This must be the work of disappointed fans, we are told. The implication here is double: the vicissitudes of fan-adoration have no relationship to proper philosophical discussion, and fan exasperation, the nihilation of the former idol, is somehow juvenile.

It's always other people who are 'fans': our own attachments, we like to pretend (to ourselves; others are unlikely to be convinced) have been arrived at by a properly judicious process and are not at all excessive. There's a peculiar shame involved in admitting that one is a fan, perhaps because it involves being caught out in a fantasy-identification. 'Maturity' insists that we remember with hostile distaste, gentle embarrassment or sympathetic condescenscion when we were first swept up by something - when, in the first flushes of devotion, we tried to copy the style, the tone; when, that is, we are drawn into the impossible quest of trying to become what the Other is it to us. This is the only kind of 'love' that has real philosophical implications, the passion capable of shaking us out of sensus communis. Smirking postmodernity images the fan as the sad geekish Trekkie, pathetically, fetishistically invested in what - all good sense knows - is embarrassing trivia.

In drawing out several current archetypes (which are mainly, but not exclusively, manifested online), K-punk ends up defending the virtues of fandom, qua the ability to really commit to something--to make that leap across the decisional abyss that is apparently very difficult for everyone these days--over the follies of the narcissistic Troll, the vicarious devotion-to-the-devoted that characterizes Grey Vampires, and the saint-like untouchability of their pious Masters, who have the distinction that comes with being renowned and successful. K-punk’s refusal to disavow his own fanhood only in order to appear more sophisticated/ironically detached, and his appeal to a less self-conscious, uncontrived manner of libidinal investment in commodities d'art, are certainly admirable. But because it has presented itself, I’d like to take this as an opportunity to, perhaps very foolishly, speak for females the world over when I say this: much of the disgust for fanboy culture can be reduced, at least in part, to a very real difference in the ways males and females are socialized to enjoy, and even further, identify with, what has for most of human history been largely the domain of men--the arts, philosophy, theory, and other immaterial labors not directly related to child-rearing or other domestic matters....

Fanboy culture tends to act as a leveling force that treats all objects of fandom as one would a sport or a game--with an emphasis on point-scoring, statistics, and obsessive cataloguing of memorabilia. Each “team” (artist, philosopher, comic brand) represents a power bloc, with each fan libidinally identifying with the successes and failures of their team of affinity--sports fans speak of their favorite team using the first-person plural pronoun, as “we.” (I can honestly say that as much as I’ve ever enjoyed, say, watching a Yankees game, I’ve never really felt I had direct access to the team’s joy in victory, or that sort of binding affinity and intense emotional investment many males seem to have in the team's fate.) As if this is not enough to disenfranchise most women, given the fact that phrases like “feminine pressure”--sometimes translated by ‘nuum fans as the tendency of women to prefer saccharine pop confections over more “serious”, weighty, conceptual music--persist in floating around, is it any small wonder that so many people (and, I've noticed, especially women) scoff at the fanboy phenomenon? Perhaps it would be useful to distinguish between fan culture and fanboy culture, here, but given my personal experiences I have a hard time doing so. (Somebody, help me out...)

What must be delineated is a kind of schizoanalysis, as Reid Kotlas of Planemonology has recently written, but one divested of crypto-morality, of positivity, reintegrated as a kind of metaterrorism of conspiratorial management, infection, contagion, and pestilence, a weaponised non-dialectical negativity wielded in the name of the highest value our times will admit to: Betrayal.