3 Sep 2020

The dark side of Stan culture

From Afternoons, 1:41 pm on 3 September 2020

There's a new online cultural phenomenon for super devoted celebrity fans. It's called Stan and is based on Eminem's dark character in a song about an obsessed fan.

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Photo: pixabay

The "Stans' connect online and share content, but can also be disruptive and threatening.

Jules LeFevre, music editor of Junkee.com in Australia tells Jesse Mulligan social media has allowed Stan culture to increasingly express its more sinister side.

The fan base phenomena is based around obsession.

“You can think of Stan as a bit of a combination of the word stalker and fan. It basically describes someone who is completely obsessed with their chosen idol. This isn’t a casual music fan. This is someone who will go to every show on a tour, it’s really devotional and obsessive,”  LeFevre says.

“It’s not necessarily a new phenomenon. If you think of Beatlemania, that was a form of Stan culture. But the difference now is you’re all online and the majority of this takes place online.”

Instances of Stans behaving badly have intensified in recent times. What can be a social network that simply benefits artists can be subverted by darker, emotive behaviours that become anti-social and abusive.

“In the last few years there’s been a number of instances in which pop stars and their fans have kind of organised en masse to do some kind of positive things, like get their single to up to the top of the charts, or negative things, which is what we’re seeing more recently, which is bombard and harass journalists over what seem to be negative reviews.”

A recently example of this type of harassment involved a music reviewer being threatened.

In August, Taylor Swift fans harassed Pitchfork’s editor after an album review of Folklore, even though it was largely positive, scoring 8/10.

She was bombarded with hate messages on social media and her address, phone number and photos of her home and herself were posted.

Stans threatened to burn her home, death threats, even sent her bizarre 'hexing' tweets paired with satanic images of Swift.

“That may be one of the best examples of it, to highlight how ridiculous this kind of dog-piling is online… and the weird cognitive dissonance that it doesn’t matter what you do, if they perceive something wasn’t good enough you will be a target of abuse,” she says.

She says it was interesting to see Swift not stepping in afterwards and cautioning her fans to behave themselves.

“For her not to step in when this outrageous abuse was happening on her behalf, it was very strange. I think artists need to take some accountability for when their fans do this. Of course it’s not their responsibility, but they are the ones who have power to address it.”

Artists need fanbases and are wary of upsetting them, she says.

Social media has enabled behaviour by faceless fans who can’t be effectively policed, with a lack of moderators on modern platforms like Twitter.

“It creates a toxic mix of no repercussions and an incredible power within the Stan community and you end up with these situations.”