There seems to be a thin line between liking something and proclaiming you're a fan of it, although in both real life and Facebook, you're assumed to be a fan once you "Like" it.
I have so many "Likes" but I kind of find myself lacking the commitment a "fan" must offer _ especially at a time when the basic requirement for being a fan includes mindlessly adoring their favourite whatever. I like you very much but sorry, the thought of intentionally keeping an eye, or both eyes even, closed for whatever mistake you commit or any stupid comment you make is creating a conflict of interest with my journalistic profession.
Take a few recent incidents, for example.
Earlier in the month, stand-up comedian and TV host Daniel Tosh cracked a joke about how "rape jokes are always funny" at the Laugh Factory in LA. He was interrupted by a female member of the audience, whom later became the subject of further harassment as he was claimed to say: "Wouldn't it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now? Like right now?"
Not funny, eh? But it seems Tosh has his horde of adoring and loyal fans to defend his action. When supermodel Karen Elson (I like her but I'm not her fan, OK?) tweeted a message voicing her disapproval of Tosh, she got a lot of horrid responses with one of them reading: "@KarenElson_Needs to be raped, she might lighten up after getting some for once."
And there are those big fans of free speech, who descend to Earth in the form of humans like television news producer Chez Pazienza, for example. Pazienza voiced his concerns of the snowballing outrage in his blog at Huffington Post, while clearly defending the gender, or even criminal, insensitivity by saying that comics stand as the vanguard of the right to free speech.
Pazienza plays up the freedom of speech card while undermining the fact that Tosh's not-so-funny joke could be seen as normalising sexual crime by saying "it's gotten to the point where the reaction to hearing something we don't like has become pretty damn unreasonable".
In this, is he saying that the outrage following the rape joke occurred simply because people got fired up hearing things they don't like? Fans of stand-up comedy will remember the incident at the very same Laugh Factory back in 2006 when Michael Richards made the racist jokes that cost him his career. I wonder whether Pazienza would say that Richards was a victim of social sanction propelled by some humourless bunch to whom he said "something they don't like"?
It's all because of this illogical thinking _ the damaged sense of reason and logic caused by your emotional commitment to a certain something _ that makes me sceptical of fanaticism. Even one of the most celebrated causes like free speech can leave the judgement of its advocates marred by the conviction that everything else can be undermined for its sake, from insensitivity to cultural, social, religious and gender differences.
Sometimes, what you turn blind eye to isn't even moral or ethical concepts, but just plain facts. Like those fans of copycat designers who, despite the evidence, would insist their favourite designers are no copycats.
It's simply down to the fact that whatever we advocate represents our judgement, our taste and our knowledge _ something many would even consider their character-defining elements.
Anything that goes against what we advocate _ what or who we're a fan of _ threatens the legitimacy of our own judgement. It's like being told to your face that your knowledge of fashion is so low you don't even have the capacity to tell whether it's a copycat or not, or that you have an inferior ethical standard for thinking that such plagiarism is "alright".
Our self-defence mechanism is the greatest mystery and most effective psychological device, trust me. It's not to do with how intellectual or reasonable you are. Your self-defence mechanism _ the denial function _ can be switched on when the integrity of what you advocate is questioned. Next, as in the case of fans of copycat designers, musicians, commercial and music video directors, etc, you earn the super power of being able to tell the difference between two things that are blatantly identical.
Having said that, perhaps it's not the brand, the freedom of speech, some popular singers, a football team or some higher cause that we're a fan of.
We're probably just fans of ourselves _ represented by those things we have chosen to be a fan of _ after all.
Samila Wenin is Deputy Life Editor of the Bangkok Post.