November 22, 2024 • 32 mins
To celebrate five years of The Happiness Lab, Dr Laurie has picked out the five episodes she loves the most. And this is a special one - Nerd Out! The Happiness of Being a Fan.
Really love a TV show; a boyband; a sci fi movie; or a celebrity? We're often too embarrassed to admit adoring some things for fear that we'll be seen as frivolous or childish - but we may be missing out on the happiness benefits that geeking out can bring.
Dr Laurie explores the joy of fandom with Benedict Cumberbatch obsessive Tabitha Carvan, YA author Jennifer Lynn Barnes and Star Trek actor (and geek-vangelist) Wil Wheaton.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This ball marks the fifth birthday of the Happiness Lab.
Since twenty nineteen eight, we've put out hundreds of episodes.
For for our anniversary season, I've asked my producer, Ryan
Dilly to pull my five favorite episodes from the archive
to release again so you can check them out. Ryan,
(00:37):
what's our number four episode?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This one's called nerd Out The Happiness of.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Being a Fan. Oh right, I love this one.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
This is an entire episode about the happiness benefits of
being a fan.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Something Ryan that as my.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Friend, you know, I spend a lot of time doing.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
That's true. So tell the audience other than psychology, what
do you nerd out?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Well, one thing, as you know, is that I nerd
out a lot about Star Wars. In fact, at the
most recent comic con in my city, I got to
meet Billy d Williams the Rando Calli scene from the
Star Wars series with my mom, which is a wonderful memory.
But the show is about a lot more than just
being like a Star Wars or Star Trek, as we
talk about in this episode fan. It's really more about
(01:15):
the psychological benefits that you can get from certain kinds
of relationships that we have with celebrities and fictional.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Characters and so on.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
It also talks a lot about the kinds of ways
that we can be kinded to ourselves by being open
to some of the goofiness that comes from fandom, and
it also includes one of my favorite celebrity guests. So
here it is nerd out the happiness of being a fan.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I blush when I think about this because it's like, oh,
it's like remembering it's loved first sight.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
This is author Tabatha Carbon. She's telling me how she
fell for the man of her dreams.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I was getting a takeaway coffee in a cafe, which
was a novel experience to me because I had been
breastfading and pregnant for so long. Like I just felt
like I hadn't drunk coffee in a thousand years.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Before motherhood, Tabatha enjoyed an active career and lots of
interest in hobbies. But after motherhood, Tabitha's two kids became
the focus of her entire world. She had no time
for herself or her own emotional needs.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I wasn't depressed, I wasn't unwill I was just preoccupied.
I just I realized I just didn't know who I
was anymore. I couldn't hold on to any of the
pieces that used to be there. They were completely gone.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
It was in this moment of personal crisis that he
finally appeared.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
I was waiting for my coffee and the newspaper was
open on a table and I saw an ad.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
The ad, Inocuous Enough, was for a new season of
the television series Sherlock Holmes, starring the actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I had seen Benedict Cumberbatch many times before. I had
thought not much of him other than he was an
unusual looking man who appeared in many, many shows that
I seemed to watch.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
But Tabitha's reaction to this Benedict photo at this particular
moment in her life felt very, very different.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Just the sight of this man pulling on a leather glove,
and I just had this surprising feeling which I can
only describe as yearning. Like I was like, I want
to watch that show.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Something's coming, there is mariaty.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I sat down to watch the latest episode of Sherlock,
and I just I found myself at this point completely
captivated by this man who I had seen one hundred
times before. This time, he looked completely different from me.
I was mesmerized by his physical appearance, everything about him
(03:43):
just it felt like he shook my bones. I just
felt more alive and awake in the moment watching this
TV show than I had in the years previous raising
my children. And that's a shocking thing to say, because
you know, raising your children is supposed to be you know,
it is an objectively meaningful thing. But the reality is this,
(04:06):
sitting down to watch this completely silly, trivial TV show
somehow affected me more emotionally than all those years of mothering.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Tabitha watched and rewatched all the seasons of Sherlock. She
became engrossed with the actor's many movies. She read and
re read Benedict's online interviews, and she scrolled and smiled
endlessly at his countless online photos. Nearly all of her
free time was soon taken up with that distinctive face
of his. Tabitha had become smin with Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
So the thing about that incumabatch is that it starts
with the voice like a jaguar trapped in a cello,
is how his voice has been described. The next thing
is the cheekbones he has very distinctive cheekbones. And then
the eyes actually make him look weird because they are
just too far apart on his head. And then I
think it's the lips, very full lips, excellent cupid bow,
(05:07):
excellent hair. Should I keep going?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
But despite the joyful thrill that her new obsession brought,
becoming so obsessed with a person she'd never met also
made Tabitha feel kind of embarrassed.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I feel ashamed is actually it sounds like an extreme emotion,
but it seemed like something you should not be proud of.
It felt inappropriate, It felt juvenile, It felt like an
mental and emotional regression to a time that you were
supposed to be completely done with by the time you're
almost forty. And it made me feel profoundly embarrassed, to
(05:42):
the point that I didn't tell anyone about it for
a long time.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Now, it's entirely possible that you've never fallen as hard
as Tabitha did for some random celebrity. You may not
yet have felt the thrill and embarrassment that comes with
being It's called being cumber botched.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Cumber bat, cumber bat, coumba bat cumber botched. That's that's
when it goes wrong that sounds.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
You may not personally know the thrill and embarrassment that
comes with being cumber batched, but I'm guessing that at
some point in your life you had something that you
really geeked out about, that band or book or game
or movie that you knew way too much about, that
you spent far too much money in time on the
kind of thing you adored so much that it went
from being a regular, everyday sort of appreciation to a
(06:28):
full blown, geeky, guilty pleasure. But could embracing a deep
love of a seemingly trivial thing and doing so openly
and without guilt be the key to feeling more connected
and more present? Would each of us become a lot
happier if we two could, at least metaphorically get cumber batched.
Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to
(06:49):
be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What
if our minds are lying to us, leading us away
from what will really make us happy. The good news
is that understanding the science of the mind can point
us all back in the right direction. You're listening to
the happiness lap with me, Doctor Laurie Santos As Tabitha's
(07:13):
excitement over all things Benedict grew, she slowly began revealing
her obsession to the people closest to her. Most of
her friends admitted to being pretty confused.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
They find it just inexplicable, and it required an entire
book for me to explain.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
That book is entitled this is not a book about
Benedict Cumberbatch. The joy of loving something anything like your
life depends on it.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
And initially what I thought I was writing about was
why did this crazy thing happen to me, this perfectly
normal person. You know, it seemed beneath me. Sounds really snobby,
but I mean that is how I That is how
I feelt about something like a celebrity crush, that it
was not the kind of thing that someone like me
should fall into.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Tabitha experienced a complicated set of emotions, both about Benedict
and about her obsession with Benedict. She'd never felt more
joyful or alive as she did watching Sherlock, but spending
so much time being a fangirl came with a lot
of guilt.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I was using my precious free time and precious free
brain space to think about this guy. When you I
felt like I should be using that time to either
think about my husband or my children the housework.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Wasting her time on something so trivial also made her
feel selfish.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It's not about serving the needs of other people. It's
not about tending to the needs of your children, or
your family or your domestic environment. It is something that
is just for you.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
She'd also seen how the actors hardcore fans who lovingly
referred to themselves as cumber bitches were portrayed in the news.
The media called the cumber bitches hysterical, crazed, cultlake and
even terrifying.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
You know, I didn't look at that and think, oh, yeah,
these are my people, like I want to join that community,
sign me up. That was a huge stumbling blog. I
was like, hell, no, I'm not gonna I'm not going
to put my hand up to be the subject of
things going kind of insults.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
But Tabitha wasn't just afraid of jeers and mockery. Her
infatuation with her new crush was so powerful that it
scared her. Tabitha hadn't experienced anything that extreme since she
was a teenager.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
All I was doing was simply pursuing a feeling which
made me feel good. It's amazing the extent to which
that felt scary.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
But intense feelings like this are kind of what fandom
is all about. I mean, the term fan comes from
the Latin fanaticus, meaning frenzied by the gods. These days,
we of course use the term for less divinely inspired circumstances.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
It's just that some things seem normal for us to
fan over, and some things don't.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Take sports, no one bats an eye if you spend
hundreds of dollars on T shirts and posters and bumper
stickers to show your devotion to a football team. No
one calls you hysterical if you scream at the television
when your favorite basketball player hits the perfect shot, or
if you sulk when the home team loses.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I mean, sports fandom is so normalized, you know, it's
on the news every single night. That's wonderful, Like it's
a wonderful thing that we have nourished and supported as
a society because sports fans get a huge return on
investment from that kind of dedication. And then, actually, that
is all I was feeling towards Bagic Cumberbatch was exactly
(10:30):
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
So how can we overcome this stigma that has been
historically attached to nerding out and happily embrace our passions
no matter what they are. To find out, I tagged
in an expert who understands the joys and downsides of
unashamed fandom.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Good morning, good morning. Can you hear us?
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I can can you see me?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Someone who's had a unique glimpse into both sides of
the fandom relationship. Now we can see you, and with
the seeing you comes the like, oh my god, oh
my god, oh my god, geeking out.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But I'm going to try to hold it together.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Ah, You're doing a great It's.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Also a celebrity who turns me into a bit of
a fangirl myself.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
It's weird to introduce myself. Hi, my name is Will Wheton.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
If you're a nerd like me, Will needs no introduction.
Will is an author, a blogger, the host of the
YouTube board game show Tabletop, and most famously, he played
Wesley Crusher on Star Trek the Next Generation. But these days,
Will is happy to be known as a geek. In fact,
justin Geek was the title of his first memoir, which
chronicled his first steps towards fandom.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
It was third grade when we went to the library
and I got my first sci fi book like I
devoured it, like I think I finished it that day,
and that really started me on the path that I walked.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
For the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Young Will was especially drawn to one particular sci fi franchise.
He fell completely in love with the nineteen sixties TV
show Star.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Trek, watching it in syndication over and over and over again,
like every time it was on, just everything stopped and
I would watch that.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
That's what I really really loved.
Speaker 5 (12:11):
So when I was fourteen and found out I was
auditioning for a new Star Trek series, I was beside myself.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
It's pretty rare that a fan gets to become part
of the thing they love so much. Will remembers what
it felt like to put on his first Starfleet uniform
and to walk onto the set of the Enterprise for
the first time.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
When you get there, you cannot see anything else except
the reality of the starship that you are on. I
loved walking there. I loved being alone there. I loved
sitting in that set and pretending it was all real.
It was a really safe, really happy place for me.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
But nerding up to star Trek stuff wasn't Will's only
happy place, you see. Ever since he was a kid,
Will has allowed himself to love lots and lots of
nerdy things, all as deeply as any cumber bitche worships Benedict.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
I am familiar with cumber bitches.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Will geeks out to Dungeon the Dragons and old school
arcade machines and tabletop board games and action figures and
comic books and fantasy novels and Harry styles do.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
I absolutely adore and I never would have, like, why
would I have listened to a boy band guy ever.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
In my life?
Speaker 5 (13:25):
That guy is amazing? What a remarkable human being and
so talented.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
As he explains in his new annotated memoir Still Jessic Geek,
Will loves having the very intense band based passion that
scared Tabith is so much.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Being a nerd is not about the thing you loved,
It's about the way you love that thing. I really
love the part of me that wakes up and sings
when I'm around people who love the things with that
kind of unself conscious, non judgmental enthusiasm.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Will is evangelical about the benefits of just absolutely loving stuff.
He's gone from being just a professional game to becoming
a geek evangelist.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
As it were, It's totally cool to be a nerd
and love stuff.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
Like I've always said, as long as the thing you
love doesn't hurt another person, love it as hard as
you can, and get as much out of it as
you possibly can.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
And it turns out that the science agrees with Will
on this point. Being a geek, loving dorky things like
your life depends on it has far more powerful psychological
benefits than you might expect. We'll explore why when the
Happiness Lab returns after the break.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So when I was in high school, I was really
into Party of Five. I was really into Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, the original Roswell. I have a very long
list of all of these shows that I sort of
went through one by one.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
This is my former Yale student, a psychologist, a New
York Times best selling hy A fiction author, Jennifer Lynn.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Barnes, And it would always be I like watching the
show and then it into the imaginative but what if,
where you start running out all the scenarios and coming
up with theories and thinking about it before the next
episode comes, because that was back when I was watching
week to week, and that's sort of my default mode
(15:25):
of media consumption and has been my entire life.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Jen is an expert on this kind of fandom. As
a young adult fiction author, She's created a few of
her own big fan franchises. You should definitely check out
her hugely popular Inheritance game book series. Like actor Will Wheaton,
Jen is also a self proclaimed nerd. She's seen many
of the benefits of geeking out firsthand.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I did a lot of daydreaming about fictional characters. I
did a lot of that emotional investment, and it did,
I think, make me less lonely.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
But perhaps most importantly, Jen is also an academic psychologist
who publishes on the cognitive and emotional benefits of fandom.
