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Why I think being an AFOL is okay
KingAlanI
Member Posts: 2,335
Recently I saw a Tumblr post encouraging adults to buy "childish" products they like, http://m-to-the-6th-power.tumblr.com/post/165306196219/dont-feel-ashamed-of-doing-childish-things.
LEGO is an obvious example, and I was all too happy to expound upon it.
LEGO by design has a lot of capacity to be what you want it to be, so it's easy to approach in a more mature manner. It's physically and thematically durable - the bricks are still usable and you'll still want to use them.
As an adult, I have more money and more experience looking for deals, so I can buy a lot of LEGO I couldn't as a kid. Now I can get big sets; I finally have a large castle and X-wing like I wanted as a kid. (I bought current equivalents, though it's quite possible to get the exact sets you missed on the aftermarket). Stamp collecting is called the hobby of kids and kings because there are ways to approach it at any budget; same goes for LEGO. Speaking of collecting, many adults approach LEGO as such and take good care of what they play with.
There are a lot of sets geared towards adults, more complex builds with thousands of parts that cost hundreds of dollars. #10251 Brick Bank, 2380 pieces for MSRP $169.99 is one of my favorite sets, and it's hardly the biggest.
LEGO has more female figures and sets now. (I feel that's progress even though some of the stuff is stereotypical, but that's a whole other post) I'm a guy who likes that, and it might help LEGO's appeal with some women as well as some girls.
The associated cartoons really do seem too simplistic for adults, but not the sets themselves.
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis
LEGO is an obvious example, and I was all too happy to expound upon it.
LEGO by design has a lot of capacity to be what you want it to be, so it's easy to approach in a more mature manner. It's physically and thematically durable - the bricks are still usable and you'll still want to use them.
As an adult, I have more money and more experience looking for deals, so I can buy a lot of LEGO I couldn't as a kid. Now I can get big sets; I finally have a large castle and X-wing like I wanted as a kid. (I bought current equivalents, though it's quite possible to get the exact sets you missed on the aftermarket). Stamp collecting is called the hobby of kids and kings because there are ways to approach it at any budget; same goes for LEGO. Speaking of collecting, many adults approach LEGO as such and take good care of what they play with.
There are a lot of sets geared towards adults, more complex builds with thousands of parts that cost hundreds of dollars. #10251 Brick Bank, 2380 pieces for MSRP $169.99 is one of my favorite sets, and it's hardly the biggest.
LEGO has more female figures and sets now. (I feel that's progress even though some of the stuff is stereotypical, but that's a whole other post) I'm a guy who likes that, and it might help LEGO's appeal with some women as well as some girls.
The associated cartoons really do seem too simplistic for adults, but not the sets themselves.
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis
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Comments
Kids-cool + adults-cool stuff = best.
In some of his lectures he discusses the 'man-child' phenomenon, as well as Peter Pan syndrome.
You you you ..... kings of Neverland!
Just ignore the scoffs and the babble.
The box says six plus,
So that includes us,
And we don't all resort to Kragle.
(Is AFOL pronounced to sound like apple or is it ayfol? On the Lego Masters programme on Channel 4, they used the former so I went with that. Hadn't heard it said in real life up to then.)
How about just 'Lego fan'. "I am a Lego fan, really, it is true." To me that will suffice.
AFOL is pronounced almost like awful, except starting with 'a' as it is pronounced in the word 'cat'. If other people like to refer to themselves a AFOL, that is of course fine too, but I myself care not for that 'term'.
So is AT-AT but pretty much everyone I know says 'at at' not 'aateee aatee'.
Also relatively speaking, the ratio of 'cool stuff' to 'not cool stuff' that adults get is far less than that of a child... it's not the amount that counts, its the proportions!
Stupid dirty mind.
Evidently he was not a Star Wars fan :-)
@bookmum I read some young adult books, maybe because they're not too simple, but easy reads. A lot of the goofier stuff in my music collection could get called childish. My mom loves adult coloring books.
As for the children's cartoons, I'd emphasize to outsiders that a media franchise surrounding the sets is a key part of LEGO's current business model. So are licensed themes, and some of that material is aimed at an older audience. (and I say LEGO because they might not understand 'TLG')
Im pretty sure people who say 'Aff-ol' are the same weirdos who call A.T.A.T's 'at-at's' and M.O.C.'s 'mocks'...
Hobby-wise, I liken building with LEGO to working a puzzle. No one bats an eye at an adult building a puzzle - ours just happens to be constructed of plastic parts.
Agreed. My wife and I very much look at it like it's doing a jigsaw puzzle. Except after the puzzle is done, the REAL fun begins. At least in our case, because once completed, we have to find a way to make it fit in our display. So it's like fitting multiple jigsaw puzzles together to make an even bigger picture.
Also, in our case, I compare it to those that collect porcelain Christmas villages. I see LOTS of those in people's houses these days. Not much different imo.
