Well, I'm a bit late but the headline "Professional Fandom" for one of the panels caught my eye. Because this expression is just as stupid as "Professional Gaming" or "Professional Protester".
How can you be a professional something, if what you do is by definition not professional? And no, there is not the difference between the amounts of money involved (e.g. cosplay does not become professional if you have high quality, expensive costumes and have your photos taken by a professional photographer). While we're at it: What makes a photographer a professional photographer? Well, most would say "If he can do many different things he learned with his camera that a beginner could not!" or "Because he can do good pictures, silly!". Both are false.
Surely, a professional photographer can do more things with his camera than a beginner, but he doesn't need them to be more professional than a beginner. And of course he can do good pictures, but so can the beginner with modern cameras and a bit of luck - the difference is that the photographer knows what makes a picture good and why it does so. A beginner does not.
Now, saying a fan is professional is silly because it implies that there are differences in quality in how someone can experience something based on whether he/she is a "professional" fan or not. How can that be? Why would someone who is new to gaming in general would have less legit experiences when playing a game than someone who thinks he has already seen it all? Perhaps his/her experiences are even more legit and professional because they aren't clouded by previous ones. Or perhaps all fans are "unprofessional" because they are biased.
But hey, who am I to criticise "professional journalism", the very guys who can't even define "non-partisan" and don't know how to properly write critique.
(I hope...)
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Oh, Christmas has come early!