Jen has found that if you look at the list
of evidence based happiness boostings strategies that I share with
my students, geeking out about your favorite TV show, film,
or comic book seems to check a lot of those boxes.
Let's start with one of the best known stress reducers
(16:19):
around play, particularly the kind that emerges when fans become
so creatively engaged with the characters they care about that
they begin to invent new adventures for them to embark on.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
I have argued very specifically in specific publications that fan
fiction is a form of a maginary play, that it
is parallel to either daydreaming in adulthood or actual pretend
play in childhood.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Jen and others have argued that when fans get together,
especially at big fan gatherings like conventions or cons as
they're called, they tend to experience what's known as a
shared pretensive reality. It's kind of the adult version of
the happiness boosting flow that kids experience when they play
together with toys, that fun, cooperative imagined reality where you
get to joke around, be social, make believe, and create together.
(17:06):
This shared playful reality is something that PEK evangelist Will
Wheton really savors.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
At a con. That energy is everywhere.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
One of my favorite things at a con is to
walk through the artists area and the vendors hall and
see the small indie artists who make unbelievably gorgeous works
of art and jewelry and paintings and stickers and figurine
that just make stuff to celebrate the fandom that brings
so much joy into our lives.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
But this creative, playful side of geeking out is just
the tip of the fandom happiness Iceberg. A lot of
the well being boost that comes from being a hardcore
fan stems from social connection, especially the kind you get
from loving the object of your geeky affection through what's
known as a parasocial relationship.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So parasocial relationships are what media psychologists call the one
sided relationships that you form with people you don't actually
know through consuming media about them. And those relationships can
be formed with real people like singers, politicians, actors, anyone
you don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Parasocial relationships can also be formed with people who don't exist,
like Sherlock Holmes or Lieutenant Wesley Crusher.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And psychologically, based on the literature, it doesn't seem to
matter that much whether the person you're forming a relationship
with is a real person in your favorite boy band
or a fictional character that you've consumed to show about.
Either way, these relationships seem to have a lot of
the real world benefits of actual relationships.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
A lot of the recent work on the benefits of
parasocial relationships comes from the University of Buffalo psychologist Shira
Gabriel who proposed what's called the social surrogacy hypothesis.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
And this hypothesis basically says that we are very social
creatures with a lot of social needs, but that our
brains can be very sneaky about how we are fulfilling
those needs.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Let's say you have a spouse that supports you and
friends to hang out with, but you're a busy mom
who lacks a sense of adventure in her life. Your
brain will probably be on the lookout for someone, anyone
who can fill that excitement hole. And if a sarag
it happens to come along, say a fictional character like
Sherlock who's smart and dashing and hangs out with you
every night on television, then your brain quickly latches on.
(19:27):
But we don't just use specific characters or celebrities to
fill our social needs. Let's say you're a geeky kid
like the young Will who doesn't feel like he belongs.
You might gravitate towards an entire fictional world where nerds
like you feel more seen, and the evidence suggests that
doing so literally expands your horizons.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
Star Trek looks through the screen and it says, there
is a place specifically for you in the future. I
loved that. I loved feeling like I wanted to belong somewhere.
I wanted to be special. And these people who are
not recognizing how special you are are going to be
forced to recognize it in the future because it will
(20:06):
be undniable.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Spares out the importance of the kind of belonging that
young Will and other fans get from Star Trek. There's
evidence that thinking about a beloved fictional character or world
can make you feel less lonely, and studies show that
writing about the target of your parasocial relationship can boost
your self esteem.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
So all of these sort of social benefits that you
can receive from real world relationships, it seems like there's
a version of those benefits that you can receive from
these fictional relationships as well.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
When we geek out about our favorite celebrity, we don't
only get a social connection boost from parasocial bonds. Fandom
can also promote in real life social connection.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
So it's often very common for a friendship to start
in fandom. You have a mutual interest, you're hanging out
at the same spots online, you're reading each other's stories
or talking about it. You talk when the show is on,
but then it goes past that, and these people become
your friends, lifelong friends.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Often the social connection that comes from communities like these
can lead to the kind of well being bump that
young will experienced firsthand.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
My childhood was very much defined by loneliness and isolation.
I just couldn't find people who I felt safe with.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
I had been.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Raised to believe that all these things that were really
important to me were weird and kind of stupid. And
when I found other people who loved the things that
I loved, actually found people who loved me and accepted
me and didn't judge me and welcomed me into the community.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
But like all of that was a revelation to me.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
And I think that's what fandom does for many people.
It gives them not just a community and not just friends,
but that sort of deep and very compelling feeling of
this is where I belong.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Being a fan can also bring a sense of identity.
You become a treky or a cumber bitche you wind
up being part of an in group. Researchers like Jen
have argued identifying as a member of a fan franchise
works a lot like being part of any group you
identify with a bigger collective that can give you a
sense of pride and boost your self esteem. Studies show
(22:18):
that fandoms also work like other in groups, and that
they tend to promote pro social behavior within the group.
Doing exactly the sorts of kind and generous things for
other people that we know can boost our mood. But
the in group identity that comes from being a fan
can also lead to the same darker psychological processes that
are observed in real world groups, especially when in group
(22:41):
identities get threatened. I mean, think of all the awful
atrocities committed by political, religious, or ethnic groups throughout history.
In the fan world, that dark side of in group
identity can lead to what's called toxic fandom.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It's important to point out that the vast majority of
fans never turn toxic. But when you have a very
large fandom, the one percent who has that level of
investment and who also maybe has some personality traits or
tendencies that would be problematic even outside of fandom, then
you can see those problematic things happening.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Actor will we ensoft just how bad toxic fandom can be.
His next generation character Wesley Crusher provoked the ire of
many Star Trek fans as a smug teenager who seemed
to save the day a few times too often. It
wasn't Will's fault that Wesley's character wasn't beloved by the viewers,
but the fans aimed their hate directly at the then
eighteen year old.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Actor, and it was really rough.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Those years of being harassed so badly contributed to Will's
decision to step away from the part.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
I will throw my body down in front of every
single person who is being attacked by toxic fandom right now,
because I.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
Know what it feels like, and I know that you
don't deserve it.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
But despite the toxic behavior he experienced, Will still believes
that the benefits of geeking out far away the negatives.
