Post-Fandom, Characterized Two-Thousand Years Ago

During a recent conversation with the very baritone Drew Fairservice on his podcast that is the sort of podcast that would have someone like me as a guest, Fairservice invoked the term post-fandom. Readers who are unacquainted with the term, as I was, will nevertheless have little problem unpacking it: the post is the same one that appears in — and greatly problematizes — terms like post-modernism, post-punk, and post-structuralism.

If pressed to supply a concise definition of post-fandom, I would refuse — not only because mine would be inadequate, but also because the people who demand such things do so less in the spirit of real inquiry and more as a sort of shitty, ad hoc quiz.

In any case, the need for such a request — as with most requests, provided one ignores them long enough — has been rendered moot. A brief inspection of Stoic philosopher Epictetus’s oeuvre, reveals that he provided an entirely able working definition of post-fandom in his Enchiridion (Greek for manual, apparently), composed in the second century.

To wit:

There is no call to be a regular at the public games. But if the occasion should arise and you go, don’t be seen siding with anyone except yourself.

Whether the next sentence of the relevant passage (from Ch. 33 of the text, an alternate translation of which is available for free here) aids, or detracts from, our purposes, I’m unfit to say. I’ll provide it here, though, as I have little better to do over the next 30 seconds.

Epictetus continues:

[W]hich is to say, hope only for what happens to happen, and for the actual winner to win; then you won’t be unhappy.