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You need a fandom. I’m not saying that you need to get a Tumblr or start reading fanfiction — but I do think everyone should get involved in some small way, whether it’s a weekly Twitter chat or following a blog or making bitchin’ fan videos — all involvement is a positive thing.

Thing is, you probably already have a fandom. Follow a specific football team, so much so you that you talk to your friends and fellow fans about it at work? Congratulations — you’re active in a fandom! Get together every Thursday to talk to your friends about what happened this week on American Idol? Rock on with your fandom self!

Fandom isn’t just about message boards and instant messages — it’s about being so into something that you let it become part of you and establish relationships based on this one mutual thing you have in common. It’s multifaceted and fragmented. Some niches are closer than others. They don’t all like each other; they don’t always agree. Sometimes they bicker. Some people sling insults and sometimes they refuse to speak to each other. There are members of the fandom that cannot stand each other. But when it comes right down to it — when the new movie comes out, when a character dies, when someone is kicked off the island — everyone is a part of it.

But it’s more than being a part of something; it’s about making personal connections. There are going to be people you love deeper than your mutual shipping interests and beyond the scope of your fandom.

I was almost 17 when I moved to Kansas. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and I didn’t know anyone. But I had a brand new cable Internet connection, a dusty FanFiction.net account, and a new LiveJournal handle. I dove headfirst into a new fandom, and some of those connections are still here eight years later. There are people I stalked on Facebook after years of not speaking (You Know Who You Are <3) and still connected with — even though we were all in different places in our lives, and have significantly less time to spend on the Internet these days.

There are people I don’t get a chance to talk to often, but whenever I do it’s this bright and awesome thing. People who knew my personal shit outside of the fandom, who would share their lives with me. And you’re going to realize how cool it is to connect based on one mutual jumping point. My fandom friends are mothers with grown children, guys just getting out of high school, peers with careers and other moms like me. People who have other political affiliations or live in totally different parts of the world — people from here in the States who have had such different lives, that it sometimes feels like another world.

Being involved in a fandom will make your world a smaller place, and you will be better for it.