Will has also seen that being a fan can literally
be life changing. There were adult fans that hated Wesley Crusher,
but Will says that many younger fans were inspired to
see a teenager on the ridge of the enterprise.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
Kids loved that, And I know because I have met
hundreds of thousands of them who became adults who are scientists,
who are researchers, who are engineers, who are parents, who
who are politicians? Just who grew up inspired by Star Trek.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
So geeking out provided you play nice, can be hugely
beneficial to your connection and your well being. But throwing
ourselves fully into a geeky pursuit is still a thing
that many of us are kind of embarrassed about. It
can still sometimes feel a bit cringe worthy. So how
can we overcome all the guilt and let our proverbial
geek flag fly? After the break Cumberbridge, Tabitha Carbon will
(24:51):
share how she was able to throw herself into her
obsession wholeheartedly, and how the benefits that came from that
were far more powerful than she expected.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
If you find something, anything, that sparks the sense in
you of fulfilling a want that is just you, not
for anyone else, and if you were able to embrace it,
then it can lead you places that you couldn't anticipate
when you took that first step.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
The happiness lab will be back in a moment.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
This feeling that I had towards him was not something
that I was looking for in my life. Arthur.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Tabitha Kravin was initially scared by her level of obsession
with the actor Benedict Cumerbauch. She eventually came to accept
her extreme crush and all the joys that came with it.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
You know, the thing that is scary about it is
that I haven't experienced that since of wanting something so
much and pursuing it so wholeheartedly in a long time.
And that's actually not something to be afraid of.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Tabitha's love of the Sherlock star was something she initially
enjoyed an isolation from other fans. That is, until she
was grabbing a book about the actor off a shelf
or her local library.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
It fell open onto this page that had post it
note and an invitation to visit this website to discuss
Sherlock and to look at photos of Benedict comforbat.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Despite having previous misgivings about joining the ranks of the
cumber bitches, Tabitha's curiosity took over.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
It went to the forum and connected with the person
who left the note, and she was someone just like me.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Suddenly Tabitha wasn't alone. She found a gateway to her community.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
I really believed that when it first happened to me,
that I was the first person this could possibly have
ever happened to to fall in such a way. Turns
out no, In fact, there are like millions of women
my age and much older in many cases who have
just followed the exact same experience, And when I connected
with them online, it just generated the most incredible energy.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
That energy is exactly what the psychologist Jennifer Lanbarnes saw
and her scientific work on fandom, the comfort and joy
of belonging to a like minded crew.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
In those online spaces, no one was ashamed or embarrassed
or guilty, and it just you know, they were just
letting it all hang out. It's just it was a
wonderful shared community experience.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
The boost Tabitha got from connecting with the cumber Bitch
community impowereder to go fully public. She stopped hiding her
love for Benedict. She didn't realize that being so vulnerable
would lead to even more opportunities to connect with the
people around her.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
The thing that struck me the most is when I
actually just went for it and like stuck up the
Benedict Comba Batch pictures at my desk at work and
started wearing the Benedict Comba Batche memorabilia. Yeah, people just
like it. People are grateful to have something to talk
to you.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
About, and far from being a trivial obsession. Tabitha learned
that finding Benedict had changed the lives of his other
fans in surprising and profound ways.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Hearing about divorces, new relationships, redirections of sexuality and gender,
career changes, every single possible change that you can possibly imagine.
They and they wanted to talk about this change in
the context of Benetdict combabatch, because in their mind those
things were connected.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Of course, Benedict wasn't swooping in and personally convincing people
to make these happiness boosting life changes, but the powerful,
one sided parasocial relationship that these fans formed with the
actor sometimes allowed them to identify important, unfulfilled needs that
they previously hadn't been able to notice.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
They were at a point in their life where they
felt stuck, just as I as I felt, you know,
they felt in some way that they were not living
a life that was representative of who they wanted to be.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Fan after fan explained to Tabitha that allowing themselves to
love something as trivial as a television actor, and to
do so so enthusiastically and so non judgmentally opened a
doorway they hadn't anticipated.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
If you kind of stepped through the doorway saying, you know,
this is I like this. You know this is something
that is making me happy. You know, it starts you
down a path where you can remember that capacity you
have of doing what you want and knowing what you want.
You know, you start to maybe remember those feelings that
you had when you were younger, when you knew who
(29:30):
you were, or you knew the kind of joy you
were capable of. And once you start to exercise that capability,
it seems you start to demand it more. You start
to be able to see in your life the ways
in which you can change your path to achieve it.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
But did Tabitha also experience the happiness boosting doorway effect
from geeking out over Benedict.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
God, it made me happier than I was at the time.
The doorway effect for me was real. He completely got
me out of a very bad place.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Tabitha has clear advice for those who may be into
a celebrity TV series or film friend, but are still
reluctant to give their passion free reign for fear of
being belittled or meant to feel self indulgent.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
You're entitled to it. You're completely entitled to it. To
just put up that kind of block in reaching your
own happiness, to me now seems crazy.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
She also has advice for those of us yet to
be cumberbatched, people who still haven't found that thing to
geek out over.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
I don't like the idea that people will hear this
and think, but I don't love anything, you know, I
don't have a passion. I understand that reaction entirely because
that is how I felt before. But I don't think
you need anything else to feel bad about. I think
that you just need to be conscious of your interests
and facilitate them in your life a little more, and
(30:54):
also even just to carve out a little bit of
mental space for yourself.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
And once you give yourself that mental space to notice
your interests, you also need to make sure that you're
mindfully paying attention.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Stay alert to that feeling that spark of you know, intriguing,
and instead of shutting it down, instead of talking yourself
out of it, instead of feeling ashamed or embarrassed, or
redirecting your energy onto something that seems more important, just
(31:27):
fan the flame of that spark a little and see
what happens next.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
And as Tabitha herself is seen, what often happens next
is more unbridled joy and play and connection and even
happiness than we initially expected.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
It seems so trivial, it seems so meaningless, it seems
so pointless, you know that. I think that's one of
the reasons that so many people cut themselves off at
the past when they have these feelings. I'm not going
to waste my time on this silly thing, but ultimately
it can lead you to extremely meaningful places just by
exercising that capability for joy.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
When that motivation strikes to dive deeper than you initially
feel is appropriate into some movie or sci fi series
or celebrity crush, you might feel embarrassed or like there
have to be healthier, more happiness promoting uses of your time.
But the science shows that geeking out about something, no
matter how trivial it is, can boost your sense of
connection and presence. When you become a hardcore fan, you
(32:26):
end up harnessing an important psychological trick that can make
you kinder, more playful, and more joyous. So unleash you're
inner geek commit to getting cumber batched with your own
unique target of joy. You could do a deep dive
into a traditional geek interest like star wars or video
games or that hot new TV star. Or you could
geek out about a topic all your own. You could
(32:47):
become a sour dough bread geek, or a croquet geek,
or a history geek. The key, as Tabitha put it
in the title of her book, is to give yourself
permission to love something anything like your life depends on it.
