David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 06/30/06 09:31 AM To dragaera at dragaera.info cc Subject Re: Fandom >Huh; for me, "fan" means somebody involved in fandom. The term >"reader" was the traditional term for, well, readers, who weren't >involved in fandom. The appearance of significant tv and film sf has >caused that to not really be the right term, and so people are trying >to fall back on "fan" and this is causing all sorts of confusion and >bad feelings on both sides. > >Which is unfortuntate. Our fannish use of "fan" is contrary to the >common usage, but there really needs to be *some* term for people who >choose to associate themselves with the cultural stream of fandom and >I, and others apparently, are loathe to give up the term we've used >for 70 years to identify ourselves. It would be nice if everyone could agree on an exact term for a large group of people like fen. The Indians probably had an exact word for this. The Negroes too. Oh, and those Orientals. Even Esikmos are probably more precise in their terminology. Okay, yes, hah hah, very funny. My point being that any term for any group of people is likely to be imprecise, as people are all a bit different from one another, not identical automotons that can be grouped into discrete categories. (What was it Vlad said about categories?) If you ask people whether they consider themselves a "geek", a "fan", a member of "fen", a "reader" or an "enthusiast", you'll always get a slightly different answer. So who's right? Majikjon