Fan ?

When you Google the word “Fan” and open up the Wikipedia link, it states, “sometimes also called aficionado or supporter, is a person who is enthusiastically devoted to something, such as a band, a sports team or entertainer. Collectively, fans of a particular thing or person constitute its fan base or fandom. They may show their enthusiasm by being members of a fan club, holding or participating in fan conventions, creating fanzines, writing fan mail, or by promoting the object of their interest and attention.”

I am sure each one of us look up to a person whom we deify, it can be anyone , may be a Famous Writer , Poet, Businessman, Sports person , Actor, Actress, Politicians, Saints or even Devils maybe. Who knows?  It is not necessary the person who we venerate have to be a humanitarian. Hence, there is no restriction it is all about the WAY WE THINK.  The person you deify has that quality which compels us to be bewitched with the magical spell.  Someone like Robert Downey Jr and Shah Rukh khan are my personal favorite when it comes to Movies, Lionel Messi in football,and the list goes on, having said that a fan may not be a person who is only into a particular category , he/she might have a wide range of interest and follows different personality from different field .But More than another field it has been seen the charisma of Bollywood movies and Indian Cricket is appealing in India . Yes as per the observation, there are crazy football fans but Indian Cricket and Bollywood has something different. For an example the “English Premier League” , we can observe how seriously people take the game of football, I am sure most of you have witnessed people cry when their favorites are defeated, Indian Cricket Fans are fans who can make the person a hero in one day or they can ruin the carrier. Hence, the    power of so called FAN is beyond one’s wildest dreams, a fan may be a whistle blower or a brand ambassador for the personality. I tried many research options but I did not find a book where it says “HOW TO BE A FAN”.  I have observed FANS who end up writing letters inked by their blood, few ends up with a quarrel among best friends, the list is endless.

While doing a small research on it, I had a question in my mind i.e. what makes a person be inclined by the personality that he/she becomes a fan. The answer that I cultivated is very interesting. As per my observation, I see that mostly people are influenced by Style, I mean the way they dress up, the way they talk or may be in case of writers the way they compose, the words they use frequently. When it comes to Movies people copy the style of dialogue delivery, the way kind of clothes they wear, etc.Hence, because of so called FANS the economy has developed strategy to endorse there brands , recently we observed WOULVERINE endorsing a cell phone brand . WE all know the strategy how it works and we all know what the advantages are when a famous personality is associated with a brand. It does not end here, brands have gone a step ahead and started advertising their products in the movie itself, for an example in a recently released movie it was observed SHAH RUKH KHAN highlighting a cell phone with specification in details along with the price. Interesting isn’t it? The objective is clear the cell phone company wants t highlight there product through the via to all the fans and also to people who are not a SRK fan but are watching the movie, but  the interesting fact is the volume of sales increased for the company after the movie was released .  There are many examples, which can be highlighted, the point I want to make here is that Fans are now a part of economy. If you still doubt that ask yourself a question “Why do you only see famous personality in the advertisement “? Let me help you with some famous names , Amitabh Bacchan, Sachin Tendulkar,Shah Rukh khan , Huge Jackman ,Priyanka Chopra , Ashwariya Rai Bacchan  . Yes, all these personality have a huge fan following so you would see one endorsing banking products, Paints, gadgets, Soft drinks, and the list goes on.

When we talk about advertisements and economy, to overlook social media will be a misdemeanor.Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and god knows what all we have that falls under the social networking sites. These sites are where FAN material can be found and observed. However, there are fans who may not be interested in social networking but are fans of personality and enjoy them. A cricket fan will not miss out an opportunity to watch the match, a fan of certain actor will not miss his movies, But there are certain fans who won’t miss out an opportunity to promote the personality.  That is what I meant earlier when I said a Fan might be a whistle blower or a brand ambassador. For a Fan no matter how bad, the movie is he will still say NO it is a good movie but somewhere deep down in the heart even a fan knows that his idol has failed to deliver, but if you are a fan, you will not be disappointed. Instead of pointing out the negatives, a fan would publicize the advantages of the movie and still promote it as a must watch. It goes with a personality from sports as well, we witnessed Australian Open – Rafael Nadal v Roger Federer where Nadal had blister on his palm but his fans kept cheering for him. Federer too had a good number of fan following but the motivation from Nadal fans proved out to better it seems and  not only that even Nadal himself was mentally strong to take it positivity, ignore the negative and move on which resulted in a impressive win . It was observed Federer fans were disappointed, twitter, face book it was all there where fans were posting about the defeat of Federer and few were found congratulating Nadal as well.  2011 Cricket World Cup Hero “Yuvraj Singh “was diagnosed with cancer. Most of us thought that is the end of the fairy tale, But fans supported him sent him messages to get well soon and to come back. His fans believed in him and motivated him to fight out cancer and guess what? Yuvi makes a comeback and back with a bang. He again gets in to that INDIAN JERSEY which might has brought tears in the eyes of his fans and Yuvi himself, every emotional moment for a fan and for the person as well. It cannot be expressed in words. At least I do not have that capability to express it or maybe I do not have words to explain that situation in my vocabulary. Well end of the sad story , but Yuvi did give a reason to smile to his fans with his performance and now THE MOST EXPENSIVE player in the IPL by banking a whopping 14 crore from Royal Challengers . Hence, Social media is definitely a bridge that connects fans with personalities.

However, the saddest part with positive comes negative. There are fans who only know the person they defy and they consider rest useless, these fans not only abuse other fan base and famous personality but also damage the reputation of a particular fan base. For these kind of fans Its only and only the person they like is important and the way to portray their love is by abusing others and spreading negativity about other Stars . They enjoy abusing and talking negative about others instead of supporting their own star and taking good about them. Hence, I was talking earlier about these whistle blowers. They are one of the reasons for fan wars, the famous one being SRK fan Vs Salman fans specially on twitter.  The Virtual war is so interesting that users end up suspending each other’s account by reporting abuse or spam. It definitely sounds juvenile but that is the reality. Well along with them are fan clubs that does numerous activities to keep fans engaged and give each other a reason to smile. The main objective of these fan clubs is to support and unite fans so that they can share the love for their stars. Facebook is overloaded with a page, which is set up as a Fanclub, and it is same with twitter. However, fans do not miss out they follow all these pages depending upon the popularity of the fan club. Having said that all these clubs have the objective to be popular among fan clubs. Hence, they plan deferent activity to grab the attention of fans. These fan clubs work as a brand ambassador for the PERSONALITY. Not only they promote the person they defy but also promote themselves among the fans. The fan club would take all the initiative to keep the fans updated with all the information. In addition, you might be astounded to know they are quicker than the news agency. So each fan club are trying to be the best among themselves ,where I don’t see there is a problem but these fan club serves the purpose on calling themselves FAN CLUBS .

Allow me to share a quote, which says, “Honestly, I don’t have time to hate people who hate me, because I’m too busy loving people who love me. – Unknown.”

The above quote speaks a lot. If you are a fan, I think you have numerous reasons and points to speak about him/her. Why hate other? Even he/she has a fan base it is all about the likes and interest. You cannot be a fan by abusing others.  A Fan does not mean he will only watch the match when his favorites are playing or watch a movie of only his favorite star.  May be a fan of a certain actor enjoys other actors as well that does not make him/her disloyal. In my opinion, even a loyal fan of a certain personality must watch others and try to compare on what makes him/her different from others. Yes you may not like the way he/she speaks , you may not like the way he interacts with his/her fans , you may not like his/her voice , there are loads of points which you can point out either to hate &abuse or to love & respect . So the choice is yours , You can choose to be a whistle blower or a brand ambassador