Could a grocery list ever become a cult hit? Perhaps.

A satirical article from Datelinehollywood.com envisioned what might be if fans of cult writer/director Joss Whedon ever took fandom to a scary place. The article jokingly reports that a grocery list written by Joss Whedon leaked onto the Internet and has been generating thousands of hits, inspiring a Joss’s Grocery Shoppers fan club. This caused sales of items on the list to increase by 173 per cent and even rallying fans to raise $2.5 million to turn it into a television series.

"It sounds like the maddest Buffy April Fool ever, but it’s not." The ambiguity of the Datelinehollywood.com article eludes to something profound about the nature of fandom today - and not just the need for a competent fact-checker at the Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazine. After reading these two articles, and as a self-professed fan of Buffy and Joss Whedon myself, I began to wonder about a few things. What was Datelinehollywood.com trying to satirize when it published that article? What would make the Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazine believe such absurdity? What does it even mean to be a "fan"? And why won’t Joss return any of my calls?

My first two questions are probably the easiest to answer. Joss Whedon has an incredibly obsess-ahem devoted fan base, despite the fact that most people don’t even know who Joss Whedon is.

A writer for the San Francisco Chronicle’s website, SFGate.com, was recently bewildered to receive hate mail from fans of Joss’ latest project Serenity because of his favourable review of the movie. (Serenity is based on Firefly which was cancelled after one season). According to the writer, the fans were angry that he "didn’t praise Whedon’s TV show Firefly enough" and because he "pointed out that critics generally didn’t like that show".

In a response to the hate mail, the writer, who is a self-professed geek, went so far as to say, "Joss Whedon has spawned the most hardcore science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts ever to walk this planet. This includes people who learn to speak Klingon, people who remain in character after they leave the Renaissance Fair and people who boycotted the Lord of the Rings movies because there were elves at Helm’s Deep." I can do nothing but nod my head slowly in shame and agree.

So that answers my first two questions: Datelinehollywood.com was ridiculing the fervour with which those hardcore Joss fans, and any hardcore fans for that matter, fixate on one fandom or another. And the Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazine was quite right to believe that satirical article because Joss fans might just be that scary.

But I still wanted to know what it means to be a fan. So I took my query to YAMA (Anime and Manga Association at York University).

YAMA is known for coordinating weekly anime showings and for hosting contests at local conventions, such as CNAnime and AnimeNorth. The members currently reside in an office at Bethune College proudly sporting life-sized posters of anime characters and a respectable library of shows for the perusal of its paying members. Surely this would be the perfect place to rest my pondering head.

According to YAMA president, Vladimir Kavoun, "A fan is someone who is consistently searching for writing and information on a specific genre or topic." A fan is just someone that likes something enough to invest time and effort into finding out more about it, and who presumably expresses some level of affection toward it.

But, contrary to popular belief, not all fans are as rabid or fanatical as Datelinehollywood.com would have us believe. As Kavoun adds, "There are different levels of fandom."

A trip to the annual Canadian National Expo in Toronto will prove just that. Every summer fans of gaming, comics, science fiction, horror and anime come together at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre to celebrate their fandoms by communing with stars at Q&A sessions, perusing vendors and participating in or observing the many impressive costumes at the final masquerade. One look at the thousands of people milling into the centre will prove that there is more than one type of fan. From the people that spend months realizing their elaborate costumes to the 12-year-old who just wants to see Captain Kirk, trying to come up with a finite definition for "fan" there of all places seems rather daunting.

But whatever a "fan" is, whether you can chart Superman’s progression as a character through the decades citing comics and movie adaptations, or you just have an N’Sync poster hanging on your wall, let’s throw our hands up together and celebrate our fan-love, be it secret or vehemently public, hardcore or just budding, but always wonderfully, beautifully geeky.

Fun Facts about Fandom:

 Three books have been published in Klingon: Gilgamesh, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing.

 George Lucas originally planned on using the title The Adventures of Luke Starkiller before settling on Star Wars.

-Buffy the Vampire Slayer roughly translates in German to Buffy in the Thrall of Demons; in Japanese to The Vampire Killer: Holy Girl Buffy; and in Hungarian to Buffy: The Bogey of the Vampires.

 Many anime fans produce and watch "fansubs", which are recordings of anime series subtitled by fans. This is a violation of copyright law in many countries.

 Fans of Kiss are said to be planning a protest march on the Hall of Fame in Cleveland on Aug. 5, 2006 in response to the band being snubbed for induction.

 The first Superman character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the 1930s was a bald-headed villain, but was reworked onto the side of the law after poor sales.

 Fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show call those who have never seen the movie "virgins". Those who have seen the movie, but not the live show are called "masturbators" and those who attend showings frequently are called "sluts".