Behavior #5: The Self-Centered Assumption that Everyone Else Wants What They Want

Many fangirls are paranoid as hell. They assume everyone else wants exactly what they want, that everyone else is operating based on the same motivations that they are. The more they become obsessed with a certain band member, the more convinced they become that all other women must be after the same band member.

I tend to think that this kind of inability to understand that other people may have different feelings or desires stems from a lack of life experience and a very tiny social sphere. Spend too much time shut up inside your own head, and you would assume everyone else wants what you want, wouldn't you? Then again, a lot of fangirls really do want the same thing – that is to say, attention from the same guy. Fangirls who spend most of their time surrounded by other fangirls may easily lose touch with a fact that in the larger world (or even in the non-fangirl part of the rock scene) to put it technically, no1curr.

A real-life example: a few years ago, Cayce attended a show by a once-famous, now little-known indie band at a small and very old live house in Meguro. At the goods booth, the band were selling tickets to their next show, which was to be held at an even smaller live house in Ikebukuro – the sort of venue that only fits about 150 people. The sort of venue where you can see the stage perfectly even if you're standing at the back of the room, because even from the back of the room, the stage is only about four meters away. Why anyone would care about line numbers for such a concert was beyond me – at such a small venue, who cares if you're in the front or not? But for some reason, the tickets to this show were numbered, and in order to keep things fair, the band's staff had sealed each ticket into an individual brown paper envelope and mixed up the numbers, so that the numbers would be randomly assigned, rather than given on a first-come, first-serve basis.

I decided to buy a ticket to the show, so I went over to the goods booth. But when I got there, a person who I knew to be one of the band's most serious (read: crazy) fangirls was already there buying a ticket for herself. She handed over the money to the staff member behind the booth, and the staff member pulled out the stack of envelopes with tickets in them. I told the staff member I'd like to buy a ticket, too. The staff member nodded at me, so I pulled out my money – but the staff member couldn't take it from me yet, because she was busy holding out the envelopes with the tickets in a fan shape, so that Crazy Fangirl could choose whichever ticket she liked. Well, Crazy Fangirl was taking her sweet time choosing. Her hand wavered back and forth over that fan of envelopes as if she were attempting to channel supernatural powers that would help her divine which envelope held Ticket #1. I, on the other hand, didn't give a damn which number I got. Figuring I could pick my ticket first and pay once Crazy Fangirl was done with her divining rod act, I reached out my hand and pulled out an envelope at random...at which point Crazy Fangirl freaked the fuck out.

“How dare you!” she screamed at me. “I paid first, I choose first!” I stared at her in disbelief for a second, before continuing to extract my chosen envelope from the stack – whereupon Crazy Fangirl swatted me hard over the head.

“What the fuck?” yours truly yelled in surprise, whereupon everyone in the tiny venue heard my shout and whirled around to glare at me suspiciously, muttering and shaking their heads. Nobody aside from the staff member had seen Crazy Fangirl hit me. A second later, Crazy Fangirl flounced back to her group of friends, no doubt dying to tell them how Cayce had committed an unforgivable violation of fangirl law and must be punished.

As a coda to this story, I'll add that a few months later, Crazy Fangirl got into a violent tussle with another fan at Shinjuku Loft which resulted in the police being called. Statements were taken, and Crazy Fangirl was banned from future shows, so in fact, it was she who was punished. She may be an extreme example, but there are plenty of others like her – so out of touch with reality that they'll physically attack a perceived rival over next to nothing. In Crazy Fangirl's mind, I had been trying to cut her in line, as it were – to beat her to a chance to score that all-important Ticket #1. Since she assumed I thought like her and wanted what she wanted, it had never, and would never, occur to her that in fact, I didn't give a damn about Ticket #1, and just wanted to get the ticket buying over with so I could go get some beer.

Which brings me to the next hallmark fangirl behavior...

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