#This is a "shower thought" more than a properly empirically researched idea, so it is presented without any citations. This lack of resources is also a reference to many modernist philosophers, whom I dearly appreciate.

Modernist theories famously tried to get at "the truth behind eveything". For example, majority of both pro- and anti-capitalists thought that history was progressing in a linear tract, and that there was such a thing as end of history. So, they tried to find the drive of history. Famously, Marx claimed to have found it in historical materialism. Similarly, many pro-capitalists have declared The End of History when USSR fell.

Both of these claims were made on the idea that a single mechanism was behind the progress of history, therefore almost everything.

It is my thesis that this was and is an extension of essentialist thinking. Such a way of thinking looked for "the essence" of the object of study, because it assumed an (singular) essence drove the object to behave the way it did. There were no multiple causes, only a single cause—if you could find it, you could explain the object in its entirety.

Modernist philosophers updated this idea a bit. They didn't look for a Platonic idea, for example, but they looked for "the drive behind the object". While they were more materialist, it was also a quasi-metaphysical endeavor.

I'm going to quote Marx's historical materialism again, because it's one modernist narrative I'm familiar with—simply put, it was such an attempt. While the historical materialist narrative touched on many great things about humanity (e.g. the plasticity of "human nature", the dependence of culture on material conditions), it overreached and overreduced history to a single mechanism. It seemingly recognized the role of other mechanisms, but decidedly explained away their importance in contrast to what Marx saw as "productive forces".

This was an extension of Hegelian dialectics, but reversed. Hegel assumed thought drove materialist changes. Marx flipped this over. However, both of these were still highly metaphysical, highly essentialist.

Essentialism's mistake, in this context, is not only that it is metaphysical, it's also that it reduces the object of study to a monocausal explanation. It looks for only one cause. However, as the advance of scientific and most specifically statistical knowledge shows, there are always multiple causes to complex phenomena.

This revolution in thinking was a great attack on modernist and all the preceding grand narratives. Statistics especially was important in this. The more an explanation -any explanation- was tested in scientific contexts the more it was apparent that no single cause was able to explain everything. Nevermind that, as both natural and social scientists became aware, most of the time a single cause wasn't able to explain most (>50%) of the variation seen in a study.

Another result of statistical thinking, if one is willing to consider all its implications, is that uncertainty is an inherent part of everything we do and explain. There is no epistemic certainty, nothing we can know for certain. So, everything is always, at some level, a working hypothesis. This doesn't mean that everything is equally plausible, but that we can never be 100% certain about our explanations, neither in science nor in anything.

Why is this so? Because inferential statistics is structured to give an idea about the uncertainty of the inference we are doing, based on our observations. In short, it always assumes there are "error bars" or something of equivalent function.

This is the second implication of this revolution—we should be aware of uncertainty and embrace it.

In summary, there were two important results of this revolution in thinking.

1. Monocausality bias hinders thinking. In complex phenomena, natural or social, there are most likely multiple important drives (causes).
2. Rejecting the inherent epistemic uncertainty of our explanations and embracing the psychological certainty of monocausal explanations would be a folly.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, this doesn't mean everything is equally plausible (doing so is also counter to statistical thinking!). But realizing the value in this approach provides a great deal of flexibility of the mind, and it makes it much less likely that a person would seek comfort in psychologically certain, essentialist or quasi-essentialist narratives. It makes it less likely so that you fall victim to overly reductive but confident-sounding explanations.

It also allows one to critically examine modernist and previous explanations, both in positive and negative ways. Grand narratives, I think, touch on many great topics and have insight, but they fall victim to overreductive monocausality bias. If you can separate them from that, then you find a source of rich thinking styles. It seems that sociology does this with thinkers such as Marx, Weber, and more.

This, I think, is one of the greater revolutions in the "post-modern" era. Post-modern thinking is often associated with extreme skepticism, to the point of declaring everything unknowable, however, this would be reductive. In the way I described, being skeptical of such grand explanations and embracing multicausality and uncertainty is an extremely productive approach.

This, however, does not mean essentialist, monocausal, modernist, etc. thinking is defeated and gone. "Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard."

Of course, despite the quote, there is nothing sure about the eventual victory of this better way of thinking. However, even in the case that it could become the dominant mode of thought, it will take a great deal of time and active struggle against the old ideas and powers-that-be.

The recent reaction to the Rings of Power trailer and a thought-provoking video about ragebait from the Youtuber Arbitor Ian made me think about this topic.

Fan as Identity and Fandom as Tribe

We all know that guy who is an extreme purist about a beloved franchise. As they love to talk about it, they love the source material, or they love the originals. Any adaptation of or addition to these is seen as deviating from these "sacred texts". Especially if the more recent material produced significantly differs from these sacred texts, it has to be bad. So, you should watch or create hours-long videos nitpicking them.

