"Bridging the Gap: Can ERB Fans be Engaged in Meaningful Participation?"

This post draws its inspiration from a contest organized to encourage Calots chapter members to write blogs for this website. Furthermore, it incorporates the results of a Calots best title event that was specifically created to engage ERB Fans. In this blog, an experienced ERB fan shares their thoughts on the issue of engagement, which is not only affecting Burroughs Fandom but also numerous other organizations where member engagement is crucial. I would like to express my gratitude to the author for this post and hope that it inspires every member of a Facebook group, ERB Chapter, Club, or Ring of Friendship, to deeply contemplate the future and how we can reignite everyone’s Burroughs passion to share, discuss, write, and engage with fellow ERB fans. - Editor

by Laurence Dunn

How do you get an ERB fan to respond or participate in a great idea? There are times I truly believe that you need to go up to that person and shake the back of their shoulders to get them to start typing on their keyboard to get any kind of response.

A year or so ago, I reported in the Panthans Journal that the character Norman Bean (better known as Edgar Rice Burroughs) was making an appearance in an episode of The Murdoch Mysteries. I even gave a link to watch it free without having to subscribe to the streaming service. I baited my entire mailing list which numbered around 140 people at the time to tell me that they at least watched it. I think I received three responses.

The recent ‘ERB Title Madness’ by the Carolina Calots was even simpler than sitting through a 45-minute show, all one had to do was to choose one book over another throughout each round and root for your choice. As reported, it was posted on a Facebook site that boasts 25,000 members, and one would surely surmise that even if 1% bothered to respond, you could get 250 votes. Did that happen? I believe I am correct in saying that the highest number of votes that were made, was just 25. 0.1% - and my guess is that the majority of those did not come from the Facebook page, but from the membership of the Calots themselves.

There is a disease that is rampant and widespread throughout ERB fandom that simply saps the belief out of fanzine publishers that while their readers may read something that you have put a great deal of effort into, they will never respond. The disease is known as ‘lurking.’

Around the year 2000 when the World Wide Web was basically still in its infancy and only a fraction of us had email addresses linked by a dial-up modem with its monotonous whirring as you made a connection, there were two email groups set up by Jim Thompson (ERBCOF-L) and Bruce Bozarth (Erblist) that had perhaps 100 or so members, some of whom were members of both. Here was a brand new world where responses from other fans could come thick and fast rather than having to wait days or perhaps weeks for a reply letter to arrive by the postman. No longer did you have to attend either of the two main ERB conventions normally held in the continental U.S. to talk with another fan, here you could sit at home and simply type away at your keyboard and ‘talk’ with an old friend to discuss your favorite author. But the disease hit hard and fast from the get-go. Both Bruce and Jim would regularly tell us how many members each had, but those who participated usually numbered less than 25% that had access.

Is there a sensation amongst the lurkers that if they dared to write an open letter for more than one person to see, that they would be judged by the content of their words and condemned? Even worse, they might get no response and feel ridiculed. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a lurker? Is that keyboard that sits in front of them laced with poison that their fingers dare not touch it?

Fortunate for me as a fanzine publisher and who has written articles about Burroughs in several other fanzines, participated on Facebook, regularly attend Zoom meetings, attended 50 or more ERB conventions over the past 40 years despite living an ocean away, I’m a bit more thick-skinned to let the lurkers bother me. The keyboard is my friend, my avenue of escape, to write about Edgar Rice Burroughs and his work as best as I see fit, share my thoughts and be creative to the 180 or so souls on my mailing list with little fear that I shall be condemned by the lurkers.

The keyboard in front of the lurkers is their enemy and thou must not touch.