Be a Fan of Me

If you are on Facebook, you will get the occasional mass email to join someone's fan club. These fan clubs are not for a celebrity or a cause, but for the person asking you to join the fan club; it's a "Me" Fan Club. "Wait a minute..." you say to me, a Fan Club based on themselves?

Facebook is not like Twitter, where your network involves people you have never met, but just "tweet" with, your Facebook is made up of people you actually know offline; so there is a bit more at stake when they ask you to be their "fan".

Be a Fan of Me

Do you join to make them happy and to avoid the "why aren't you joining? Don't you like me?" questions or do you ignore them? I will join the ones that I have an interest in (your art, your work, your cause, your store, etc.), others I don't join because the fan club is not to my taste or political leanings.

The fan club invitation that irks me the most are the ones that are a "Person Fan Club" coming from the "Person". Hey, I already like you enough to be your friend, do I have to be your "fan" too? Maybe I am irked because I don't like to self-promote myself in the way where I would ask you to put me on a pedestal. Or maybe because I am irked because you think you need a fan club.

It's Wednesday...I am a curmudgeon midweek.

Another reason I could be so P-O'ed about all these Fan Club requests is because I have become less inclined to accept every invitation; I am just exhausted - in the last ten years the internet has made me a member of more websites than I can count, being the member of anything else would just break the camel's back. After so many requests they have become meaningless. I could just join, it's just another click, meaningless and forgotten by lunch, but that would be wrong. If you want to have a Fan Club, make it mean something, make it relevant. I am not saying that being a Fan of "You" is not meaningful, but what are you doing that is relevant? I will most certainly put on the cheerleader outfit for you if you make it mean something to me. I promise.

Image: Ophelia Chong /X Waist