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Here's where your analogy particularly breaks down: "a gamer" is neither a professional nor an amateur mark. Fandom does not, and perhaps cannot, have any sort of success bar. There is a notion of a "professional gamer" in the eSports world, and it's possible to extrapolate thereby to a notion of an "amateur gamer" that competes in eSports. But that belies a confusion between "[sports] gamer" and "[fandom/enthusiast] gamer". Within the context of fandom/enthusiasm, what would "professional" mean? "Amateur"?

Fandom/enthusiasm don't really have success bars. It's something you are either enthusiastic about or you aren't. You can be a fan of something and never be successful at it, however you define success. A baseball fan doesn't have to be good at actually playing baseball nor devoted to a deep knowledge of the sport to be a fan of their favorite team.




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