The internet complicates the old fan taxonomy, and Johnson’s self-awarely intense approach complicates it much further. My first instinct, that Johnson has taken this much too far, would have been undoubtedly correct in a different decade. Today, parts of it feel familiar. I hurl an endless stream of veiled self-promotion onto Twitter with comparatively little feedback, and allowing yourself to believe you’re being seen when you’re probably not is as close to a pithy summation of social media culture as I can come up with. There’s something almost reportorial about what Johnson is doing, which I was constantly reminded of as I was working on this story, knowing that Johnson could see every time I went back to read one of his messages.

Some interesting thoughts on the relationship between fandom and celebrity.

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