I never did the fansite thing, mostly because I'm in my mid-thirties, so by the time I found them I was probably 20, and they always seemed to be stupid rumors from people who knew no more than me, and I wasn't that fanatical about anything I liked that I needed to constantly read about it.
Still, I'm reminded of a kid I knew at university -- he was 14 and a junior in college -- who loved Pokemon so much. He would go to anime club and just watch pokemon on his laptop, rather than whatever they were showing. Turns out another person who went to the club -- a normal-aged freshman -- ran some big Pokemon fan site the kid loved.
Such a memorable moment seeing a prepubescent kid super excited, saying "you're [username redacted]!?!", with the grumpy zero social skills freshman completely blowing off the kid. Maybe he just didn't know how to react, but what it looked like was that this young fansite admin was just a jerk; I doubt he got much better with age. I kept up with the kid until I got rid of social media, he's a transgender antifa influencer or something now, so perhaps the moral of the story is don't look up to site admins or reddit mods?
Edit: heh, I still know the guy's username, which found me the site. Turns out he isn't an admin (at least not anymore, maybe never was), but is still very active on the site posting articles. It's been over a decade, he probably is 30 now; maybe he is a true believer, or maybe he is one of the vampires.
I never did the fansite thing, mostly because I'm in my mid-thirties, so by the time I found them I was probably 20, and they always seemed to be stupid rumors from people who knew no more than me, and I wasn't that fanatical about anything I liked that I needed to constantly read about it.
Still, I'm reminded of a kid I knew at university -- he was 14 and a junior in college -- who loved Pokemon so much. He would go to anime club and just watch pokemon on his laptop, rather than whatever they were showing. Turns out another person who went to the club -- a normal-aged freshman -- ran some big Pokemon fan site the kid loved.
Such a memorable moment seeing a prepubescent kid super excited, saying "you're [username redacted]!?!", with the grumpy zero social skills freshman completely blowing off the kid. Maybe he just didn't know how to react, but what it looked like was that this young fansite admin was just a jerk; I doubt he got much better with age. I kept up with the kid until I got rid of social media, he's a transgender antifa influencer or something now, so perhaps the moral of the story is don't look up to site admins or reddit mods?
Edit: heh, I still know the guy's username, which found level the site, which is still around. Turns out he isn't an admin (at least not anymore, maybe never was), but is still very active on the site posting articles. It's been over a decade, he probably is 30 now; maybe he is a true believer, or maybe he is one of the vampires.
I never did the fansite thing, mostly because I'm in my mid-thirties, so by the time I found them I was probably 20, and they always seemed to be stupid rumors from people who knew no more than me, and I wasn't that fanatical about anything I liked that I needed to constantly read about it.
Still, I'm reminded of a kid I knew at university -- he was 14 and a junior in college -- who loved Pokemon so much. He would go to anime club and just watch pokemon on his laptop, rather than whatever they were showing. Turns out another person who went to the club -- a normal-aged freshman -- ran some big Pokemon fan site the kid loved.
Such a memorable moment seeing a prepubescent kid super excited, saying "you're [username redacted]!?!", with the grumpy zero social skills freshman completely blowing off the kid. Maybe he just didn't know how to react, but what it looked like was that this young fansite admin was just a jerk; I doubt he got much better with age. I kept up with the kid until I got rid of social media, he's a transgender antifa influencer or something now, so perhaps the moral of the story is don't look up to site admins or reddit mods?