Ramos, Jennylyn L.

BA Speech Communication
This is the story of our lives: On fandom, politics, and political humor

I used to be a crazy die-hard fan of boy bands when I was younger, like One Direction,
for example. I would waste a lot of time memorizing their songs, researching about them,
stalking them on social media, watching videos of them, reading fan fiction, defending them
against their haters, socializing with other fans like me, and forcing my mom to buy me
merchandise and concert tickets. Now however, I came of age and decided to unstan because I
had more important things to think about, like say surviving this semester, or ousting the son of
a dictator. Nevertheless, I know that deep inside, there is still that fangirl in me. I acknowledge
my past because I also owe it to my old avid fan self who I am today; I owe my development to
the fandom that nurtured me and honed me to be a better individual.

Being in a fandom feels like being in our own personalized universe. It is a fun and
pleasurable experience—constructing a worldview, creating fandom-specific terms or codes that
only we Directioners would understand, and identifying with one another through similarities.
Following Ernest Bormann, we build communities, construct visions, and communicate culture
through our use of symbols. We create fantasies or invented realities from our shared meanings
and identities (Herrick, 2000). Suddenly, everything has a different meaning. For example, when
I look at a spoon, I do not remember food, I remember Liam Payne’s fear of it. When I see the
Ireland flag, I do not think about the Irishes, I only think about Niall Horan. When I eat a carrot, I
do not think that it is good for the eyes, but rather think that Louis Tomlinson likes girls who eat
carrots. Seeing an ice cream swirl would instantly remind me of Zayn Malik’s tousled hair. Then
of course, I also get new signified meanings from Harry Styles’ tattoos. We also get new codes
and presupposed information from discursive and non-discursive materials like their songs,
music videos, posts, pictures, memes, and even their gestures and bodily behaviors which are
adapted, shared, and circulated in social media, like for example, in Twitter. In such a way, we
can also apply Ferdinand de Saussure’s concept of signifier (the physical form of a sign i.e. how
the word is written) and signified (our own concept/idea of it) and see how language operates.
Following concepts on structuralism, Henry and David (2003) also claims that “fans envision a
world where all of us can participate in the creation and circulation of central cultural myths.”
With this, “in terms of vernacular creativity and slang then, it is humour that often serves as the
‘aleatory points’ in conversation, which convey the signified and simple constructions of
language where identity is expressed in language” Austin (2021). Most definitely, deep diving
into communication and rhetoric allows us to get a better understanding of the group’s shared
consciousness and we also get to see how they reinforce their identities in order to create reality
and promote their advocacies.

Fandoms and politics can also be related to each other—after all, politics is indeed
everywhere and nothing is without ideology. Politics has grown more approachable and
engaging with the help of pop culture, such as in fandoms, since online humor serves as a
prominent mode of citizen engagement in politics and fans are given the opportunity to
Ramos, Jennylyn L.
BA Speech Communication
participate in political discourse in their own unique ways (Tay, 2012). For example, I owe it to
the band and to the fandom my knowledge and awareness of feminism and the LGBTQIA+
community because they uphold and promote these advocacies in their discursive and
non-discursive materials. In such things is where democratic ideologies manifest. Putting
forward their advocacies and moving people to action has become easy, given their agency,
impact, and power to influence and dominate discourse.

In the One Direction fandom specifically, what I noticed is that we do not only get
acquainted with different causes, we are also influenced to embody the attitude and orientation
of being critical, which we are able to apply in our own personal endeavors. The environment
promoted in the fandom creates social conditioning and constructs, ultimately affects our
perception and influences our action, and this is very applicable here in the Philippines,
especially with regards to local politics and the recent elections. For example, the principles and
advocacies I uphold personally and professionally are still adopted and imitated from the values
I learned from the boys. Now given my upbringing in a fandom where love, empathy, and
compassion are exhibited, I then advocated and voted for VP Leni Robredo because she
appears to be the best candidate to uphold the same progressive causes and facilitate the same
warm and safe environment like in the fandom. I know that I am not the only one who feels this
way because I often hear in her rallies that there are Directioners for Leni. I have also seen fan
pages and street teams that support her. One post actually got my attention because I saw the
relevance of fantasy themes in the narrative of Filipino Directioners and how they used One
Direction’s songs and meanings to relate it to the endorsement. The post wrote: “Our nation
needs a leader who would carry us over fire and water—a leader who could walk with us
Through the Dark. We need a leader who is not only Ready to Run, but also cares about the
Little Things. Leni Robredo is our Girl Almighty. She’s not Afraid, and that’s what makes her
beautiful.”

This is where I gained more appreciation of what Tay (2012) is saying on bringing
together the popular and political culture together. Here, I also realized that it was easy to adapt
to the political culture because being a fan of pop stars and being a follower of a political
candidate is pretty much the same—you do your research about them, you are eager to meet
them, you imitate things they do, and you see them as credible sources of what decisions and
actions you are to do in your life as they are both are also leaders and influencers in their own
ways. My takeaway however from being VP Leni’s supporter is that liking or appreciating these
icons does not require you to blindly follow or worship them. I would admit though, I was guilty
of this because when I was younger, I did not know better, and I would also submit to a culture
of idolatry where I blindly identify with the celebrities’ persona and let them control my decisions
and actions in life given that I am emotionally attached to them. Now, applying learnings from
political culture to pop culture, I learned that we should always keep an eye for mistakes and
constructively criticize, otherwise we would not progress as a collective, we cannot attain
change for our betterment.
Ramos, Jennylyn L.
BA Speech Communication

Indeed, VP Leni Robredo’s campaign led us to a change in perception with regards to

the word fanaticism, because here we see how being a fan is harmless because we are not
being manipulated and we are supporting good causes for our social development. For me
however, there should still be caution in condoning it. We should not be blinded by the fun or
pleasure that we get from the culture or the fandoms. We should always remain critical of the
proliferation of the group’s narratives and the ideologies that manifest as domination in our
society.

References

Austin, J. R. (2021). Fan Identities in the Furry Fandom. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Herrick, J. (2000). The history and theory of rhetoric: An introduction. Routledge.

Henry, J., & David, T. (2003). Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Digital Cinema, Media
Convergence, and Participatory Culture. Durham Meenakshi G.

Louis Tomlinson PH [@TEAMLOUISPH]. (2022). One Woman. One Dream. One Direction. Leni
Robredo is our Girl Almighty. #DirectionersForLeni [Tweet]. Twitter.
https://twitter.com/TEAMLOUISPH/status/1502977831499837450?s=20&t=i9vJwmx
2iJlNkBCMkFUl0w

Tay, G. (2012). Embracing LOLitics: Popular culture, online political humor, and play.