These cultures are a form of participatory media that allows “average” users to connect with one another and be activists for the things socialites, brands, companies and celebrities stand for. Those who participate in stan/cancel culture become a personal PR team for these people and/or brands, allowing fans to depict their success or diminish their fame based on personal actions, beliefs, values, etc.
Stan culture is a group of individuals who support a particular celebrity, brand, value, and/or beliefs. Stans are very powerful and can help bring in more attention of those who don’t personally identify as stans themselves, but this allows for public discourse and change. Some brands and people have personal stans and so they support their beliefs too.
When did it start?
“Its origins lie in Eminem’s 2000 hit song “Stan,” about an overzealous fan, and has come to describe anyone who takes their love of a particular artist or entertainment franchise to new extremes.”
Cancel culture is commonly seen as a form of stanning, like a by-product of Stan Culture. There is no definitive start date known for cancel culture but it is commonly agreed upon to have grown popular in 2018. Cancel culture is in relation to a brand, companies, celebrities, socialites, and influencers. This allows users to diminish the value of brands and can affect ones income by bringing up past negligence or views/beliefs one disagrees with.
Lindgren states in his section Hyperpersonal Interaction “…online environments, people can communicate over a period of time, get to know each other well, and share intimate things, while still keeping their true identities concealed.” This allows for stans to be supportive of their beliefs while not being so boisterous in putting themselves out there.
Examples of brands and people with stans would be Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, etc. People who choose to support local business, or are vegan/cruelty free tend to have stans as well and can help their viewers grow.
Many people in 2019 have already been canceled like James Charles, R.Kelly for different reasons. R.Kelly cancellation has caused him to lose mass amounts of money and loss in sales for music. It is also known that some other artists who support R.Kelly have also received backlash and their own demographic and support went down as well.
With the power of stans, average consumers and people are able to connect on values and help support these brands and socialites success within the world and truly challenge and shape their own world.
Twitter is a powerful participatory media. Tweeting has brought public commentary to a whole new level. The lure of twitter is it’s a mode of communication that can be self-indulgent, communal, political, a hobby, job, or for general use. The spectrum is endless. You can engage within or outside your circle. There’s a trending page and even a search engine. It really is an open forum. It’s like, if you’re not on twitter how do you get your news?
As an observation, I’ve found that Stans use Twitter the most as it’s the easiest one to engage in a conversation and to circulate content. As long as you have access to technology and have the vocabulary to do so, it’s fairly easy. It’s convenient for users to post comments, pictures, and videos about their fandom for the world to see (if it’s a public profile). It can incite an interaction, reaction, discourse, culture shift, or impact inside or outside of “Stan Twitter”.
I would consider Outside Twitter as locals who tweet about their personal lives and don’t engage in fan/pop culture at all or not aware of all the memes.
This is an example of a Stan account, someone who has a celeb profile but their account is devoted to their favorite artist’s updates.
The tweeting function is vital to Stans because that’s how they bond, give opinions, but also to get noticed. Most won’t see tweeting as a form of power and deem it as trivial but users have the potential to influence.
By sharing your comments and opinions, the open forum is read and seen by many to potentially gain publicity.
Stans will come together to retweet (repost) a comment that is widely shared to gain viral attraction. Or Stans will tweet about the same subject at the same time in order for it to get trending. That’s how they use participatory media to get noticed by higher ups in terms of brands, shows, companies, and of course their favorite artist.
Examples:
Hayley Kiyoko Stans and also fans of the show Friends were able to get the show to stay on Netflix by tweeting their disappointment. Under Hayley’s Tweet is a bunch of her stans supporting her opinion and getting her to 11,000 retweets that Netflix noticed.
THE ONLY REASON I HAVE AN ACCOUNT WITH NETFLIX IS TO REWATCH FRIENDS. WHY @netflix ARE YOU HURTING US.
Brooklyn 99, a comedy show that was cancelled on Fox were able to get their show picked up by NBC because there was so much outrage and by their Stans and public figures alike. Basically, Stan Twitter and celebrities came together to revive the show just by tweeting.
The power of fan love is on full display today! Long live #Brooklyn99 99! #nbc
Britney Stans were able to investigate a lead into Britney’s alleged conservatorship and are claiming she’s being held hostage. They started the #FreeBritney hashtag for awareness on Twitter and got both Britney and Jamie spears’ attention.
