I’m here by way of atone­ment, because I used to be a real jerk about fan­dom, and I used to make fun of them, and think they were wast­ing their time. And then I had this kin­da life-changing come-to-Jesus moment that I want to talk to you about and this real­ly weird arti­fact that got pro­duced part­ly because of me, and it’s com­plete­ly changed my think­ing. And as I’ve got­ten to know fan­dom and real­ly like them, I’ve come to believe that they kind of rep­re­sent a future and a mod­el for what com­mu­ni­ties are like on the Internet when you have actu­al peo­ple using machines to talk to one anoth­er rather than this kind of invent­ed sense of what social life and social net­works are sup­posed to be like, the way we’ve engi­neered them.