You know that feeling.
The one where you’re so deep into a book, an album, or a show that it stops feeling like something you’re consuming and starts feeling like something you’re living. It’s one of the most powerful ways women bond over pop culture. You’re not just reading — you’re Violet Sorrengail, practically. You didn’t just listen to The Tortured Poets Department, you felt every single word of it like Taylor Swift wrote it in your journal. You didn’t watch Bridgerton, you are a Bridgerton.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, you think: is it just me?
It is not just you. It is never just you. And the moment you find that out — the moment you realize there’s an entire world of people who feel exactly what you feel — is one of the best feelings there is.
How Women Bond Over Pop Culture
I’ll be honest about what actually prompted this post. When the Off Campus series dropped, I watched the entire thing in under 24 hours. I have now watched it three times. I am almost finished with the first book. And in the process of completely losing my mind over it, I discovered that millions of other women did the exact same thing — and that discovery, that moment of finding your people, is exactly what this post is about.
I went to see The Hunger Games alone. Not because I couldn’t find anyone to go with, but because I didn’t want to wait. I had read every page of those books. I had imagined every scene. I needed to see Katniss on that screen and I needed to see her now.
So I bought my ticket, found my seat, and looked around at a theater full of people who had done the exact same thing.
We didn’t know each other. We hadn’t spoken a word. But when Peeta and Katniss finally kissed — you know the moment — the entire theater gasped. Together. Strangers, every one of us, sharing something that felt almost too big to hold alone.
I drove home with that feeling buzzing in my chest and thought: this is why we do this.
We Don’t Just Enjoy Things — We Inhabit Them
There’s something specific about the way women love things. We become unofficial ambassadors. We evangelize. I have never written a single word of the Fourth Wing series, and yet I will recommend it to every human being I encounter with the energy of someone who has a personal stake in its success. Good storytelling gives you a life you didn’t live and feelings you didn’t know you needed.
And then someone else admits they felt it too, and suddenly you’re not just a reader or a listener or a viewer. You’re part of something.
I have loved books my entire life. English lit major, lifelong reader, the kind of person who gets emotionally attached to fictional characters in a way that probably warrants some self-reflection. Twilight. The Hunger Games. I was there for all of it — staying up too late, reading under the covers, genuinely grieving when a series ended.
And then I became a mother, and like so many things we take for granted, free time quietly disappeared.
It took me about nine years to find my way back. A few years ago I made a decision: less scrolling, less screens, more books. I picked one up and remembered almost immediately why I had loved it so much. The losing yourself in it. The way a really good series makes the real world feel slightly less interesting by comparison. I tumbled down the rabbit hole and decided to stay in Wonderland.
ACOTAR. Throne of Glass. Crescent City. Fourth Wing. And now, Off Campus — because apparently I never learn my lesson about starting a series I won’t be able to put down. I became so emotionally invested in each of these that when I turned the last page, I didn’t feel finished — I felt bereft. Genuinely grieving the characters and the world and the words I no longer had. If you know, you know.
The best part? Discovering I was not alone. Not even close. When I posted a video wearing all black to mourn Onyx Storm, it went viral — because thousands of women felt exactly the same way and needed someone to say it out loud first.
That’s the moment I really got it. The fandom isn’t a side effect of loving something. It is the thing.
And I’ll never forget sitting on a cruise ship pool deck next to my future mother-in-law, both of us quietly reading, when we glanced over and realized we were both reading Fifty Shades of Grey. We looked at each other. We burst out laughing. Instant bond. Sometimes community finds you when you least expect it.
We Always Find Each Other
Remember the week after the first Bridgerton season dropped? Women everywhere — myself included — were posting photos in florals, sipping from teacups, fully committing to the bit. Nobody organized it. Nobody sent a memo. It just happened, because that’s what we do when something moves us: we find each other.
Or take the 98 Degrees concert I went to in middle school. I couldn’t tell you the year. I couldn’t tell you the setlist. What I can tell you is that I spent a solid hour hugging and scream-singing and crying with complete strangers who loved that band as much as I did. We had nothing in common except that one thing — and that one thing was everything.
And then there are the ones that sneak up on you.
My husband has loved The 1975 for as long as I can remember. He tried to show me — first when they performed “Chocolate” on Conan, then again on SNL — and I wasn’t impressed. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. There’s a decent chance I was pregnant or had a newborn and was simply too distracted to care about anything that wasn’t sleep.
But he didn’t give up. He sprinkled their music in wherever he could for the next eight years. YouTube videos during the pandemic. A new album announcement delivered at an unreasonable hour on a summer morning in 2021 — six months pregnant, barely awake, and he was vibrating with excitement. I did not share the excitement. I smiled and went back to sleep.
And then August 2022 happened.
We were driving to Provincetown, windows down, and he put “Happiness” on repeat. Cape Cod stretched out in front of us and he just… glowed. The way people glow when something they love is playing and the moment is exactly right. I looked at him like I still didn’t fully understand the obsession.
But I was singing along.
By the time “I’m in Love with You” came out, I was fully singing along. And when he got tickets to their first tour since the pandemic cancellations, I complained — genuinely complained — about going. I went anyway, to support him, the way you do.
On November 3, 2022, we walked into Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, and everything changed.
The room was full of people who had waited years for that night. You could feel it before the first note played — that specific electricity of a crowd that has missed something badly and is finally getting it back. When the music started, it didn’t feel like a concert. It felt like a reunion. And I stood there next to my husband, in the middle of all of it, and finally understood.
That’s the thing about fandom. Sometimes it finds you through someone else’s love first — and when it finally clicks, it clicks all the way.
Now I check fan accounts daily for hints about a new release. I know half of it is fake news. I don’t care. The speculation is the community. The decoding, the theorizing, the collective losing of our minds — it’s all part of it. And somewhere out there are thousands of other people doing the exact same thing, refreshing the same pages, hoping for the same news.
I am one of them now. Along with my husband who is happy I finally listened. And it feels great.
And when Taylor Swift and Matty Healy briefly dated in 2023? I won’t pretend I wasn’t absolutely beside myself. If you read my blog then you actually already know based on all of my posts. Two of my favorite artists, colliding in real time, sending both fanbases into a collective spiral together. The internet was chaos. It was wonderful. My daughter and I marked the occasion the only way that felt right — she wore her Taylor Swift shirt, I wore my 1975 tee designed to look like Taylor’s Eras tour shirt, and we took a photo that I will treasure forever as proof that sometimes the universe just gives you exactly what you didn’t know you needed.
Here’s What’s Actually Happening When We Do This
We are wired for connection. And for a lot of us, especially in the chaos of adult life — jobs, kids, responsibilities, the general exhaustion of existing — it gets harder and harder to find it in the ways we used to. But fandom? Fandom doesn’t require scheduling. It doesn’t require anyone to show up at a specific time or place. It just requires that you loved the same thing someone else loved, and that you were brave enough to say so out loud.
When you find your people over a book series or an album or a show, it doesn’t feel small. It feels like being let into a secret society. Like finally sitting at the right table. Like someone slid an invitation under your door and said: we’ve been waiting for you.
That’s not a trivial thing. That’s belonging. And belonging — real, felt, joyful belonging — gives us purpose.
That’s Not Obsession. That’s Community.
So the next time someone rolls their eyes at how much you care about a fictional world or a pop album or a TV show — let them. You’re not being dramatic. You’re being human. You found something that made you feel something, and then you found the people who felt it too. I am proud to be passing down the secret to belonging to my daughter, who is bonding with friends (and me!) over The Hunger Games series.
That’s not obsession. That’s community. And it’s one of the best things we do.
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