, toying with formal codes identical to the source texts. The technical complexities of its more ambitious exponents also imply a greater barrier, which entails a specialization and a hierarchical organization of equipment within the limits of industrial activity. The main purpose of this article is to further the knowledge on fanfilms in their diversity, considering continuities and differences regarding certain attributes-also \"canonical\"-of fan creations, as well as audiovisual self-production, in order to make a contribution to the still scarce scientific literature on the subject. For this purpose, we analyze different example cases from an initial corpus and go into detail about the activity in a case considered as paradigmatic-the Hive Division collective. As reflected in the paper's conclusions, fan-made films require reconsidering suppositions from both fields, such as legitimacy or authenticity, reevaluating motivations and observing the similar challenges faced in connection with other creative fan practices.

In order to understand the culture of the physical, virtual, and blended spheres that adolescents inhabit, we build on Gee's concept of affinity spaces. Drawing on our ethnographic research of adolescent literacies related to The Hunger Games novels, the Neopets online game, and The Sims videogames, this article explores the nature of interest‐driven writing in these spaces. We argue that fan‐based affinity spaces motivate young adults to write because they offer multiple modes of representation, diverse pathways to participation, and an authentic audience. As scholars and educators, we posit that these out‐of‐school spaces can offer youth new purposes, modes, and tools for their written work. FREE author podcast

Lighting illegal fireworks inside soccer stadiums is a worldwide and persistent problem. Despite rules and regulations as well as rigorous enforcement, the use of illegal fireworks in football stadium is increasing rather than decreasing. Little is yet known about the causes and predictors of this behavior, preventing the development of effective interventions or communication strategies. We therefore conducted a qualitative study, using semistructured interviews with both supporters of a large Dutch soccer club who participated in lighting fireworks, and with professionals who dealt with illegal fireworks in daily practice. Semi-structures interviews were based on hooliganism literature as well as the COM-B model. We concluded that hooliganism and lighting illegal are distinctly different phenomena, although they share some underlying constructs. From a behavioral perspective, using the COM-B model as a framework, reflective motivation was identified as the strongest facilitator of lighting fireworks, which appeared to be an important part of supporter life and shared culture. Quick interventions that target automatic behavior, such as nudges, will probably thus not be successful in changing this behavior. Supporters suggest compromise between supporters and professionals as preferred future direction. Reported feelings of stigmatization by and feeling unappreciated by professionals, could interfere with successful implementation of this direction. Professionals however contradict negative to have judgements of supporters. Building a bridge between supporters and professionals should be a first step towards a solution.

In this article I revisit concepts of fan culture and community, which have been central to fan studies. Critiques of subcultural theory, along with fandom's fragmentation into \"traditional\" fans and \"brand fans,\" have suggested that media fandom cannot be viewed as a coherent culture or community. Consequently, I consider how a concept of fan world addresses some of these emergent critiques of fan culture/community, setting out what a world theory can offer current debates surrounding fandom. I draw particularly on Howard Becker's approach to art worlds (Becker, 2008) and Steven Connor's overview ofworld concepts (Connor, 2010). This allows me to elaborate on a model of the fan world, moving away from a position where world theories have usually been adopted in relation to franchises' world building to think about the platforms and pathways through which fandom is performed today. Ways of \"having done fandom\" are chosen, more or less reflexively, by fans from an array of communal and individualized possibilities. And \"paths not taken\" become counterfactual as fans follow certain bran- ches of fan activity but not others, developing specific forms of fan specialization and positioning rather than others (Giddens, 1991). The fan world represents this open necessity of having to choose particular fan pathways within the contemporary \"participatory condition,\" itself being comprised of all possible versions and branches of fan identity.

