"Today's Fan Girl"

Admittedly, I am a fan girl. In order to get the best seat for the midnight screening of my latest pop culture crush, I am willing to sit outside a mall movie theater for upwards of three hours if necessary. It is not beyond me to screen print my own t-shirt to express my support of some obscure fandom. I await the release of the latest teen vampire romance sequel with near morbid fascination, and then attend the release party hosted at the local Barnes and Noble with kindred, similarly crazed, spirits. It is who I am. A new trend, however, compels me to pause in my pursuit of fictional cravings.

My most beloved and bookmarked online movie ticket sales sites have begun to offer tickets well in advance of a movie’s scheduled release date. Tickets for Jim Cameron’s “Avatar” have been available for select theaters since mid August, a full four months in advance of its December 18th release date. Also in August, Fandago began selling midnight release tickets for the coveted “Twilight” sequel, “New Moon.”

I understand the urge to pre-purchase, the need to secure in advance that object of my fixation, to claim it as mine if only by means of a credit card and authorization code. However, I think fan girls have lost something through these extra-early advance ticket sales. Lost in the black hole of internet purchases are the warbling lines and ragtag mobs of sleep-deprived, half-frozen, and soaked to the bone ticket seekers. The mouse click offers no element of chance, no thrill of the hunt, or luck of the draw. As ticket providers procure profits by their manipulation of supply and demand, we fan girls are left longing, however internally, for the challenge once provided by the pursuit of our desires. There is no ticket that the savvy and monetarily supplied fan cannot acquire. At our fingertips lie the web addresses giving availability and purchase information for nearly every addiction-soothing event. Today’s fan girl has traded the adrenaline of uncertainty, the challenge of competition, and the textile feel of actual tickets complete with perforated stubs for a reassuring computer screen and an 8 1/2 by 11-inch confirmation page. Do we even realize what we sacrifice in the name of progress, what we surrender for profit?

In this world of unlimited technological connectivity, we experience a physical disconnect. Buying tickets online is such a solitary interaction; positively isolated in comparison to the press of bodies in lines past. I, for one, choose to remember the days of victorious rush and crushing disappointment wistfully.

To the groupies, Trekkies, and cosplayers among us, let us not forget the thrill and challenge. Let us paper our social web pages with pixilated images of anime characters in html code to prove that we fanatics still exist. Know that when you see me in line at the local supercenter sporting my World of Warcraft hoodie, that, though I will not be meeting you in any lines locally, I cannot wait to be elbow to elbow with you in the queue outside the next Comic-Con.

©T.Lynn Smith 2009