Flipping through one or two ad-ridden forum pages, it's surprising how quickly you can encounter a comment that seems simply out of the realm of comprehension. Avatar-Forums.com member "Bens" describes his love for James Cameron's super high budget, blue alien flick and the world it creates with such words as, "Yesterday I watched Avatar 6th time ... All you can find in Avatar shows you that you already have all this in you in your heart. Find it and keep it in your heart forever ... I am crying again now."
After reading one or two of these comments, you might think that this emotion cannot be sincere. I decided the only way to know whether it was real was to find out for myself.
Spurred by a recent CNN report, Avatar-Forums.com seems to attract only the most passionate fans, the kind that contributes to one of its wildly popular topics entitled: "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible." After seeing the report, I wanted to gain full access to the site to see what all the fuss was about. I registered as a member on the forum and started using a sneaky new guise to begin flipping through page after page of mind-numbing babble, trying to find as many gems buried among the posts as I could.
In between digging through all the overzealous praise and posts pondering what the female protagonist alien would look like in high heels, I found comments describing how Avatar changed some viewers' perspectives about life. Perhaps, then, Avatar could do something meaningful for someone else, even if it didn't have a significant impact on me. I guess I should not judge, anyhow, as I myself am hiding a replica Harry Potter wand and robe among my childhood possessions.
But even I was struck by the frequency of members' declarations of love and commitment to the film. Founding member "Neytiri" was among the most passionate, advising other members about how to cope with the impossibility of traveling to the alien world and asking others for ways to break their obsession to loved ones. Neytiri's posts were so juicy that I had to get in on more Avatar love, so I threw a list of questions her way, thinking that I already knew what her answers would be, given her numerous previous posts.
To my dismay, however, amid the lengthy responses Neytiri returned, the love was not there. In lieu of emotionally unbalanced, hot alien-obsessed responses full of outrageous capitalization and emoticons, all I managed to extract was a detached, neutral and philosophical member stressing how Avatar's depiction of nature made her want to recycle more.
I figure this much: Though there's a definite possibility that one might want to seem a little less like a giddy teenager in content and delivery when interviewed for a college publication, Neytiri's passivity may expose more about the fan forum as a whole. As a forum member, Neytiri can declare from the safety of her computer whatever she'd like, but when it becomes clear that Neytiri is making direct contact with another human being, she may hesitate before slapping bold words through her keyboard about her ideal Na'avi man.
So what's worse, then - an eerie but genuine aficionado of nerdy relics of the sci-fi/fantasy genre, or a big phony aware of the social ineptitude such an intense obsession suggests? Personally, it seems to me that if you plan on declaring via fan forum that you're Han Solo's No. 1 fan, you better be wearing the costume and matching furry Chewie bedroom slippers at home to prove it.
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