Yeah lol I am such a weirdo.
^^
I am sure all the really mature people also don't say e.g. NASA (phonetically: nasə), but of course N.A.S.A. etc., or even insist on saying National Aeronautics and Space Administration all the time as that will make them seem so mature, and above all knowledgable. Ha!
As I said, "more knowledgable minds know when to spell them out by letter."
Ok, back on topic. Personally I hate the acronym AFOL. Normally I feel the Lego community has many of the better and more creative acronyms out there. But this is a rare miss for me. Why can't we just be Lego adult builders (maybe LABs) or Lego adult collectors (LACs)? Oh well, it's far too late now.
That said, in relation to the CS Lewis quote, I never really had the fear of being seen a childish for liking Lego. As a teen and well into college most of my friend knew that I was a huge Lego fan. I still get asked went meeting up with a friend I've not seen in a while, "Are you still into legos?" Even now there's few people around me that aren't aware that I'm a Lego fan. I don't advertise it, but clearly don't hide it either.
There's things I can do as a adult that I never could as a kid. As a adult I have more resources, more time, and more skill. I also have the ability to influence and inspire more people. Whether they are kids, teens or adults.
I've always called them AyTee-AyTees (probably in part because I didn't interact with a lot of other Star Wars fans as a kid and I don't think the movies name them out loud). If you call them Att-Atts, what are you supposed to call the AT-STs that debuted in the same movie?
One thing I like about the term AFOL is that as much as some people wish to redefine it (i.e. "you're not a REAL AFOL if you don't build your own creations"), it's inclusive of all the different ways adults enjoy LEGO, from collecting to building sets to building original creations to following the various tie-in media.
That said, there are times when I prefer just saying "LEGO fans" since it is clearer to outsiders and doesn't have the same sort of vaguely pretentious, Man-Upstairs undertones that "the way I use it makes it an adult thing". You usually don't see, say, adult Pokémon or Transformers fans needing to qualify their fan-hood in the same way.
I'd expect if you spell them out then pronouncing Aytee Aytee isn't that wrong.
As an adult with a sometimes hectic and stressful career I like that I can relax with a childlike hobby, but then again I gave up comparing myself to other 47 year olds a long time ago.
Oooh, and Kablammo! Bada bing bada boom!
Check this/her out:
ps.
AT-ST's are just scout-walkers ....... or chicken-walkers, or dodo's. Who actually calls those bi-pedal floppy legged walking boxes AT-ST's?
Although the brochure included in my Mud Runner set displayed all manner of fascinating Lego sets, my parents soon clued me into the fact that the larger the set, the more expensive it was. And everything in that brochure was larger than my Mud Runner car.
A few years later, my Lego mania in full swing, my father's boss invited him and I over to his home, where I beheld a vision of heaven: a full 9V train layout, with the Load N' Haul Railroad as the centerpiece, and one of the greatest sets of all time, the #8880 Super Car. I never thought I would see such Lego displays in my life. My father's boss was even older than my dad, but also had teenage sons in high school. But all three of them shared the passion for Lego. After leaving, it was further impressed on me that Lego, at its highest echelon, was something for adults or the soon-to-be-adults, and also those with money (which invariably looped back to the fact that those with money = adults).
Now, I am an adult, and as I so fervently hoped for in my youth, I have enough money to get the best Lego has to offer, in addition to wonders I missed out on back in the 1990s. My AFOL-hood seemed guaranteed, although there were times in my teenage years where I felt like I was just "sticking with it" for BIONICLE and Star Wars' sake. Yet, here I am, and it has always felt right.
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Adults feeling secure about doing "kid's stuff" seems analogous to males feeling secure about not acting macho.
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I pronounce AFOL phonetically but spell out some other acronyms including those of the Galactic Empire's walkers.
Plus, ever since my ASD revelation, I've better understood my innate attraction to closed systems, i.e. Lego, Minecraft, that sort of thing. So I not only have my hobby, but I can also see that how my brain is wired creates an internal draw to such areas.
I have an ASD myself. Amongst other things, that leads to hyperfocus on particular topics. We don't have conventional social skills, so maybe any interest not heavy on people skills is appealing. LEGO can be an example, but I don't see much LEGO-specific there.
"Rule 34" is very much a thing in fandoms for other kids' series like Pokémon or Avatar: The Last Airbender, and even the AFOL community has found plenty of unique ways to corrupt the hobby (like "Bonktron", a series of grotesque phallus-shaped space MOCs which I've more than once had the misfortune of seeing). People just aren't as quick to judge the whole fandom for its skeeviest members when they hear about grown men liking a beloved toy from their childhoods as when they hear about grown men liking a show aimed at girls.
I may have to clear my search history now.
For anybody reading this now, PROBABLY not a good idea to investigate that further unless you're weirdly comfortable with seeing graphically detailed brick-built genitalia.
