gattino
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2003
- Messages
- 2,523
I'm using the term Fortean here to mean people with a greater than average interest in the parananormal and related subjects...people who actively buy magazines and books on a variety of such topics, read the FT and lurk upon this and other themed blogs and forums.
As for what I mean by social type, I'm not entirely sure..just wondering out loud.
On the thread about Transgender people it went a little off topic into areas of sexuality and so on and it was pointed out that a large number of transgender individuals are in the "occult community" and that the essentially accurate stereotype of the clairvoyant or medium is of a woman or a camp man.
Although "forteans" per se have little cultural presence as a class in the media, there is currently a pair of entirely comic relief characters in the soap opera Coronation Street, Mary the shopkeeper and the editor of her favourite magazine "The inexplicible" (I suspect largely inspired by our own favourite publication) who are bonded by their common belief in supernatural mysteries. Their mutual admission to having once been sceptics (revealed as a shameful secret) is enough to drive them into each other's lusty middle aged embrace. Their passionate interest in bigfoot and orbs etc are in other words symbolic of them being a variety of comical social misfit .
Though the term Geek is often now held up as a badge of pride, comic book and sci fi fans - with whom there is clearly some overlap in the pages of FT - are very much percieved of, rightly or wrongly, in those terms. The Big Bang Theory shows us what to expect fans of such material to be like...unsporty, socially awkward, unable in the case of men to relate to girls very much, living at home too long et etc. Similarly when someone is identified as a train spotter, their entire personality and home life is presumed in largely mocking or pitying terms in our minds.
I don't sense the latter is true of people interested in the paranormal..too many people are..but my question is ...allowing for countless individual exceptions including everyone here .. do you think there is a similar set of personal characteristics that eitehr are OR ARE PERCIEVED TO BE typical of people who take an active interest in the stuff we all do? Is the average follower of these themes more likely to be - or be seen as being - academic? socially inadequate? kooky? a loner? outgoing? eccentric? Are the majority of forteans, indeed, another variety of geek?
As for what I mean by social type, I'm not entirely sure..just wondering out loud.
On the thread about Transgender people it went a little off topic into areas of sexuality and so on and it was pointed out that a large number of transgender individuals are in the "occult community" and that the essentially accurate stereotype of the clairvoyant or medium is of a woman or a camp man.
Although "forteans" per se have little cultural presence as a class in the media, there is currently a pair of entirely comic relief characters in the soap opera Coronation Street, Mary the shopkeeper and the editor of her favourite magazine "The inexplicible" (I suspect largely inspired by our own favourite publication) who are bonded by their common belief in supernatural mysteries. Their mutual admission to having once been sceptics (revealed as a shameful secret) is enough to drive them into each other's lusty middle aged embrace. Their passionate interest in bigfoot and orbs etc are in other words symbolic of them being a variety of comical social misfit .
Though the term Geek is often now held up as a badge of pride, comic book and sci fi fans - with whom there is clearly some overlap in the pages of FT - are very much percieved of, rightly or wrongly, in those terms. The Big Bang Theory shows us what to expect fans of such material to be like...unsporty, socially awkward, unable in the case of men to relate to girls very much, living at home too long et etc. Similarly when someone is identified as a train spotter, their entire personality and home life is presumed in largely mocking or pitying terms in our minds.
I don't sense the latter is true of people interested in the paranormal..too many people are..but my question is ...allowing for countless individual exceptions including everyone here .. do you think there is a similar set of personal characteristics that eitehr are OR ARE PERCIEVED TO BE typical of people who take an active interest in the stuff we all do? Is the average follower of these themes more likely to be - or be seen as being - academic? socially inadequate? kooky? a loner? outgoing? eccentric? Are the majority of forteans, indeed, another variety of geek?