The happiness benefits that follow might be more profound than
you expect.
Pushkin. This ball marks the fifth birthday of the Happiness Lab.
Since twenty nineteen eight, we've put out hundreds of episodes.
For for our anniversary season, I've asked my producer, Ryan
Dilly to pull my five favorite episodes from the archive
to release again so you can check them out. Ryan,
(00:37):
what's our number four episode?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This one's called nerd Out The Happiness of.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Being a Fan. Oh right, I love this one.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
This is an entire episode about the happiness benefits of
being a fan.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Something Ryan that as my.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Friend, you know, I spend a lot of time doing.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
That's true. So tell the audience other than psychology, what
do you nerd out?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Well, one thing, as you know, is that I nerd
out a lot about Star Wars. In fact, at the
most recent comic con in my city, I got to
meet Billy d Williams the Rando Calli scene from the
Star Wars series with my mom, which is a wonderful memory.
But the show is about a lot more than just
being like a Star Wars or Star Trek, as we
talk about in this episode fan. It's really more about
(01:15):
the psychological benefits that you can get from certain kinds
of relationships that we have with celebrities and fictional.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Characters and so on.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
It also talks a lot about the kinds of ways
that we can be kinded to ourselves by being open
to some of the goofiness that comes from fandom, and
it also includes one of my favorite celebrity guests. So
here it is nerd out the happiness of being a fan.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I blush when I think about this because it's like, oh,
it's like remembering it's loved first sight.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
This is author Tabatha Carbon. She's telling me how she
fell for the man of her dreams.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I was getting a takeaway coffee in a cafe, which
was a novel experience to me because I had been
breastfading and pregnant for so long. Like I just felt
like I hadn't drunk coffee in a thousand years.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Before motherhood, Tabatha enjoyed an active career and lots of
interest in hobbies. But after motherhood, Tabitha's two kids became
the focus of her entire world. She had no time
for herself or her own emotional needs.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I wasn't depressed, I wasn't unwill I was just preoccupied.
I just I realized I just didn't know who I
was anymore. I couldn't hold on to any of the
pieces that used to be there. They were completely gone.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
It was in this moment of personal crisis that he
finally appeared.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
I was waiting for my coffee and the newspaper was
open on a table and I saw an ad.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
The ad, Inocuous Enough, was for a new season of
the television series Sherlock Holmes, starring the actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I had seen Benedict Cumberbatch many times before. I had
thought not much of him other than he was an
unusual looking man who appeared in many, many shows that
I seemed to watch.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
But Tabitha's reaction to this Benedict photo at this particular
moment in her life felt very, very different.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Just the sight of this man pulling on a leather glove,
and I just had this surprising feeling which I can
only describe as yearning. Like I was like, I want
to watch that show.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Something's coming, there is mariaty.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I sat down to watch the latest episode of Sherlock,
and I just I found myself at this point completely
captivated by this man who I had seen one hundred
times before. This time, he looked completely different from me.
I was mesmerized by his physical appearance, everything about him
(03:43):
just it felt like he shook my bones. I just
felt more alive and awake in the moment watching this
TV show than I had in the years previous raising
my children. And that's a shocking thing to say, because
you know, raising your children is supposed to be you know,
it is an objectively meaningful thing. But the reality is this,
(04:06):
sitting down to watch this completely silly, trivial TV show
somehow affected me more emotionally than all those years of mothering.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Tabitha watched and rewatched all the seasons of Sherlock. She
became engrossed with the actor's many movies. She read and
re read Benedict's online interviews, and she scrolled and smiled
endlessly at his countless online photos. Nearly all of her
free time was soon taken up with that distinctive face
of his. Tabitha had become smin with Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
So the thing about that incumabatch is that it starts
with the voice like a jaguar trapped in a cello,
is how his voice has been described. The next thing
is the cheekbones he has very distinctive cheekbones. And then
the eyes actually make him look weird because they are
just too far apart on his head. And then I
think it's the lips, very full lips, excellent cupid bow,
(05:07):
excellent hair. Should I keep going?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
But despite the joyful thrill that her new obsession brought,
becoming so obsessed with a person she'd never met also
made Tabitha feel kind of embarrassed.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I feel ashamed is actually it sounds like an extreme emotion,
but it seemed like something you should not be proud of.
It felt inappropriate, It felt juvenile, It felt like an
mental and emotional regression to a time that you were
supposed to be completely done with by the time you're
almost forty. And it made me feel profoundly embarrassed, to
(05:42):
the point that I didn't tell anyone about it for
a long time.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Now, it's entirely possible that you've never fallen as hard
as Tabitha did for some random celebrity. You may not
yet have felt the thrill and embarrassment that comes with
being It's called being cumber botched.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Cumber bat, cumber bat, coumba bat cumber botched. That's that's
when it goes wrong that sounds.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
You may not personally know the thrill and embarrassment that
comes with being cumber batched, but I'm guessing that at
some point in your life you had something that you
really geeked out about, that band or book or game
or movie that you knew way too much about, that
you spent far too much money in time on the
kind of thing you adored so much that it went
from being a regular, everyday sort of appreciation to a
(06:28):
full blown, geeky, guilty pleasure. But could embracing a deep
love of a seemingly trivial thing and doing so openly
and without guilt be the key to feeling more connected
and more present? Would each of us become a lot
happier if we two could, at least metaphorically get cumber batched.
Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to
(06:49):
be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What
if our minds are lying to us, leading us away
from what will really make us happy. The good news
is that understanding the science of the mind can point
us all back in the right direction. You're listening to
the happiness lap with me, Doctor Laurie Santos As Tabitha's
(07:13):
excitement over all things Benedict grew, she slowly began revealing
her obsession to the people closest to her. Most of
her friends admitted to being pretty confused.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
They find it just inexplicable, and it required an entire
book for me to explain.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
That book is entitled this is not a book about
Benedict Cumberbatch. The joy of loving something anything like your
life depends on it.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
And initially what I thought I was writing about was
why did this crazy thing happen to me, this perfectly
normal person. You know, it seemed beneath me. Sounds really snobby,
but I mean that is how I That is how
I feelt about something like a celebrity crush, that it
was not the kind of thing that someone like me
should fall into.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Tabitha experienced a complicated set of emotions, both about Benedict
and about her obsession with Benedict. She'd never felt more
joyful or alive as she did watching Sherlock, but spending
so much time being a fangirl came with a lot
of guilt.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I was using my precious free time and precious free
brain space to think about this guy. When you I
felt like I should be using that time to either
think about my husband or my children the housework.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Wasting her time on something so trivial also made her
feel selfish.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It's not about serving the needs of other people. It's
not about tending to the needs of your children, or
your family or your domestic environment. It is something that
is just for you.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
She'd also seen how the actors hardcore fans who lovingly
referred to themselves as cumber bitches were portrayed in the news.
