The Cult and Culture of The Walking Dead

I’ve heard the expression cult following to describe small, passionate group of fans, usually for something unusual or obscure. I suppose things like Star Wars have cult followings and Star Wars isn’t so obscure and its fan base isn’t so small. I would have to say that The Walking Dead has a huge cult following. And I’m a card-carrying, Kool-Aid-drinking, cult member. The word that cements its cult status is passion. Walking Dead fans are passionate about their fan status. There don’t seem to be many casual Walking Dead fans. If you don’t have the time to devote to being a Walking Dead fan, it seems that you just don’t watch at all. For most of us, it’s an all or nothing proposition.

Something interesting about Walking Dead culture is that it infiltrates all aspects of your life. We make separate Twitter accounts for Walking Dead tweets. We make Pinterest boards to keep track of the hilarious memes that continuously come out after each show. We create our own memes. We buy t-shirts. We do Google searches for the songs and for any bits of information we can find. We watch DVDs, marathons, DVR episodes. We reference quotes. We like Facebook fan pages. We buy calendars. We go to conventions and dress up like characters. We have parties with zombie food. There are tribute artists. There is merchandise of all kinds, even handmade bags and jewelry on etsy.com. We ponder what weapons we would use, how we would survive, where we would go. We discuss, speculate, theorize and debate plot lines and character attributes. What will happen next? Who will die next? Do you read the comics? Have you heard any spoilers?

We feel connected to other fans on social media. We feel connected to the characters. We feel connected to the actors. The actors seem to feel connected to us. The actors seem to feel connected to each other. It’s a show where characters die and some characters are only on the show for one episode. Those characters seem to still love the show even when they are no longer on it. There are actors who do reviews of the show on YouTube. Actors who live tweet before the show with us. Actors and behind the scenes people who talk to us on Talking Dead. The Cult and Culture is stronger than ever in the age of social media and with this show. I’ve never been a part of such an experience.

What is it about The Walking Dead that makes us crave every tidbit of information about it. What makes us love it? And we love it, don’t we? You don’t hear many people say, ‘it’s pretty good’ they say, ‘I love it!’ I’m a 50-year-old woman who hates horror movies and gore and I’m an obsessive Walking Dead cult member whose hobby is to write about it and administer a Twitter page about it. I can’t explain it, I’ll just remain blissfully brainwashed.

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