I am one of the fans who met Michael multiple times in multiple countries. From 1999 to 2009 I was part of a group of fans who travelled to see Michael outside hotels and at events in Europe and America.
There's a lot of misconceptions and false information about us and how we met Michael and how we were around him so much. The majority of fans like me, fans I knew over the years never paid to meet him. The Japan fan event in 2007 was a unique event and very few of the US and European fan community went to it, purely based on the fact that we didnt want to pay to meet him when we knew we could met him for free.
In a way it was easy to meet Michael in the last 10 years of his life. For me it was not planned or expected or something that was even guaranteed. We were a niche small fan community, supporting and loving a man who was hated by mainstream general public. As a result, mainstream general public had no interest in him, so fan sites like MJJC and all the other forums , our online homes were ignored. To mainstream media general public he disappeared from view but all that happened was that when the world turned its back on him, he turned to us, the fan community and allowed us to get close to him.
All the information was easily accessible here on MJJC, KOP, MNJO, Max Jax, Angle, MJHIDEOUT and all the other fan forums for anyone who cared enough about Michael to seek out the fan communities.
All it took was for a person to have this spark in them to want to see Michael. Something deep in your soul that made you do whatever it took to be part of his world. For me that spark ignited in the late 1980's and 1990's when I was a child and teenager, watching the Bad and Dangerous Tour documentaries on MTV and VHI and seeing all the fans outside the hotels and concerts. No one in my family or no one I knew in school was a fan like me, but when I saw all those fans outside hotels and heard them being interviewed I realized that there were other people like me out there. As a lonely teenager, watching MTV I had this secret dream to find other fans like me, people I could talk to about Michael and who felt the same as I did about him.
It took until History tour for me to finally find the fan community. I went to History tour in my home city on my own, and in the hours waiting in line outside the venue before the concert, I saw so many fans I recognized from Bad and Dangerous documentaries. I started talking to the fans around me as we waited for the concert and they told me about the fan communities. After the concert I joined the same fanclub MJNI they told me about and that was how my life changed forever. I would go to fanclub events, meet other fans, get their contact details and then after the event we were all on the fanclub messageboards. It was just basic networking, and thats how information about Michael was shared. Everyone was part of a friend group and would share information with their group of 5 or 6 friends, who would then share it with a different group of friends. All the friend groups were connected through mutuals. All of this was mostly done through text messages on phones or MSN chat online and then on the messageboards like here on MJJC.
As it was such a small amount of fans travelling to see Michael, year after year, country after country, he would recognize the same faces. His bodyguards and other staff like Karen Faye, Michael Bush and Grace the nanny would also recognize us. Many of them would come out to talk to us and we would give them gifts for Michael. That was mainly how we got close to Michael, by being known by him and his staff and then they would see and remember how we behaved around him, so then the next trip, the next event, they would be comfortable letting us be around him again.
Over the years, so many fans I met had a similar story, finding Michael when they were young, feeling like they were the only person in the world who loved him , then something happens and they find the fan communities.
The true hearts always find a way.
I do realize though, that for me and all the other fans I knew, that we could only make our dreams come true due to some privileged circumstance. Mostly the privilege was being European, being in our 20's, not having major financial, career or family responsibilities and being able to use our disposable income to travel to see Michael. In Europe by law, all employees, from the burger flipper in McDonalds to high level corporate CEO's get approx 28 days paid time off. The majority of fans like me just used our paid time off annual leave days to travel to see Michael. I worked 60 hour weeks in minimum wage jobs and just saved and saved for the next Michael trip. Most fans I know did the same. Worked multiple jobs or signed up for every over time shift and just save their disposable income. Most fans I knew were not rich and did not come from wealthy families. Many fans did not have the support of their families or came from dysfunctional families. There is this urban myth that our travels to see Michael were paid for by the bank of mom and dad, which is so very far from the truth.
The years from 1999 to 2009 were a very different time. The internet was not mainstream and it was only sub cultures, teenagers and 20 somethings who were mainly online. For many years we didnt even have laptops, we were online using our parents PC at home or in internet cafes. It was a time before mobile phones had internet and cameras. It was a time before social media.
I know people are jealous of us but just remember the fans like me, we were a very small percentage of the online fan communities. The majority of the online fan community never saw Michael in real life, never met him and never went to a concert. There are many many fans who due to the country they lived in , could not get a tourist visa to America or Europe. There were many many fans who were part of the online fan communities but were still teenagers and their parents wouldn't let them travel to see Michael.
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