The media called the cumber bitches hysterical, crazed, cultlake and
even terrifying.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
You know, I didn't look at that and think, oh, yeah,
these are my people, like I want to join that community,
sign me up. That was a huge stumbling blog. I
was like, hell, no, I'm not gonna I'm not going
to put my hand up to be the subject of
things going kind of insults.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
But Tabitha wasn't just afraid of jeers and mockery. Her
infatuation with her new crush was so powerful that it
scared her. Tabitha hadn't experienced anything that extreme since she
was a teenager.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
All I was doing was simply pursuing a feeling which
made me feel good. It's amazing the extent to which
that felt scary.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
But intense feelings like this are kind of what fandom
is all about. I mean, the term fan comes from
the Latin fanaticus, meaning frenzied by the gods. These days,
we of course use the term for less divinely inspired circumstances.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
It's just that some things seem normal for us to
fan over, and some things don't.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Take sports, no one bats an eye if you spend
hundreds of dollars on T shirts and posters and bumper
stickers to show your devotion to a football team. No
one calls you hysterical if you scream at the television
when your favorite basketball player hits the perfect shot, or
if you sulk when the home team loses.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I mean, sports fandom is so normalized, you know, it's
on the news every single night. That's wonderful, Like it's
a wonderful thing that we have nourished and supported as
a society because sports fans get a huge return on
investment from that kind of dedication. And then, actually, that
is all I was feeling towards Bagic Cumberbatch was exactly
(10:30):
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
So how can we overcome this stigma that has been
historically attached to nerding out and happily embrace our passions
no matter what they are. To find out, I tagged
in an expert who understands the joys and downsides of
unashamed fandom.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Good morning, good morning. Can you hear us?
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I can can you see me?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Someone who's had a unique glimpse into both sides of
the fandom relationship. Now we can see you, and with
the seeing you comes the like, oh my god, oh
my god, oh my god, geeking out.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But I'm going to try to hold it together.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Ah, You're doing a great It's.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Also a celebrity who turns me into a bit of
a fangirl myself.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
It's weird to introduce myself. Hi, my name is Will Wheton.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
If you're a nerd like me, Will needs no introduction.
Will is an author, a blogger, the host of the
YouTube board game show Tabletop, and most famously, he played
Wesley Crusher on Star Trek the Next Generation. But these days,
Will is happy to be known as a geek. In fact,
justin Geek was the title of his first memoir, which
chronicled his first steps towards fandom.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
It was third grade when we went to the library
and I got my first sci fi book like I
devoured it, like I think I finished it that day,
and that really started me on the path that I walked.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
For the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Young Will was especially drawn to one particular sci fi franchise.
He fell completely in love with the nineteen sixties TV
show Star.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Trek, watching it in syndication over and over and over again,
like every time it was on, just everything stopped and
I would watch that.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
That's what I really really loved.
Speaker 5 (12:11):
So when I was fourteen and found out I was
auditioning for a new Star Trek series, I was beside myself.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
It's pretty rare that a fan gets to become part
of the thing they love so much. Will remembers what
it felt like to put on his first Starfleet uniform
and to walk onto the set of the Enterprise for
the first time.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
When you get there, you cannot see anything else except
the reality of the starship that you are on. I
loved walking there. I loved being alone there. I loved
sitting in that set and pretending it was all real.
It was a really safe, really happy place for me.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
But nerding up to star Trek stuff wasn't Will's only
happy place, you see. Ever since he was a kid,
Will has allowed himself to love lots and lots of
nerdy things, all as deeply as any cumber bitche worships Benedict.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
I am familiar with cumber bitches.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Will geeks out to Dungeon the Dragons and old school
arcade machines and tabletop board games and action figures and
comic books and fantasy novels and Harry styles do.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
I absolutely adore and I never would have, like, why
would I have listened to a boy band guy ever.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
In my life?
Speaker 5 (13:25):
That guy is amazing? What a remarkable human being and
so talented.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
As he explains in his new annotated memoir Still Jessic Geek,
Will loves having the very intense band based passion that
scared Tabith is so much.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Being a nerd is not about the thing you loved,
It's about the way you love that thing. I really
love the part of me that wakes up and sings
when I'm around people who love the things with that
kind of unself conscious, non judgmental enthusiasm.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Will is evangelical about the benefits of just absolutely loving stuff.
He's gone from being just a professional game to becoming
a geek evangelist.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
As it were, It's totally cool to be a nerd
and love stuff.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
Like I've always said, as long as the thing you
love doesn't hurt another person, love it as hard as
you can, and get as much out of it as
you possibly can.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
And it turns out that the science agrees with Will
on this point. Being a geek, loving dorky things like
your life depends on it has far more powerful psychological
benefits than you might expect. We'll explore why when the
Happiness Lab returns after the break.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So when I was in high school, I was really
into Party of Five. I was really into Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, the original Roswell. I have a very long
list of all of these shows that I sort of
went through one by one.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
This is my former Yale student, a psychologist, a New
York Times best selling hy A fiction author, Jennifer Lynn.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Barnes, And it would always be I like watching the
show and then it into the imaginative but what if,
where you start running out all the scenarios and coming
up with theories and thinking about it before the next
episode comes, because that was back when I was watching
week to week, and that's sort of my default mode
(15:25):
of media consumption and has been my entire life.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Jen is an expert on this kind of fandom. As
a young adult fiction author, She's created a few of
her own big fan franchises. You should definitely check out
her hugely popular Inheritance game book series. Like actor Will Wheaton,
Jen is also a self proclaimed nerd. She's seen many
of the benefits of geeking out firsthand.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I did a lot of daydreaming about fictional characters. I
did a lot of that emotional investment, and it did,
I think, make me less lonely.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
But perhaps most importantly, Jen is also an academic psychologist
who publishes on the cognitive and emotional benefits of fandom.
Jen has found that if you look at the list
of evidence based happiness boostings strategies that I share with
my students, geeking out about your favorite TV show, film,
or comic book seems to check a lot of those boxes.
