Current Fan Culture, or: We Need To Talk About Your Obsession with Harry Styles

How far can 'stan' culture go before there's no turning back? A critical look at fan engagement with celebrities.

Harry Styles 2019 Gucci Photoshoot

Back in time:

I'm going to take you back now, if you'll bear with me, to the year 2012. At this point, I am fourteen years old, moody, and incredibly obsessed with the band My Chemical Romance.

My love for the band was proven through a weekly subscription to Kerrang! magazine, far too many posters on my walls, and a Tumblr blog dedicated solely to pictures of the lead singer, Gerard Way.

It was at this point I first became involved in the internet culture of 'fandoms'. (If you've spent the past ten years living in a bubble; a fandom is self organised group of people, generally online, dedicated to a particular thing, be it a celebrity, TV show, etc.)

Fandoms initially became popular as it allowed people to openly share their enjoyment with others of a particular thing. Work that people did, be it fan art, fan fiction or cosplaying, finally had an outlet where like minded people could give feedback and support.

It was around the time I was joining online forums filled with people who shared my love of heavily make-up'd, emo boys, the internet culture of ‘stanning’ was beginning to become the all-consuming giant that it is today.

The term ‘stan’ derives from the 2000 song released by Eminem of the same name. In the song, Eminem’s character writes letters to his hero, Stan. However, when he continues to receive nothing back, the letters get increasingly more and more aggressive, with Eminem's character continually losing grip on reality. His actions culminate in kidnapping his own girlfriend, tying her up and killing them both.

Naturally, stan was initially a negative thing to be identified as. It was an insult, hurled at people who didn't have a strong enough sense of self; people who defined their whole life based on the things that they were into.

In short: stans were obsessive, they knew too much.

So how did stanning stop being a bad thing?

The early twenty-tens saw a resurgence in artificially formed pop-bands, such as One Direction or JLS. With a band like this, designed purely to get as much radio play as possible, all publicity was considered good publicity.

PR companies would leak information about the band member's friends, family, home life. Interviews and press junkets were constant. Particularly with One Direction, mob mentality became a real thing. Within the fandom, the more information you knew about a band member, the better you were doing.

Slowly, the negative implication behind stanning was getting edged out. With social media becoming an ever more popular way of celebrities and musicians to engage with fans, the traditional barriers between knowing and not-knowing were breaking down.

Now, you could become privy to all the aspects of a celebrity's mundane, day-to-day life. If needed, you can get real time updates on what Niall Horan watches on TV, or what the inside of Liam Payne's shower looks like. The information is all just out there, readily available.

Through this, fans feel included, in the loop. No longer do they have to wait for a letter in writing, like Eminem's Stan, instead they can get a reply instantly on Twitter.

This instantaneous gratification meant that dedicating time to celebrities became less of a momentous task. In other words, being a stan took a lot less effort.

After all, the information is just out there for you to take. Sure, you've never met the celebrity, but they follow you on Twitter! You both eat pancakes! You both listened to the same song on Spotify!

So if stanning isn't bad anymore, what's the big deal?

There's a term that exists for the feeling of knowing someone that you've not actually got a relationship with. It's a, 'parasocial relationship', and it is fundamentally unhealthy.

In simplistic terms, a parasocial relationship is one person putting their personal time and energy into a celebrity, with the celebrity in question not having any real idea that the fan exists.

Think about it. I mean, really, think about it if the circumstances were different. For a moment, let's move away from talking about these people as celebrities. Let's take away their God-like personas, and make them regular joes. People like you and me.

Say, for example, you went to university with Harry Styles. You’re not on the same course, or anything. You don’t have any mutual friends, you’ve never spoken. At most, you saw him once across the library floor, but it was late and you were tired from studying for an exam, and he had his back to you so it could have been anyone, really, but let's say it was him.

Still, despite not ever having spoken, for some reason you follow him on Twitter, and Instagram, and Snapchat. You’ve got your phone set up so it pings every time he posts. And those posts? Well you've liked every single one; the pictures of his food, of his mum, of that shit view out of his uni halls window. 

“I love him,” You tell your friends, drunk off a cheap bottle of wine on a Tuesday night. “I know him so well, I mean, we’re so alike! We both think beetroots are weird, so it must be love!”

It all seems a bit more uncomfortable now, doesn’t it? A bit like now your friends are going to start whispering behind your back. Telling each other that they're a bit worried about you.

You see, it’s widely accepted that you can’t be in love with that random guy you’ve never talked to from your university.  However, it is accepted that you can, apparently, be in love with that random guy who happens to be quite a good singer. Because, you know, that random guy is actually Harry Styles, and he's famous, and dreamy, so it's okay.

Now, before this goes any further, I want to state: being a fan of something is not a fundamentally bad thing. All too often, teenage girls are ridiculed for the things they enjoy, and I don't agree with that. (In fact, I think that's part of the problem, but that's another blog post...)

So, there is nothing wrong with being a fan of Harry Styles. There is nothing wrong with thinking Harry Styles is cute. There isn’t even anything that wrong with those fantasies you flesh out before you fall asleep, where you and Harry get married and you become his famous wife.

The issue comes from the people who take it too far.

In stan culture, the biggest compliment you can give is to call someone a 'true fan'. In order to get this moniker, there's certain expectations. The most essential being: dedication. Basically, to be a true fan you must be unwavering in your devotion.

Unfortunately, the thing about unshakable faith in someone you don't actually know, is that it isn't really the best way to live your life. If you pick a person from the internet and decide you love them, you only see them through the carefully cultivated life they want you to see.

It's for this reason stans struggle so much when a celebrity is exposed to be less than polished. Less than perfect.

Going back to Harry Styles, imagine if you will, he did something abhorrent. Let's say that he wore blackface. The stan, in order to stay true, would need to defend this action, even though it's deeply racist and not okay. They'd need to continue to see Harry Styles as perfect, unshakable.

This is the biggest flaw with modern day stan culture, and yet the most prevalent. People have chosen their person, their celebrity, and then they also forget that those celebrities are still humans. Flawed, messy, disagreeable humans.

So, to the stans on Twitter who think it's okay when a white celebrity appropriates the culture of people of colour, or a cisgender person defends transphobic actions, I want them to know this: it isn't. It has never been okay.

Do you know what is okay? Admitting that celebrities can mess up! In fact, learning from ignorance and mistakes can only be a good thing. However, in order for the celebrity to, like, actually learn, people need to hold them accountable.

If I someone I know personally says something racist, I'm going to call them out on it. In doing this, I'm not declaring that they're cancelled and that I don't love them anymore. Instead, I'm allowing them to recognise their problematic behaviour and learn how to, you know, not be racist.

And, I don’t know about you, but it’s 2019. I’m tired of watching people in power fail to recognise their mistakes, and I’m tired of being part of a culture which enables them. There is nothing wrong with putting your hands up and saying, I’m sorry, in fact, it's encouraged.

And if there's nothing wrong with you doing it, why would there be anything wrong with letting your fave do the same?

So, to all the stans out there: be better. Be the person you think your celebrity is. Hold people accountable for their actions.

It'll help everyone. I promise.