Fan Fiction and Saper

Reading through Lost's fan sites wasn't anything necessarily surprising to me, since I've been exposed to fan obsession for as long as I can remember. That in and of itself is an interesting topic, but it's for another time. The way I understand sites and fan logic such as that which surrounds Lost is that it starts as something different and less intense than it ends up as. I understand being a fan of something. I understand believing characters and having a flicker of hope that they exist, in some form, somewhere. I think what happens is a snowball effect. Saper explains that fan fiction started as a way to converse about science fiction, and gradually became more about the fans themselves. With momentum and increasing popularity, fictional stories become obsessions.

People love to connect. Even when people say that the increase in social networking over the Internet leads to impersonal interaction, it still allows for people to make relationships, and many of them. So it makes sense that people cling to characters that are either like themselves, unlike themselves, or in situations they can relate to. I don't think obsessive fans are necessarily trying to find an escape from real life, but allowing themselves to give in completely to imagination. I don't think it is a completely healthy habit, and it is somewhat perplexing the degrees to which fans take their research, but it is not an idea that completely baffles me.