Let's start with one of the best known stress reducers
(16:19):
around play, particularly the kind that emerges when fans become
so creatively engaged with the characters they care about that
they begin to invent new adventures for them to embark on.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
I have argued very specifically in specific publications that fan
fiction is a form of a maginary play, that it
is parallel to either daydreaming in adulthood or actual pretend
play in childhood.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Jen and others have argued that when fans get together,
especially at big fan gatherings like conventions or cons as
they're called, they tend to experience what's known as a
shared pretensive reality. It's kind of the adult version of
the happiness boosting flow that kids experience when they play
together with toys, that fun, cooperative imagined reality where you
get to joke around, be social, make believe, and create together.
(17:06):
This shared playful reality is something that PEK evangelist Will
Wheton really savors.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
At a con. That energy is everywhere.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
One of my favorite things at a con is to
walk through the artists area and the vendors hall and
see the small indie artists who make unbelievably gorgeous works
of art and jewelry and paintings and stickers and figurine
that just make stuff to celebrate the fandom that brings
so much joy into our lives.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
But this creative, playful side of geeking out is just
the tip of the fandom happiness Iceberg. A lot of
the well being boost that comes from being a hardcore
fan stems from social connection, especially the kind you get
from loving the object of your geeky affection through what's
known as a parasocial relationship.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So parasocial relationships are what media psychologists call the one
sided relationships that you form with people you don't actually
know through consuming media about them. And those relationships can
be formed with real people like singers, politicians, actors, anyone
you don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Parasocial relationships can also be formed with people who don't exist,
like Sherlock Holmes or Lieutenant Wesley Crusher.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And psychologically, based on the literature, it doesn't seem to
matter that much whether the person you're forming a relationship
with is a real person in your favorite boy band
or a fictional character that you've consumed to show about.
Either way, these relationships seem to have a lot of
the real world benefits of actual relationships.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
A lot of the recent work on the benefits of
parasocial relationships comes from the University of Buffalo psychologist Shira
Gabriel who proposed what's called the social surrogacy hypothesis.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
And this hypothesis basically says that we are very social
creatures with a lot of social needs, but that our
brains can be very sneaky about how we are fulfilling
those needs.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Let's say you have a spouse that supports you and
friends to hang out with, but you're a busy mom
who lacks a sense of adventure in her life. Your
brain will probably be on the lookout for someone, anyone
who can fill that excitement hole. And if a sarag
it happens to come along, say a fictional character like
Sherlock who's smart and dashing and hangs out with you
every night on television, then your brain quickly latches on.
(19:27):
But we don't just use specific characters or celebrities to
fill our social needs. Let's say you're a geeky kid
like the young Will who doesn't feel like he belongs.
You might gravitate towards an entire fictional world where nerds
like you feel more seen, and the evidence suggests that
doing so literally expands your horizons.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
Star Trek looks through the screen and it says, there
is a place specifically for you in the future. I
loved that. I loved feeling like I wanted to belong somewhere.
I wanted to be special. And these people who are
not recognizing how special you are are going to be
forced to recognize it in the future because it will
(20:06):
be undniable.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Spares out the importance of the kind of belonging that
young Will and other fans get from Star Trek. There's
evidence that thinking about a beloved fictional character or world
can make you feel less lonely, and studies show that
writing about the target of your parasocial relationship can boost
your self esteem.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
So all of these sort of social benefits that you
can receive from real world relationships, it seems like there's
a version of those benefits that you can receive from
these fictional relationships as well.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
When we geek out about our favorite celebrity, we don't
only get a social connection boost from parasocial bonds. Fandom
can also promote in real life social connection.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
So it's often very common for a friendship to start
in fandom. You have a mutual interest, you're hanging out
at the same spots online, you're reading each other's stories
or talking about it. You talk when the show is on,
but then it goes past that, and these people become
your friends, lifelong friends.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Often the social connection that comes from communities like these
can lead to the kind of well being bump that
young will experienced firsthand.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
My childhood was very much defined by loneliness and isolation.
I just couldn't find people who I felt safe with.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
I had been.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Raised to believe that all these things that were really
important to me were weird and kind of stupid. And
when I found other people who loved the things that
I loved, actually found people who loved me and accepted
me and didn't judge me and welcomed me into the community.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
But like all of that was a revelation to me.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
And I think that's what fandom does for many people.
It gives them not just a community and not just friends,
but that sort of deep and very compelling feeling of
this is where I belong.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Being a fan can also bring a sense of identity.
You become a treky or a cumber bitche you wind
up being part of an in group. Researchers like Jen
have argued identifying as a member of a fan franchise
works a lot like being part of any group you
identify with a bigger collective that can give you a
sense of pride and boost your self esteem. Studies show
(22:18):
that fandoms also work like other in groups, and that
they tend to promote pro social behavior within the group.
Doing exactly the sorts of kind and generous things for
other people that we know can boost our mood. But
the in group identity that comes from being a fan
can also lead to the same darker psychological processes that
are observed in real world groups, especially when in group
(22:41):
identities get threatened. I mean, think of all the awful
atrocities committed by political, religious, or ethnic groups throughout history.
In the fan world, that dark side of in group
identity can lead to what's called toxic fandom.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It's important to point out that the vast majority of
fans never turn toxic. But when you have a very
large fandom, the one percent who has that level of
investment and who also maybe has some personality traits or
tendencies that would be problematic even outside of fandom, then
you can see those problematic things happening.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Actor will we ensoft just how bad toxic fandom can be.
His next generation character Wesley Crusher provoked the ire of
many Star Trek fans as a smug teenager who seemed
to save the day a few times too often. It
wasn't Will's fault that Wesley's character wasn't beloved by the viewers,
but the fans aimed their hate directly at the then
eighteen year old.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Actor, and it was really rough.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Those years of being harassed so badly contributed to Will's
decision to step away from the part.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
I will throw my body down in front of every
single person who is being attacked by toxic fandom right now,
because I.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
Know what it feels like, and I know that you
don't deserve it.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
But despite the toxic behavior he experienced, Will still believes
that the benefits of geeking out far away the negatives.