In March 2016, the trailer for Paul Feig's Ghostbusters reboot debuted online and suffered the unfortunate accolade of being the most disliked trailer in YouTube history. Popular news media, including professional, pro-am, and amateur commentators, picked up on the resulting online kerfuffle as clear indication that there is something rotten in the state of fandom. Feig himself frequently turned to the echo chamber of social media to denounce fans as \"some of the biggest arseholes I've ever met in my life\". Addressing fans that singled out the reboot as \"ruining my childhood,\" Feig poured fuel on the fire by criticising such a perspective as merely the product of \"some whacked-out teenager,\" overdramatic, pathological and, perhaps more pointedly, \"toxic\". In so doing, Feig-and, by extension, the cast of the Ghostbusters reboot-replicated and re-activated traditional stereotypes of the fanboy-living in his mother's basement and obsessing over trivial entertainment.This article takes the claims of \"childhood ruination\" seriously to examine what is at stake for fans of the original Ghostbusters film. Despite the organs of online media heavily criticising fanboys as misogynistic relics and sexist heathens, often in aggressive ways, I argue that fans' affective, nostalgic attachment to the first Ghostbusters film-the \"primary cinematic text\" (Bernard, 2014)-forms a crucial component of fans' \"self-narratives\" (Hills, 2012) and \"trajectories of the self\". By drawing on empirical work on \"nostalgic narratives\" conducted in the psychology field, I argue that it is not simply toxicity that drives these fans to defend the fan-object from being colonised by an invading text, but, rather, what I am terming as totemic nostalgia, a form of protectionism centred on an affective relationship with a text, usually forged in early childhood. Threats to the Ghostbusters totemic object, then, \"can thus be felt as threats to these fans' self-narratives\" (Hills, 2012, p. 114).

With the rapid development of social media, the phenomenon of celebrity worship has become increasingly prominent in Chinese celebrity culture. This study adopts a qualitative research method to delve into the potential negative impact of celebrity worship on social behavior and cultural phenomena, as well as the relatively under-researched nature of this issue in Chinese society. The study finds that celebrity worship has a powerful influence and impact on young fans in social media and may bring about a series of problems that cannot be ignored. Currently, Chinese younger generations often interact with their idols through social media, making the admiration more personalized and direct. However, behind this intimate connection lie some negative side effects. Celebrity worship may lead individuals to overparticipate in the virtual world, weakening the connection with real-world interactions. Fans may lose themselves in following their idols and become overly dependent on what they say and do to define their own value and identity. Despite the profound impact of celebrity worship on individual psychology and behavior, little attention has been paid to this issue in China. This study aims to fill the gaps in existing research by digging deeper into the impact of the phenomenon of celebrity worship and advocating for a more comprehensive and in-depth study of this issue. By better understanding the negative mechanisms of celebrity worship, we can make society and families aware of the younger generation’s worship behavior and prompt the youth to interact in social media in a more rational and healthy way.

This essay examines the ways anti-Blackness is manifested in Vietnam through Facebook anti-fans' reactions to Disney's The Little Mermaid (2023) starring Halle Bailey, a Black American actress, in the role of Ariel. Analyzing the racist and colorist remarks within Facebook users' comments and posts about the movie and utilizing misogynoir as the main concept of critique, the author demonstrates the phenomenon of anti-Black misogyny in Vietnam and focuses on the \"I'm not racist, but...\" trope. Uncovering the queer history of Hans Christian Andersen's work, this essay adopts a queer feminist lens to defend the filmmakers' choice to depict Ariel as a queer and Black mermaid. It contributes to analyses of anti-Blackness worldwide, with a focus on transnational Asia contexts, specifically Vietnamese reception of an American film. To challenge the status quo, the author closes with a reflection on Sara Ahmed's concept of the \"feminist killjoy\" and a call for more research and discussions around race and gender in Asia to counter global consequences of colonialism and White supremacy.

In several European countries, a new football fan type has emerged in recent years—the post-consumer fan. These fans break with commercialized football by founding their own clubs in order to incorporate their vision of football. This vision is antagonistic to commercialized “modern football”. However, the newly founded clubs compete in the existing commercialized structures and need to generate financial capital. To date, little is known about how clubs deal with these contradictory goals. Based on a 27 month long ethnographic participant observation and ten semi-structured interviews, this article investigates how the members of the German club HFC Falke negotiated sponsoring and players’ wages. It highlights how the clubs implement alternative practices in order to remain close to their values while being competitive. As a result, they emphasize the democratic process, and implement normative guidelines. Some of the strategies are known from previous research on other clubs but during our research we also detected new strategies. The club and its members experiment with new practices, such as transparent payment based on effort and sponsoring used for the fans’ benefit (e.g., subsidies of beer prices on matchdays). Through these normative guidelines and practices, the clubs strive to establish a more sustainable football in commodified structures. The discussions in the club and its practices might also inspire debates on the future of professional football.