Alita's Fanbase On Social Media - An Attempt To Put Things Into Perspective

Alita: Battle Angel had a huge impact on my life; and from my many conversations with other fans I learned that they feel the same way. We all are passionate about the movie, and very enthusiastic. And when someone asks for "the best movie we've seen this year", "the most underrated movie", "movies more people should see", it usually doesn't take very long and the comments are flooded with memes or clips of Alita. To someone who has not seen the movie, or has seen it but isn't that excited as we are, that might be weird. Or even frightening. But actually, it's a matter of perspective.

When 1977 the first Star Wars movie was shown in theaters, many people watched it over and over again. And every day, when they were at school, at their college campus or at work, they met friends, co-eds and colleagues, and they told them about this fantastic new movie they've seen. And even when they were ridiculed for their passion about Star Wars, they just couldn't stop telling people to go see Star Wars. The movie was just too good.

Now imagine, if the entire world would meet at one schoolyard. All the passionate fans of Star Wars 1977, suddenly together at one place. They would seek and find each other. Within minutes, they would form a massive circle where they would talk to each other, and to bystanders, about how great the movie was. Imagine suddenly standing in front of several hundred people passionately loving a movie.

Are you scared?

Today's social media is like that world population convention on a schoolyard. Alita's fanbase is spread over the entire world. But thanks to social media, we are connected to each other. To remain in the metaphor: I can hear the australian Alita fan talk about the movie, and join the conversation from germany.

That leads to exactly that kind of situation I described at the beginning: Someone puts up a survey about, let's say, which movie should get an oscar. A few Alita fans see that survey and answer, of course, that Alita should be rewarded. Other fans are following them, see their reply and go to the thread, and then answer too, and in a chain reaction, the survey is spread throughout the entire fanbase. For us, it's just honestly answering a question. On the receiving end, it is like a tsunami of Alita fans commenting, washing everything else away. But in the end, the discomfort some might feel when they see this is the result of applying analogue world measures to the digital domain of social media.

Remember the schoolyard metaphor: In the real world, you would rarely see more then a few hundred people at once. Let's say 1% of these people are Alita fans. Then you are confronted with a one-digit number of Alita fans. No big deal, right?

This is our everyday experience, which shapes our expectation and perception of the world. And it's perfectly fine for the real world. These expectations do, however, not apply to social media, simply because we're not dealing with a sample size of a few hundred people there. We're dealing with millions of people, all interconnected; we are on a virtual schoolyard where the entire world population is gathered. We expect a one-digit number of people to respond, based on our real world experience, and freak out when, instead, a few hundred people respond; simply because we didn't take into consideration how many people actually are on that virtual schoolyard.

So, what can you do when the Alita wave is rolling over you?

That's simple: Keep calm and nothing bad is going to happen!

We are ordinary people. We have our flaws. We are passionate about a movie we love, we are enthusiastic, and yes, sometimes we get carried away by our enthusiasm. But we're not out in numbers to cause any harm. Just wait for the wave to tail away and go on with whatever you want. Or ask us about the movie and what we like about it. Deal with us the same way you would deal with people in the real world. Because after all, we're real world people talking on social media.