What Makes Someone a Follower Rather Than a Fan?

Written By Eric Nielsen

A follower is willing to bear the consequences of rejection by others, ridicule, being passed over, and laughed at when the cause he/she believes in is no longer popular. Fans disappear when their cause is no longer popular and it becomes costly in either reputation, comfort, or convenience to stay the course. Fans fall away, followers remain.

Sacrifice

Followers also reap the bounty of rewards when the cause they have sacrificed for pays off. There were probably a lot of fans of Apple computers before they went big. The followers who invested in Apple stock sacrificed at the time, but reaped the riches later while fans were on the outside could only look in. Spielberg, Lady Gaga, Lebron James have many fans now, but their followers will be known once they are no longer popular.

Consider the example of what a follower looks like from the pen of an American Communist a few decades ago in Mexico City, writing this letter to his fiancee:

We communists suffer many casualties. We are those whom they shoot, hang, lynch, tar and feather, imprison, slander, fire from our jobs and whose lives people make miserable in every way possible. Some of us are killed and imprisoned. We live in poverty…

…We have a cause to fight for, a specific goal in life. We lose our insignificant identities in the great river of humanity; and if our personal lives seem hard, or if our egos seem bruised through subordination to the Party, we are amply rewarded-in the thought that all of us, even though it be in a very small way, are contributing something new and better for humanity.

There is one thing about which I am completely in earnest-the communist cause. It is my life, my business, my religion, my hobby, my sweetheart, my wife, my mistress, my meat and drink. I work at it by day and dream of it by night. Its control over me grows greater with the passage of time. Therefore I cannot have a friend, a lover or even a conversation without relating them to this power that animates and controls my life. [1]

You may read this man’s words and disagree with his cause. But one thing that is hard to disagree with is that he was a true follower of his cause.

Imagine a world where the causes which are most valuable and worth fighting for are what we choose to devote our lives to not as fans, but as followers?

We are left with a big question. There is no worthiness in sacrificing for the wrong things. Many people have sacrificially followed a cause or person and lost big-time!

What cause or person is actually worth the cost of following? (See my conclusions here)

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[1] White, John. The Cost Of Commitment. Leicester : Inter-Varsity Press, 1976. Print.

Tags: fan, follower, rewards, sacrifice, worthy cause