What the Idea of “Increasing Your Fans” Overlooks — the More You Are Supported, the Less You Are Verified

Introduction

Increase your fans. If there are people who cheer for you ardently, you can keep your activity going — this advice has a solid persuasiveness.

In fact, the presence of people who support you deeply sustains your activity. There are reactions, gratitude arrives, what you put out is received. This response is real.

Yet beyond the point where fans have grown, something strange occurs. What you put out gradually drifts from your own thinking. “If I put this out, there will be a reaction” — before you know it, this calculation has become the standard of your transmission.

Many are surely searching for how to increase their fans. What this article verifies is the premise beneath it: what the shape of relationship called “fan” structurally presupposes — its dissection.

Let me give the conclusion first. The concept of the fan presupposes a one-directional asymmetry: “the maker puts out, the receiver receives.” And this asymmetry, in the long run, depletes the maker.

What the Theory of “True Fans” Falls Silent About

There is a famous theory that showed the insight that building deep relationships leads to sustainable activity: Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans.” The claim that a maker can live if there are a few deep supporters has given hope to many independent workers.

Let me confirm, to be safe. I am not treating this theory itself as the problem. The insight “a deep relationship is more sustainable than diffusion to an unspecified mass” is essentially correct. The problem lies in the distortion that arose in the process by which this insight was implemented on the platform.

On that basis, there is a point to note structurally. A “true fan” is defined as a person who “gladly buys everything you put out.”

As an economic relationship this looks advantageous to the maker. But in fact it is a relationship whose core is an uncritical trust: “if it is this person, anything has value.” A receiver who does not evaluate critically and always receives affirmatively — this is closer to the definition of a dependent relationship than to the partner of a healthy solidarity.

What this theory falls silent about is the following. It may be possible to hold 1,000 fans. But by keeping up with the expectations of those 1,000, what does the maker lose?

Motive Quietly Migrates from Inside to Outside

Let me trace what is lost as stages.

The first stage is “the migration of motive.” The experience “I put out what I wanted to put out, and there was a reaction” turns into the behaviour “keep putting out what gets a reaction.” Even if quality is maintained, the motive that generates is quietly migrating from inside to outside. This stage is hard to notice from outside and even for the person.

The second stage is “defensive transmission.” A stage of keeping out content that, while meeting the expected standard, has drifted from your original concern. The sense “this is not what I truly want to convey, but it is demanded” begins to accompany it. The fear of falling silent also strengthens. Put something out and you must meet expectations; fall silent and worry and criticism come — you enter a structure where either option leads to depletion.

The third stage is “rupture.” It appears to the outside as a sudden declaration of retirement, but its substance is “the loss of the will to continue.” From the first stage to here can take months to years. Even if it looks sudden from outside, it is only the final stage of an accumulated process.

What the self-determination theory of the psychologists Deci and Ryan has shown repeatedly is the fact that action grounded in intrinsic motivation is superior to action grounded in extrinsic motivation in persistence, creativity, and learning effect [Deci & Ryan, 1985]. When motive migrates outward, what is lost is this persistence itself.

The More You Are Supported, the Less Your Thinking Is Verified

There is one more easily overlooked loss.

When you are ardently supported, the maker gains the satisfaction “this idea is getting through.” But at the same time, that “one’s ideas are received exactly as they are” also means “one’s ideas are not being verified.”

No one is turning a critical eye. No one is saying “I think this part is wrong.” An idea put out in that state, however precise it looks, remains “a closed system of a single way of seeing.”

I myself, as I have gone on transmitting, have received two kinds of reaction.

One is the reaction shaped as “I think you are exactly right.” A courteous reception. But when I receive this reaction, my thinking does not move.

The other is the reaction shaped as “this viewpoint differs from my own observation right here.” When I receive this reaction, something happens on my side. There is the discovery “my way of seeing had stopped here.”

A maker who keeps receiving only the former has, while surrounded by approval, no partner for thinking. This is a kind of loneliness that deepens the more supporters there are.

▸ This difference by “the kind of reaction” is treated in what is the difference between a comrade and an ally?.

The Fan Quietly Slides into a Believer

Between “fan” and “believer” there seems, at first glance, a great distance. But seen structurally, the two have a continuity.

Note that “believer” here carries no religious meaning. It is a social-psychological metaphor for a state of accepting the words of an authority without critical examination, of entrusting autonomous judgement to an external authority.

The slope is not an abrupt change. At first you follow as “a means of gathering information.” Next a trust forms — “this person’s way of seeing is a useful reference.” And the moment you cross a single step into “if this person says it, it is right,” the fan begins to head toward the believer.

What accelerates this slope is a closed place. Belong to a group that trusts the same counterpart, and within it exchanges that reinforce trust are carried on daily. It is the principle of “social proof” shown by the psychologist Robert Cialdini [Cialdini, 2007]. People are apt to judge as right what many people think is right.

As a result, a design that gathers fans, whether intended or not, holds a pull in the direction of turning fans into believers. This is not a problem of the operator’s ethics but a problem of design.

Conclusion: What to Ask Is Not the Number but the Quality of Reaction

What the idea of “increasing your fans” overlooks is the single point that the relationship presupposes the asymmetry of “those who lead and those who follow.”

Increase the number while keeping the asymmetry, and the maker is depleted by responding to expectations while the receiver lets go of the power to see critically. For both sides, it is a long-term loss.

So what to ask is not the number. It is the quality of the reaction you are receiving.

If only agreement comes back, your ideas close off unverified. If differing observations come back, that relationship updates your thinking. Even the same “being supported” carries an entirely different meaning.

And this difference is not born by chance. It is decided by what kind of relationship you design. The whole of that design is gathered in why the more you connect, the lonelier you grow.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985) Plenum Press
• Cialdini, R. B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2007)
• Weber, M. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1921)