This type of person accepts as a given that the original material they are talking about is sacred. Therefore, any change to it is bad. They are often known as a purist, however, I think the better term for it is conservative.

There is research that posits that fandom is basically a postmodern tribe and fan a postmodern identity (1, 2). The idea is not entirely new. Sports fandoms and fans have been noted for these qualities before (3, 4).

I think this makes intuitive sense to people who read both humanities and participate in a fandom. Fans take their fictional worlds to heart, and they strongly identify with the characters, the universe, the stories, the games, etc. Combined with the weakening of more traditional identities, and the rise of internet that has created the conditions to connect with people worldwide, it's not surprising that such postmodern identities and tribes would be born.

The Conservative Fan

I talk about conservatism here in the broad sense, meaning being biased toward conserving what traditionally exists, a standpoint that values tradition. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry about this is well-researched.

"Conservatism in a broad sense, as a social attitude, has always existed. It expresses the instinctive human fear of sudden change, and tendency to habitual action."

I think the "purist fan" fits this definition perfectly. Combining this with the idea that a fan is a type postmodern identity, we can assert that this type of fan is a type of postmodern conservative. Therefore, fandom purism is a type of postmodern conservatism.

The Reactionary Fan and Outrage Culture

There are a lot of descriptions of what a reactionary is, and there is no agreed upon definition. I'm going to use a definition that makes sense to me as a broader definition.

For me, a reactionary, in its broadest sense, is someone who doesn't analyze things much and instead opts to act on impulsive emotion, which is very often anger, resentment, hatred. They approach topics from a very bad faith position. They make short, quippy, and wrong statements.

Reactionaries often, but not necessarily, defend conservative or conservative-adjacent views, because conservatism is biased toward reacting to changes and seeing them as negative. This aligns with the reactionary mindset that is built upon heavily reacting to things. Since change is inevitable and will always create reactions, conservatism -which is about resisting change- is a perfect fit for reactionarism.

A relevant extension of this reactionarism is the outrage culture. A production can't be just bad or mediocre, it has to be awful. You can't just dislike it and move on, you have to feel outrage. You have to belittle it at every chance you get. It's because your identity as a true nerd, and a fan of [insert fictional world], is threatened. You have to act now! They are trying to take it away!

Ragebait being amplified by social media algorithms also strengthens this. However, pointing to it as the sole reason would be a mistake.

The Synthesis and Some More Considerations

The purist fan is a postmodern conservative. They attach their identity very strongly to some sacred texts (book, comics, movie, etc.), and they don't want them to change. Therefore, there is a heavy bias involved in discussing developments around these texts.

The conservative fan can also be a reactionary fan, but doesn't have to be. They don't have to go out there and yell at people, or condescendingly talk to their social circle, like a reactionary fan does. However, they often do.

It shouldn't be hard to see why conservatism and reactionarism, in the context of fandom, would be related to their corresponding ideologies in the classical sense of the words. While decompartmentalization exists, and people don't necessarily act the same way in different areas of their lives, it makes sense that a general attitude about change would affect one's approach to both fandom and regular politics.

I think this is a major reason why we see so many loud "purists" about fandom topics follow reactionary politics in regular politics. It also explains why the regular reactionaries can so easily convince fandom reactionaries to adapt their arguments. They come from the same attitude toward change and same attachment to conservative identity politics.

So, this is my analysis of this topic. Before closing, I want to raise a question that's been on my mind. The quote I shared at the start of the post, the fear of change, I suspect this might be one of the key underlying characteristics of these people, both in regular and fandom politics. People who get attached to certain periods of time in the past so strongly that they dislike any change, or even react violently—they are at the heart of this.

There is a related, very famous meta-analysis studying 22,818 cases (88 samples) across 12 countries. Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. According to the study, conservatism is negatively correlated with openness to experience (-.32) and positively correlated with dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity (.34).

Returning to fandom context, what I'm trying to get at is that maybe holding so dearly to experiences we've had as kids or teenagers is maybe not that good. Sure, there is nothing wrong with nostalgia, and there is nothing wrong with enjoying things we did as kids or teens. But I suspect this overemphasis on being forever teens is turning people into dogmatic, reactionary people. Maybe it's time to grow up and accept change, even find ways to cherish it.

Very Important Note

This is not an endorsement of any change to stories and franchises. Obviously, some can be bad. In fact, many adaptations of source material lose some things, partially because of differences in medium and partially because of financial interests involved in movie and show production. RoP is a good example of mediocritization due to financial concerns.

As you can guess, I did not even like Rings of Power. But even though I've been a Legendarium fan since I was a kid, it wasn't because they changed the source material. It's because I think RoP was, to use a more modern term, mid. However, this did not cause me to go on a rant about how they are ruining the Legendarium. This is a key difference, in my opinion, between simply disliking and being a reactionary.