10 years ago, who was there?? I have been here long before anyone else and I’ll be here long after. I love my sister with everything I have. So anyone or anything that speaks to the contrary can GTFOH with all the comments about what you don’t understand. pic.twitter.com/raeU7wlh5C
Thirst Tweeting from Stans has gotten the attention of celebrities and T.V. shows such as Late night Jimmy Kimmel.
When researching, the only problem I find is that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish whose just a local user and whose a full on Stan on Twitter. I would argue that locals participate in Stan culture but not to the extent of others. Sometimes it’s quite easy to point Stans out when they have anon/celeb pic profiles or use lingo like “Daddy” , “legend”, “Mom”, “Slay”, “Tea”, or “Serve”. A lot of this slang language was developed by LGBTQ+ community, Black Culture, and Drag Queens. It’s just Stan twitter is constantly using them and it’s become an indicator.
As long as there is a common agenda, publicity can occur on a small or large scale.
Stans have really come a long way by navigating participatory media in their favor. They have so much influence that Stan tweets have the potential to gauge in levels of public approval, disapproval, and debate on a particular artist/movies/shows/figures. Since tweets are equivalent to giving out your opinion, peers and higher ups would like to read or counteract them. Tweeting can shift the market or dominate the conversation.
No way is this a form of grassroots activism, but it’s in the same lane of using your “voice” and bringing awareness. Their collective participation in tweeting creates impact but also networking skills (Gladwell). Being able to reach many people through trending and retweeting is an asset.
These fan communities are reflective of what the internet can afford us. The comment and sharing feature embedded onto these social media networks allows users across the globe the opportunity to participate more than they have before. It’s an open forum for anyone to chime in. Their engagement is being seen by the masses and media outlets. Stan culture/Twitter has given a voice to many users for good but also bad. Good in terms of getting to connect and have fun as a past time, but bad for hate. Unfortunately, Stans are more known for their harassment and verbally abusive behavior as sitting behind the screen makes them bold.
A side effect of participatory media and Stan culture is that now these Stans feel invisible enough to spew hate and unnecessary comments out of malice. They troll so much that they take pride in it. It borders on giving out wrong information or just cyberbullying. They’ve gotten celebrities like Alessia Cara, Pete Davidson, Normani from Fifth Harmony and probably many more to take breaks from social media. They use twitter as a hateful tool to be stubborn and invasive.
I can’t deny that it’s kind of cool to see such passionate and motivated communities coming together. But I wish it wasn’t as toxic as a lot of people would agree.
Being a fan is usually something that’s fairly harmless. There’s nothing wrong with having interests or even a slight “obsession” with a celebrity.
But there is a point where that obsession becomes an actual problem and boundaries are crossed.
Jenna Mourey, also known as Jenna Marbles, and her boyfriend Julien Solomita are popular YouTubers that have a pretty huge following. Jenna has been in the YouTube game for quite some time now, since 2010, and has over 19 million subscribers currently. She’s known for being very kind and compassionate, and her videos are super funny.
On September 17, 2017, Julien released a video on is vlog channel titled, “don’t come to our house.” Within this video, he tells the story of how this woman had brought her son to their house because her son was a fan and had found out that they lived there. The woman didn’t seem to see any issue with this, and Julien had to ask them to leave.
People tend to forget that celebrities are still people with their own lives and that they deserve the same respect that you would show to anyone. While the son may be too young to understand why this is crossing a line, the mom is an adult who should’ve known better.
Stalking and invasion of privacy are definitely issues, but there are other aspects and behaviors that can be deemed unhealthy. According to an article published in the Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease titled, “A Clinical Interpretation of Attitudes And Behaviors Associated With Celebrity Worship,” the level of fixation that people can feel is a major factor as well. (Trigger Warning: self-harm) The article discusses a case in which a 16 year-old girl had to be hospitalized for cutting her warm, neck, and legs in a hot bath after finding out her favorite musician was getting married. There are different levels of worship that are talked about and explained through how these celebrities are discussed by individuals, such as how low levels of celebrity worship would be something like, “Learning the life story of my favorite celebrity is fun,” to intermediate levels with, “I have frequent thoughts of my celebrity, even when I don’t want to,” and what is labeled to be borderline-pathological at, “If I were lucky enough to meet my favorite celebrity, and they asked me to do something illegal as a favor I would probably do it.”
