I am a member of a fandom. It’s not the first fandom, and it’s not the biggest, but it is the best. I know this, not only because I am a fan of Supernatural , but because I am a bit of a science nerd. Like many SPN fans, I feel blindsided by the feelings I have for this show. But with a little bit of help from my favorite scientific theory, I think I can explain why the SPN fandom has fallen so hard. I dig Evolutionary Psychology. It’s relatively new to the scientific scene and it’s still…well…evolving. It’s based on the idea that some of the things modern-day humans do come from behaviors that helped us back in our cave-dwelling days. These behaviors, or instincts, are sort of like software that runs in the background of our minds; we don’t normally pay attention to them, but they pop up when we need direction. Some of the unconscious behaviors we employ that helped us survive thousands of years ago don’t translate very well - like our cravings for sugar. Eating sugar us
Explaining fandom from an evolutionary point of view.