Up to this point, I'd assumed that the wilder fan effusions are the core examples of a normal process of identification in pursuit of social capital. This conclusion is encouraged by the scant literature on fan management and the much more extensive literature on brand identity, but I'm now convinced that there are three social capital processes operating simultaneously, and that this is why David's own efforts to shift fan behavior sometimes work and sometimes seem to be shouted into a void.

Background: Social Capital & Identification
It's normal in a large group that participants pursue social capital: that is, there's competition for status. Competition in fandom revolves around demonstrating that one is the Biggest Fan. Typically, one of the elements that defines Biggest Fan is identification with the target of the fandom: at minimum, fans ordinarily bask in the reflected glory of the target's successes and attack outsiders who criticize the target.

Where David's fandom gets interesting is that there are three levels of attachment to him as a target, and competition for Biggest Fan operates under different rules depending which level the fan is playing at. These levels are more a continuum than a ladder, but they're perceivable as distinct. Let's call them:

1. Appreciation
2. Identification
3. Objectification

Appreciation
Players at the Appreciation level show intelligent interest in David's efforts as an artist, in a tone that leans strongly positive (otherwise, why be a fan?) but is not necessarily uncritical. Here's where we find the people who participate in moderately technical discussions of music, lyrics, and the music industry. I'd also put the drier humor (e.g., Kaydeecee's fan updates) and the more artistic videos (e.g., Emmabtvs' series) in this category, based on a tone that I hear as interest in what David's trying to do as an artist (as opposed to fixation on his left elbow).

Leadership at this level emerged early and seems to be almost unchallenged, possibly because building social capital here depends on having skills and/or knowledge.

Identification
Players here relate strongly to some quality that David demonstrably possesses, so we're talking about simple, straightforward liking because he comes across as a good guy or because people relate to some portion of his family history. The identification process is why the more responsible celebrities start charities: people are going to identify, so you might as well use the power for good.

Except thanks to Idol, it's not that simple: Idol infantilizes. Everyone's reframed as a shiny 17-year-old who never drinks, swears, or fornicates; it's just a question of whether the show prefers competitors who are polite to old ladies and puppies or those who provide big drama with backbiting. Since David has fairly recently grunged up his image substantially, there's some interesting potential for cognitive dissonance among people who were identifying strongly with his "look" from the Idol era.

So far, the consensus response has been to discount evidence that he's not quite as innately well-ironed and incapable of an unclean thought as Idol would have had us believe: those videos get few comments, or the comments are mostly short and generic, or there's an explicit discounting process such as deciding that he only say the F-word song out of patriotism. Since the grungier look is likely to be continuous for the entire college tour, it'll be interesting to see if there's a move to integrate this information into how David is perceived. (And it says a good deal about brand identity that the issue of what shirt he's wearing is even worth discussing. Most people do own more than one style of shirt.)

But -- it's always more complicated -- ordinary identification has been to a great extent been over-ridden and shouted down by players at the next level.

Objectification
Objectifiers go beyond identification into building an elaborate fantasy image that's loosely connected to one or two actual qualities or events. Drawing loosely on Martha Nussbaum's work, the signs of objectification in David's fandom include:

1. Interpreting his every move as being "for the fans."
2. Disputing his ability to make sensible career decisions or to choose management who will make good decisions.
3. Violating his expressly stated wishes on fan behavior, on the justification that he "really" likes what he objected to.
4. Cherry-picking lyrics and images to develop a vision that serves the fan's needs but that David readily disappoints because it doesn't have much to do with him.
5. Dwelling on his body parts in preference to his music (not the odd "squee!" or "hey, that photo's hot," but a markedly greater interest in looks over substance).

It's among the Objectifiers that the competition runs hottest, which is how they've managed to swamp so much other discourse. They can compete so hotly precisely because they allow facts, sensitivity, privacy, and tangible reality to set no boundaries to their narratives. Interestingly, it's not unheard-of for the same person to include, in the same post, how it's great that David comes across as an ordinary guy and how he's almost God.

While fan culture ought to move based on what example is set and what behaviors are rewarded, the intragroup focus of the Objectifiers explains why these techniques haven't worked. How to shift away from this culture -- and David has commented on fan culture frequently enough that it's not presumptuous to speculate on how to shift it; if one of his people knew how, it'd have been done long since -- is the next question up, and it may not have an answer. But that's for later.