What superfans experience in a community of like-minded people could be described this way:

Picture a crowd swaying in unison to a beloved song. Everyone assembled feels the same emotion simultaneously, says Paul Booth, a professor of media and pop culture at DePaul University. The euphoria catches and builds.

The experience, known as “collective effervescence,” can feel transcendent, he says, almost telepathic.

“I think it has to do with wanting something in our lives that we can lose ourselves in,” he says. At a time of increasing polarization and cynicism—not to mention that coming election—it’s an especially wondrous connection, he adds…

Fandom asks us to latch ourselves to something outside of us, to allow a person or object we don’t have control over to become part of our identities. How much easier to stay cool and removed, rather than risk having our enthusiasm batted down or betrayed.

Concerts, conventions, sporting events, etc…gather with thousands of like-minded people and the activity and emotions can move people in unique ways. At one point in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, sociologist Émile Durkheim asked:

What other name can we give to that state when, after a collective effervescence, men believe themselves transported into an entirely different world from the one they have before their eyes?

It is not just a place where music is playing or a game or a bunch of activities in a convention hall; it is a particular experience that individuals alone have difficulty producing. It is the product of communal energy.

As the article notes, what happens if people experience fewer collective effervescence moments? Do humans need a certain amount to thrive – or do they suffer ill effects with fewer moments of collective effervescence?