With the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens this past weekend, there’s been a frenzy of Star Wars fannishness around the Internet, with calls to avoid revealing spoilers interspersed with endless memes, think pieces, and quizzes. I consider myself a Star Wars fan (among many other fandoms), so all this felt normal to me.

Then I saw someone say something about how overwhelming it all was. Is this, the person wondered, how everyone else feels when we get all in a tizzy about the latest Doctor Who news du jour? The very idea turned them off so much they felt chagrined about participating in the hoopla in the past and talked of turning off all their social media accounts to avoid subjecting the rest of the world to such nonsense in the future.

I think this startled Who fan has taken the wrong lesson from the experience. There are two major classes of reactions one can have when presented with this sort of behavioral mirror: recoil or embrace. The former is the route my unfortunate acquaintance took, and springs from an exterior perspective. When seen from the outside, fannish behavior can appear irrational, overzealous, and occasionally even militant—in short: fanatical.

When one is confronted with another fandom’s behavior for the first time, the intensity can be really frightening. That’s true whether said fandom is based on a particular flavor of SFF like Who or Star Wars, on a video game franchise, on a sports team, or on any other Thing-someone-else-loves-but-about-which-you-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass. This is why die-hard sports fans and SFF-convention-goers tend to give each other such serious side-eye. Each group is thinking, “it’s normal for me to dress up and get rowdy about my team/my show, but those weirdos are incomprehensible!”

Fans of one thing who view fans of other things this way tend not to notice the similarities. Occasionally, though, someone will experience cognitive dissonance as the parallels become suddenly clear. “Oh my god—that’s what I look like to other people when I talk about [my fandom]!” The revulsion formerly aimed at the Other turns inward, causing the recoil reaction I mentioned. The fan decides that their own behavior, comparable as it is to that they detested from the Others, is inherently bad.

Such is the despair that struck my social media friend. Although in some ways I completely understand that tendency, I think a more fruitful way to approach the revelation is through a more internal perspective. While the recoiler sees themselves from the outside and is appalled, the embracer sees the Other from the inside and is delighted.

The fan who approaches other fandoms in this manner (and I will admit that in many cases it’s easier for an SFF fan to recognize this in fans of other SFF properties, though plenty of us cross over with sports, too) see the behavior of the Other and think, “Oh my god! That’s how I feel about [my fandom]!” Note the difference here; rather than focusing on external judgement, one who embraces the mirror image focuses on the internal excitement sparked in another fan.

Recognizing yourself in the heart of the Other (rather than the Other in the appearance of yourself) allows you to appreciate that fan’s extremes as their own brand of joy, resonating in them in the same way that love of your fandom of choice makes your spirit vibrate. For me, in fact, I’ve found that sitting on the sidelines and enjoying others’ enjoyment of their Thing just makes loving my own fandoms more awesome. “Look at you over there, reveling in your Thing! I will be over here reveling in my Thing, too.” Of course, all this changes in the case that one or more revelers cease to pay attention to how their enjoyment of their Thing impacts others around them negatively, but that’s a different post.

I am, obviously, an advocate of taking the “embrace” path whenever possible (maybe in part it’s because I’m old enough now not to give too many fucks about what strangers think of me). I know not everyone can do that, for various reasons, but I encourage everyone to give it a try. You may find that, even if you never share those Others’ enthusiasm for their fandom, the Force might be with you, too.

p.s. I’ve now seen The Force Awakens, so you’re welcome to talk to me about it, as long as it doesn’t involve posting spoilers where others can see them.