Brand new films and TV shows are practically being released every other week now on a wide range of streaming platforms and being released in theaters. Over time some of these films and shows gather a lot of traction and eventually leads up to them having a consistent fan base. The fan base grows and like many things there are always going to be people who are extremely passionate of that certain work.  They will often reference scenes or quotes said in that work and watch that works multiple times. Films like Pulp Fictions, Donnie Darko, and The Breakfast Club are popular examples of cult films. Some of more familiar films to my age group would be films like Scott Pilgrim vs. the world , Mean Girls, and Napoleon Dynamite. Films like Mean Girls gathered a lot of attention of younger viewers and one of the most notable parts of the films is where the girls in the film “only wear pink on Wednesdays” and is something that grew so popular to the point that there would always be a dramatic increase of girls wearing pink on Wednesdays just because of that film. Another notable part in the film is the date “October 3rd” which is now popularly known as “mean girls day” which is a scene in the the lead actress Lindsay Lohan replies to a boy who asked her what day it was and she replied saying October 3rd, that’s it. There are many other films that have gathered a cult like following like this but in my experience this was the first and one the most prominent growing up.

With being to stream multiple shows and movies now and the integration of the internet cult fan bases have tremendously grown in popularity, especially with shows that are able to streamed on platforms like Netflix. Some shows that are like this are How I Met Your Mother, Friends , Game of Thrones , and The Office. The majority of these shows have already been completed and have been for years but passionate fans keep these shows thriving and bringing new viewers in. For example a couple weeks ago it was announced that one Netflix’s most popular shows Friends was said to be removed soon. But fans all over the internet threatened to cancel their subscriptions and to switch to other platforms, there was a tremendous amount of backlash and Netflix heard loud and clear and payed and additional 100 Million dollars to continue streaming Friends on Netflix. This shows how much influences these fan bases can have if they are large enough and there is a substantial amount of backlash from these fan bases. These shows are kept alive and elevate their cult status with tremendous amounts of inside jokes and quotes that sometimes have felt almost embedded into modern culture.

To sum everything up cult fan bases have greatly increased in recent years and have gotten extremely popular to the point that someone has experienced or heard of at least one of these sub cultures.