The best thing about Pokemon is that there is no wrong way to do things. I believe as long as you can find enjoyment out of what ever it is your doing, you’re a fan. Everyone’s got a favorite something.
Minus scalping. Thats definitely wrong.
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Obviously, if someone says they like Pokemon you don’t need them to provide a dossier of evidence to prove their credentials.
“I’m a bigger fan than you and here’s why” is a school playground argument.
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I guess it depends, do they still like or enjoy the franchise but simply have a strong preference for Gen 1? It’s ok to have preferences. On the other hand, are they a stereotypical facebook millennial that played Red and Blue once and haven’t touched the franchise since because “these newfangled things aren’t REAL Pokemon!!”
In the second case I would say no, they are not. I feel like disliking or not participating in 90%+ of a franchise is probably as good a disqualifier as any.
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If someone says that they are a fan of Pokemon, they are a fan. I don’t care how little or how much they interact with the franchise. It’s not for someone else to decide if they are a “true” fan.
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Honestly a very interesting post that got me thinking about the semantics.
I think in other media/interests it’s also more common to specify what you’re a fan of if you only like a particular aspect of something.
Eg. In music circles, your example of someone who only likes the first Beatles album, I’d expect that person to describe themselves as “a fan of the Beatles’ early work” as opposed to “I’m a Beatles fan”.
Maybe because for a long time Pokémon has been a niche enough hobby that people are more likely to want to unify with a simple “I’m a Pokémon fan”. But with the popularity trajectory Pokémon is on, maybe the semantics will change over time and people will become more likely to describe themselves as a “2D game-era Pokémon fan” or a “Legendary Bird fan”
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It’s not as simple as if you say you’re a fan then you are a fan
Every human community is a social network that uses signaling theory to identify its member and define the boundaries between us and not us
You declare yourself a cinephile, and want to benefit from being part of the community of cinephiles, but you haven’t seen any classics and know nothing about movie making or the cinema industry ? That will be perceived as false signaling and rightly so.
It follows that a proof of knowledge is needed.
Your amount of knowledge is what signals other that what you claim is true. It doesn’t make any sense to be recognized as a fan of Pokemon and not having any knowledge about the different subsets. Personally I will not claim being a fan of Pokemon, I think it is a title to be earned, through a vast amount of knowledge accumulated over the years.
I will say with confidence I’m a Pokemon enthousiast though
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gens 1-4 are great, no clue about anything after that
Regardless if someone claims they are a fan or not its all about the engagement with Pokemon I love. If someone wants to talk about only gen 1 for hours then Im here for it. If they have more knowledge and want to tell me about their adventures through Galar, or that moment when Ash became champion then Im also just as excited. I do think “fan” does have a meaning that comes with some diverse length of time association regardless of gen, but all of that is forgotten in the moment of all the people that just love Pokemon and want to surround themselves with loveable creatures.
I’ve looked at the data and yes, the Kanto region is by far the most iconic region in all of Pokemon and its not even close. And this isnt just because of Charizard it has many other iconic Pokemon like Mewtwo and Gengar. (The list goes on.) Kanto/Gen 1 is a big reason why Pokemon is the number 1 IP in the world so is it really a shocker people are obsessed with it? The term “Genwunner” doesn’t make any sense. It’s the most popular Gen/Region so it should come to no surprise people are a big fan of it. A bunch of YouTubers bashed the Gen 1 games for being very “buggy” but they’re still very playable and give you the Pokemon experience.
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This is the main qualifier for me as well
It is totally fine to have a strong preference for a certain generation, I think that is totally understandable considering what games you first grew up with. I grabbed the quotes above because I think you all made great points about the differences between gen 1 fans and genwunners that I want to expand on
To me, the loose defintion of “Genwunner” is someone that only recognizes the original 151 as “genuine” or “worthwhile” Pokemon. They typically disregard anything after gen 1 or 3 (these people are living amongst us everywhere: it is horrifying to think about)
Again, I agree with the point of the above quotes. Anyone who casts off a majority of the entire franchise and has no intention of having good faith engagement (playing the games, watching the anime, learning the new Pokes, etc) with the series past a specific gen isn’t a true Pokemon fan. They may like certain Pokemon, or the time capsule that is gen 1 fandom, but they don’t actually love the World of Pokemon
I love each new gen, particularly the expansion of the lore, discovering new Pokes to love and collect, and the renewed sense of mystery and discovery. I think exploration is so inherently important to the identity of the franchise, and limiting yourself to one gen is doing yourself a giant disservice by removing the majority of the potential enjoyment you can have
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the glitches missing nos infinite rare candys/master balls were part of the experience 
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The legacy of MissingNo is a rabbit hole within itself that makes Gen 1 special in a way that cant be duplicated.
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TO play devil’s advocate, if the concept “pokemon” must include all things that are obviously pokemon, then you might say “no”, IFF they are vehemently against the newer stuff. For example, anyone who thinks Gengar is better than more recent ghost PkMn is NOT a fair judge: NOT a PkMn fan. 
Seriously tho, you don’t have to be a fan of everything even most things, to be a fan of the franchise. However, it may be that if you are not a fan of anything new, by far, then you may be a fan of “your Pokemon” franchise, but not “their Pokemon” franchise.
At either extreme, it’s a [No True Scotsman fallacy](Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia No_true_Scotsman), in which they argue their biased or subjective concept of a thing is the true definition of that thing: “Pokemon”/“Pokemon fan”.
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Ironically, glitches back then were “better” IMO, in that they created rabbit holes and unusual gameplay. Usually they didn’t brick the game or create frustration, whereas today, I feel like glitches and bugs are mostly QA problems, in which specific game elements are not properly programmed, like the “ghost v psychic typing” in Gen 1. But then there’s the argument that many bugs are actually unintended features. Like infinite combos in fighting games where everywhere works as intended, they just didn’t consider a particular scenario or interaction… These were always my favorite bugs to address in QA (honestly) because someone was using the tools as we designed, they just hacked them in a way we didn’t expect. Nothing malicious, just human cleverness.
I suspect, as more games become AI slop, we’ll see this more too. but we may see an increase in missingno type bugs as well.
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gen 1 was glitched so much kids would make up rumors like u can find yoshi at the end of the game if u have the whole pokedex at lvl 100 and beat the elite 4, and as a child no one can tell which ones are real and not
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