Empowerment from being united or alienation within an army?

There are many benefits to being part of a fandom - friends, a sense of belonging and somewhere you can go to escape from reality. The question is, why do people come together, and conform to the social norms of these groups? One explanation comes from psychology, that ‘people want to be right and they want to be liked.’¹ This suggests that girls conform to the Hiddleston fandom because they believe it is ‘right’ and they think it will convince people to like them. Post-feminists would argue this is a negative thing because women should be able to participate in any cultural practices without having to worry about the opinion of others. Conformity can lead to easy domination by others. Tom Hiddleston fans often admit they would be happy to be ruled/dominated by ‘Loki’ - Hiddleston’s character in Thor. James Surowiecki warns us of the dangers of these online crowds because ‘once you are linked in the network, the network starts to shape your views and [...] your interaction with everybody else.’² This could lead to the socialisation of fandoms - if one fan spots another fan wearing a ‘Loki’ t-shirt, they may feel socially ‘safe’. However, this leads to a lack of individuality, and the opportunity for men to repress the female fandom as unoriginal ‘sheep’ following the herd.

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1 Furnham, A., 2008, 50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need To Know, London: Quercus Editions Ltd.^↩
2 James Surowiecki, 2005, The power and the danger of online crowds, [Online], [Last accessed 1st May 2014], Available from: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_surowiecki_on_the_turning_point_for_social_media ^↩