The Right to be Wrong

Such sad news that Sam Neill has passed away, he was such an amazing actor 😢 💔🙏

The Loyalty Reflex

I received an anon earlier telling me, essentially, that none of us really know who Sam is. Which is true, we don’t.

But here is the funny part: neither do the people who use that sentence as a shield. Because “you don’t know him” only seems to apply when someone questions the narrative. It never seems to apply when someone insists he is humble, grounded, kind, authentic, respectful, misunderstood, private, generous, shy, simple, noble and quietly perfect.

Apparently we don’t know him well enough to analyse public behaviour. But some people know him well enough to defend his soul.

Interesting system, isn't it?

And that's really what this is about: not Sam himself, but the kind of fan who needs every single thing he does to be interpreted positively.

If he goes somewhere luxurious, he deserves it.

If he turns up in a very ordinary tourist attraction, it proves how grounded he is.

If he doesn’t post SB, he’s protecting her.

If he does post SB, he’s showing commitment.

If he posts her in a disappearing story, he’s private.

If he ever posts her permanently, that will be love.

If he stays vague, he owes nobody anything.

If he feeds the narrative, people should simply be happy for him.

There is no version of events that damages the image, because the image has become more important than the behaviour being observed.

That's not analysis, that's interpretative loyalty. And I think this kind of loyalty often has very little to do with the actual person being defended. It has much more to do with the fan’s own emotional investment.

Some fans have spent years building a relationship with a public image. They’ve bought the books, the whisky, the gin, the vodka, the tequila, the con tickets, the merch, the gala tickets, the MPC subscriptions, every limited edition of the same products, and the fantasy of proximity.

They’ve defended the brand, promoted the projects, corrected the sceptics, attacked the critics and performed loyalty as if it were a moral category. At some point, that’s no longer casual fandom. It’s an identity structure.

So when someone says, “This behaviour looks odd”, they don’t hear a public observation. They hear: “Your judgement may have been wrong.”

And that's much harder to tolerate. Because if Sam isn’t quite the grounded, noble, emotionally coherent figure they’ve defended for years, then the uncomfortable question becomes: What exactly have I been defending? And perhaps even worse: Why did I need to defend it so badly?

That's why the critic becomes the problem.

Not the contradiction. Not the strange public choices. Not the awkward ambiguity. Not the increasingly commercial ecosystem. Not the private and public breadcrumbing.

No. The problem becomes the observer. Any observer. The observer is jealous. Bitter. Ignorant. A hater. A bad fan. Someone who doesn’t know him.

Which, again, is technically true. But the point of observation is not to claim private knowledge. It's to look at what is publicly visible and ask why it lands the way it does. That's the difference.

Observation says: this feels inconsistent. Loyalty says: how can I explain this so the image stays intact?

And SB fits very neatly into this system too. A lot of these fans don’t seem especially interested in her as a person. They’re interested in her as a Sam-adjacent access point.

Following her, praising her, flattering her, cheering her on, sending her affection, treating her like a doorway into his orbit: that's not necessarily support in the pure sense. Sometimes it's parasocial strategy dressed as kindness.

If SB notices them, they feel closer to Sam. If she likes or reposts something, responds to something, or simply remains visible, they receive a tiny hit of imagined proximity.

And that's powerful. And it's also useful. Because these fans do two things at once: they pay, and they defend. They fund the machine and protect the narrative around it. They buy the products and then explain why nobody should question the product. They support the public figure financially and then do unpaid emotional PR for the brand.

Honestly, as a business model, it's efficient. But as a feedback system, it's disastrous. Because once loyalty becomes the main currency, reality has to queue outside. And that's where the problem begins.

A healthy fandom can say: I like him, but this is strange. The loyalty reflex says: if it looks strange, you’re looking at it wrong.

A healthy fandom can say: I enjoy the work, but this choice isn’t landing. The loyalty reflex says: how dare you question him?

A healthy fandom can separate public image from actual person. The loyalty reflex fuses them together and then calls that respect.

But it's not respect to turn a human being into a fragile little shrine that must never be touched by criticism. It's projection with security guards.

And the irony is that these fans often claim to be protecting him, when what they are really protecting is the version of him that keeps their own investment emotionally safe.

That doesn’t mean they’re stupid. I don’t think that’s the right reading. Many of them are probably sincere and emotionally attached. Many have built friendships, routines and a sense of belonging around this fandom. For some, defending him may feel like defending years of their own life.

But that's exactly why they can become analytically blind. Not because they cannot see, but because seeing clearly would cost them something. And that's why every contradiction must be softened. Every oddity must be rebranded. Every public misstep must become proof of humility, privacy, generosity, authenticity or victimhood. The image must survive. Even if the behaviour becomes harder and harder to explain.

I wrote about part of this already in The Mommy Bubble, mostly from the angle of how that ultra-loyal fan ecosystem keeps him afloat while quietly weakening the feedback loop around him. This is the other side of the same mechanism.

So to the fans who rush in every time to explain, defend, soften, reframe and rescue the image: Maybe ask yourselves why he always needs so much rescuing. Because if the image were really that stable, it wouldn't require a defence team under every post. And if your loyalty cannot survive one uncomfortable observation, then perhaps it isn't loyalty. Perhaps it's fear.

And one last thing, just as a small practical note. When you send me messages like that, please understand that they usually tell me far more about you than they tell me about Sam. I can read the reflex very quickly. The panic, the defence, the need to correct, the need to rescue the image.

Reblogging as an answer to the ones in my inbox, trying to defend it all with examples that, joke, show the contradiction even more. And ending with:

Honestly, I think many of you don’t really know what Sam is like…