Will has also seen that being a fan can literally
be life changing. There were adult fans that hated Wesley Crusher,
but Will says that many younger fans were inspired to
see a teenager on the ridge of the enterprise.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
Kids loved that, And I know because I have met
hundreds of thousands of them who became adults who are scientists,
who are researchers, who are engineers, who are parents, who
who are politicians? Just who grew up inspired by Star Trek.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
So geeking out provided you play nice, can be hugely
beneficial to your connection and your well being. But throwing
ourselves fully into a geeky pursuit is still a thing
that many of us are kind of embarrassed about. It
can still sometimes feel a bit cringe worthy. So how
can we overcome all the guilt and let our proverbial
geek flag fly? After the break Cumberbridge, Tabitha Carbon will
(24:51):
share how she was able to throw herself into her
obsession wholeheartedly, and how the benefits that came from that
were far more powerful than she expected.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
If you find something, anything, that sparks the sense in
you of fulfilling a want that is just you, not
for anyone else, and if you were able to embrace it,
then it can lead you places that you couldn't anticipate
when you took that first step.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
The happiness lab will be back in a moment.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
This feeling that I had towards him was not something
that I was looking for in my life. Arthur.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Tabitha Kravin was initially scared by her level of obsession
with the actor Benedict Cumerbauch. She eventually came to accept
her extreme crush and all the joys that came with it.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
You know, the thing that is scary about it is
that I haven't experienced that since of wanting something so
much and pursuing it so wholeheartedly in a long time.
And that's actually not something to be afraid of.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Tabitha's love of the Sherlock star was something she initially
enjoyed an isolation from other fans. That is, until she
was grabbing a book about the actor off a shelf
or her local library.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
It fell open onto this page that had post it
note and an invitation to visit this website to discuss
Sherlock and to look at photos of Benedict comforbat.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Despite having previous misgivings about joining the ranks of the
cumber bitches, Tabitha's curiosity took over.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
It went to the forum and connected with the person
who left the note, and she was someone just like me.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Suddenly Tabitha wasn't alone. She found a gateway to her community.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
I really believed that when it first happened to me,
that I was the first person this could possibly have
ever happened to to fall in such a way. Turns
out no, In fact, there are like millions of women
my age and much older in many cases who have
just followed the exact same experience, And when I connected
with them online, it just generated the most incredible energy.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
That energy is exactly what the psychologist Jennifer Lanbarnes saw
and her scientific work on fandom, the comfort and joy
of belonging to a like minded crew.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
In those online spaces, no one was ashamed or embarrassed
or guilty, and it just you know, they were just
letting it all hang out. It's just it was a
wonderful shared community experience.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
The boost Tabitha got from connecting with the cumber Bitch
community impowereder to go fully public. She stopped hiding her
love for Benedict. She didn't realize that being so vulnerable
would lead to even more opportunities to connect with the
people around her.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
The thing that struck me the most is when I
actually just went for it and like stuck up the
Benedict Comba Batch pictures at my desk at work and
started wearing the Benedict Comba Batche memorabilia. Yeah, people just
like it. People are grateful to have something to talk
to you.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
About, and far from being a trivial obsession. Tabitha learned
that finding Benedict had changed the lives of his other
fans in surprising and profound ways.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Hearing about divorces, new relationships, redirections of sexuality and gender,
career changes, every single possible change that you can possibly imagine.
They and they wanted to talk about this change in
the context of Benetdict combabatch, because in their mind those
things were connected.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Of course, Benedict wasn't swooping in and personally convincing people
to make these happiness boosting life changes, but the powerful,
one sided parasocial relationship that these fans formed with the
actor sometimes allowed them to identify important, unfulfilled needs that
they previously hadn't been able to notice.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
They were at a point in their life where they
felt stuck, just as I as I felt, you know,
they felt in some way that they were not living
a life that was representative of who they wanted to be.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Fan after fan explained to Tabitha that allowing themselves to
love something as trivial as a television actor, and to
do so so enthusiastically and so non judgmentally opened a
doorway they hadn't anticipated.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
If you kind of stepped through the doorway saying, you know,
this is I like this. You know this is something
that is making me happy. You know, it starts you
down a path where you can remember that capacity you
have of doing what you want and knowing what you want.
You know, you start to maybe remember those feelings that
you had when you were younger, when you knew who
(29:30):
you were, or you knew the kind of joy you
were capable of. And once you start to exercise that capability,
it seems you start to demand it more. You start
to be able to see in your life the ways
in which you can change your path to achieve it.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
But did Tabitha also experience the happiness boosting doorway effect
from geeking out over Benedict.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
God, it made me happier than I was at the time.
The doorway effect for me was real. He completely got
me out of a very bad place.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Tabitha has clear advice for those who may be into
a celebrity TV series or film friend, but are still
reluctant to give their passion free reign for fear of
being belittled or meant to feel self indulgent.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
You're entitled to it. You're completely entitled to it. To
just put up that kind of block in reaching your
own happiness, to me now seems crazy.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
She also has advice for those of us yet to
be cumberbatched, people who still haven't found that thing to
geek out over.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
I don't like the idea that people will hear this
and think, but I don't love anything, you know, I
don't have a passion. I understand that reaction entirely because
that is how I felt before. But I don't think
you need anything else to feel bad about. I think
that you just need to be conscious of your interests
and facilitate them in your life a little more, and
(30:54):
also even just to carve out a little bit of
mental space for yourself.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
And once you give yourself that mental space to notice
your interests, you also need to make sure that you're
mindfully paying attention.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Stay alert to that feeling that spark of you know, intriguing,
and instead of shutting it down, instead of talking yourself
out of it, instead of feeling ashamed or embarrassed, or
redirecting your energy onto something that seems more important, just
(31:27):
fan the flame of that spark a little and see
what happens next.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
And as Tabitha herself is seen, what often happens next
is more unbridled joy and play and connection and even
happiness than we initially expected.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
It seems so trivial, it seems so meaningless, it seems
so pointless, you know that. I think that's one of
the reasons that so many people cut themselves off at
the past when they have these feelings. I'm not going
to waste my time on this silly thing, but ultimately
it can lead you to extremely meaningful places just by
exercising that capability for joy.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
When that motivation strikes to dive deeper than you initially
feel is appropriate into some movie or sci fi series
or celebrity crush, you might feel embarrassed or like there
have to be healthier, more happiness promoting uses of your time.
But the science shows that geeking out about something, no
matter how trivial it is, can boost your sense of
connection and presence. When you become a hardcore fan, you
(32:26):
end up harnessing an important psychological trick that can make
you kinder, more playful, and more joyous. So unleash you're
inner geek commit to getting cumber batched with your own
unique target of joy. You could do a deep dive
into a traditional geek interest like star wars or video
games or that hot new TV star. Or you could
geek out about a topic all your own. You could
(32:47):
become a sour dough bread geek, or a croquet geek,
or a history geek. The key, as Tabitha put it
in the title of her book, is to give yourself
permission to love something anything like your life depends on it.
The happiness benefits that follow might be more profound than
you expect.
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