My Love/Hate Relationship with Fanlistings

I have been creating and maintaining fanlistings since April 2006, and I still love the idea of fanlistings now as much as I did when I first discovered it. During my time at TFL, I have been a member of the community as a regular member, a trouble checker, and currently, a category staffer. I love the network, I love the community, and most of all, even after almost three years, I still love fanlistings. But as much as I love them, they still drive me crazy sometimes.

It’s not the network that gets on my nerves, nor the lovely people that staff the network and help it run as smoothly as it does. It’s the severe attachment that some people get to the concept of fanlistings that often does my head in. Obviously I love all of my fanlistings – I wouldn’t be running them if I didn’t like the subjects! But as much as I love them, I realize they are only fanlistings. Just a hobby, just something for fun, just something I like to do. In the larger scheme of things, they don’t really matter. When I’m old and withered and gray, will it matter whether or not I was rejected for this subject, approved for that subject, and suffered from a “rejection streak”¹? I highly doubt the fact that I wasn’t approved for one of the most popular subjects at TFL will cause the rest of my life to unfold in untold amounts of trauma and depression, just like I doubt the fact that if I was approved for a hugely popular subject the rest of my life will be gloriously upon gloriously happy simply because of that approval.

I know that people can get carried away with subjects they love, but there is a delicate line that is sometimes crossed with fans. Some people freak out about their “application skills”² (not a legitimate worry) to their “troubles history”³ (a legitimate worry), and all of this gradually builds up and it leads one to wonder how people let themselves get so swept away with the things they love. Whether or not one is approved for a fanlisting they had applied for shouldn’t send them into a tailspin and have them mutter darkly under their breath, “I can’t believe they were approved over me, I would have done a better job with the fanlisting, obviously I’m the bigger fan.” Sure, be upset about it for five minutes (or ten, if you really want to stretch it) and then move on. There’s more to life than fanlistings ;)

Fanlistings are meant to be fun, they were never meant to be a source of depression, and the minute fanlistings becomes serious business are when they no longer become fun – and why would anyone subject themselves to stress and anxiety for a hobby when there are a huge amount of legitimate worries in everyone’s personal lives?

1. When you apply for subjects and each time you apply you received a rejection for a prolonged period of time [↩]
2. Some people think that writing the greatest essay about their love for the fanlisting subject increases their chance of approval, but it actually has very little weight in the decision making process [↩]
3. If fanlisting owners have a prolonged history of having their fanlistings be troubled according to network rules, that weighs in on the approval decision [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.