Don't forget that at the time they were only referred to as "Imperial Walkers" in the films. Kenner released the "AT-AT" and "Scout Walker" after ESB, and in the adverts they referred to the AT-AT phonetically. People were already used to referring to TIE Fighters phonetically (and that was how they were pronounced in the films) so it made sense. It was only when Kenner released the AT-ST driver figure after ROTJ that anyone knew that was the designation of the Scout Walker. By then it was too late, and the inconsistency lives to this day.
Oh, and being an AFOL is okay. However you pronounce it. :)
As a child, I loved Lego and had always said to myself I will keep building no matter how old I get! As a teenager, I shunned away sich childish nonsense because I wanted to be all growed up. Then as an adult, I realized teenager me was an imbecile, and that many of the things I enjoyed as a child, I still enjoyed. So right back into Lego (and other toys) I went!
I only came out of my dark ages at the beginning of last year, aged 37, after not getting any Lego since the '80s. A bad back forced me to take a couple of days off work and after one day of extreme boredom sitting completely still on my couch I went in search of a puzzle or some other such amusement to keep my mind occupied. As I strolled through my local toy store the latest Force Awakens Millennium Falcon caught my eye and I've been rapidly burning through my disposable income ever since.
Initially I felt a little silly and kept my habit on the quiet. Gradually I started letting it slip to a few friends and colleagues (hard to explain boxes from Lego turning up at work when everyone knows you don't have kids). I'm not kidding, every twenty and thirty-something person, male and female, that I worked with or was mates with said, "That's awesome!" and demanded to see photos. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Nobody I know thinks it's uncool. Maybe that's because I only know nerds? I dunno. The only person who thinks I'm a little bit strange is my current boss, which is weird because as an architect I thought she would be the one person who would understand more than anyone.
My parents raised their eyebrows when they first found out until I gently reminded my mum that she used to make porcelain dolls, teddy bears and dolls houses when she was my age. They're actually much happier once I pointed out that I spend much less on my current obsession than what I did on my previous (collecting very expensive guitars).
My personal theory is that you pretty much become the person you're going to be forever by age 12. Or at least develop your prime interests by that age anyway. My main interests are guitars, football (soccer), mountain bikes, surfing, architecture and languages. All things I discovered before the age of 12. I genuinely can't think of anything I tried after that age that I've managed to stick with (swing dancing at 28, lasted 2 years). I may have missed a few decades but I can add Lego to that list now, and proud of it!
@Aanchir so LEGO characters provide less 'inspiration' for creeps? On that subject, many LEGO Store events are for young children only, and the children's room at the library where I work has a rule against unaccompanied adults. So AFOLs are at least accepted as nostalgic?
So it's really just force of habit calling it an AT-AT for me now, despite the argument against that pronunciation making total sense to me. I suppose as long as we know what we're all referring to, it doesn't really make a whole lot of difference, right? :-)
Oh, and here's a vintage advert as proof!
When I left my DA and got my first set as an adult ( #7191 X-Wing UCS) I really didn't worry as it was my wife that bought it for me, and if she's fine with it then I don't care about anyone else's opinion. Plus, I thought it was bloody expensive and I wasn't about to go through the cognitive dissonance of paying a lot of money for something I was embarrassed about! Since then she's started collecting teddy bears so I reckon she was enabling me so she could go a similar route, but anyway...
I didn't go out of my way to tell people about it though, and would be careful to whom I would admit it to, as I thought there was a prejudice against grown-ups owning 'toys' back then (over a decade ago - I'm feeling old). Now I'm happy to tell anyone who asks, and I have a Lego calendar on my desk, and my family and friends know that I like Lego as presents (and they know to NOT buy me random Lego, which is even more important). My interests have expanded to include certain Transformers, graphic novels, and other collectible stuff probably aimed at people much younger than me, all of which I am very comfortable with talking to people about.
I think it's a combination of hitting an age where I started to not care as much about some people's uninformed opinions, having children who I want to share my hobbies with and to be interested in theirs, and the increasing social acceptability of being emotionally attached to things we liked as children (film and TV being great advocates of this).
It's a great time to be alive - and I am not being the slightest bit sarcastic.
Finally, on the pronunciation note, I never called them walkers (those are crisps) and I always called the 4 legged ones "At-At" and I ignored the 2 legged ones as a matter of principle (if forced, I say "At-ssss... oh never mind"). But as I'm mainly interested in the spaceships it doesn't come up very often in conversation anyway. Also, its "AFOL and his money are soon parted" - I find it funny and yet true... :-)
Finally, finally - you guys need to use incognito/private/whatever Apple calls them tabs when googling anything starting with 'bonk' - it's just good sense.
And that is the key to life. Too many people live their entire lives not figuring that out. Be who you are. Embrace it. Do what you like (so long as it is moral, ethical, and not illegal). Surround yourself with people who accept you for who you are, not who they want you to be. You'll be much happier in the end. I know I am.