These levels definitely exist, and with places like social media where fans feel more connected to their favorite celebrities on a personal level more than ever, the lines just keep getting blurrier. Young fans need to be educated on what is right and wrong, and have guidance on what’s no longer healthy.
“I’m Your Number One Fan” — A Clinical Look At Celebrity Worship is another article that was published discussing the different studies done to help quantify this idea of being an overly-obsessed fan through two scales called the Celebrity Worship Scale and the Celebrity Attitudes Scale. A study was done in the UK that examined college students and their celebrity worship levels.
It’s crazy to see how times are shifting and to see that studies are starting to reflect things that are happening within modern society, with things like celebrity worship actually being written about in clinical and medical journals.
Another instance of young fans not understanding right from wrong involved YouTubers Ethan and Grayson Dolan, also known as the Dolan Twins, when their father passed away. Fans had created an Instagram page about the funeral and had planned to go to the funeral in order to meet the twins. There were posts containing instructions of where to meet and what to do at the funeral, and plans to keep everyone updated once the obituary was posted. The fan that was updating the account even purchased plane tickets to fly there for this. It’s a horrifying thing to hear about happening, especially to two young men who had just lost their father. This is that borderline-pathological level where reason has gone out the window for the sake of getting a chance to interact with their favorite celebrities.
Again, this isn’t to say that every fan in the world is this bad or extreme. It’s just SUPER important to acknowledge that this does exist. This behavior is not safe, nor is it healthy. This is not to shame any individuals who feel or act this way, but to discuss where the line can be crossed of just being a fan to exhibiting worrisome thoughts and actions.
There has been a lot of controversy of the current trend of Stanning and Cancelling celebrities, brands, etc. There has been a common understanding and ettiquite around when it is appropriate and needed. Stanning and Cancelling celebrities and brands tend to occur when some form of news breaks about about them being a supporter or anti-supporter of X, Y, Z or they have done or said something negative whether that be in the present or past. In cancel culture, many are being known for getting cancelled for saying or engaging in past or present racist, homophobic, or insensitive remarks.
Many who participate in trying to cancel brands and people doesn’t mean they always succeed. Brands like Chick-fil-A are commonly known for trying to be cancelled due to homophobia/anti-LGBTQ+ through donating towards campaigns that fund against same-sex marriage and being a Christian based brand and so those who disagree with he views Chick-fil-A owners carry tend to try to not support them and eat there. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chick-fil-a-gay-marriage/
There are times and places for people to be cancelled and stanned. Pulling up old receipts of socialites tend to be seen as petty depending on how aggressive the encounter was but it also gains attention from the socialite themselves and mainly people are looking for an apology and some form of recognition of their actions. Times are changing and everyone is demanding equality.
In our textbook, Lindgren states in his section Out of Sight “when we use services such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, we often cannot be seen by others, nor can we see who else is there at the same time.”pg.76 I think this effect is where stans are most prominent because the idea of not being seen allows for people to feel more comfortable voicing their opinions and supporting who they choose.
Lindgren, S. (2017). Digital media and society. Los Angeles: SAGE.
With everyone feeling entitled to their opinions, more people are willing to voice them and share their thoughts on topics and express their views. The discourse of everyone’s thoughts clash and start controversy and allows for people to find a community they choose to belong with. I think we are in a challenging time of wondering if this is more beneficial or harmful to society?
In this group project, each person had their initial posts regarding stan and cancel culture but we all also decided to make it interesting and choose a celebrity, brand, or topic/trend that has been stanned or cancelled. I think the most popular incident has been the James Charles v. Tati Westbrook beef and drama.
Overall the drama has settled but the backlash was crazy. Tati started with 4 million subs and James with over 16 million. James was known to have the most subscribers in the beauty influencer community and after the drama, he quickly lost 3 million subscribers within 24 hours and Tati went from 4-7 and now near 10 million. This just goes to show how far the support of stans can go. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/12/entertainment/james-charles-youtube-subscribers-trnd/index.html
From our text, Lindgren has a section entitled Active Users, Mutual Relations in this Lindgren talks about computer-mediated communication and states “media that are interactive offer their users the ability and potential to directly intervene in the content in different ways.” pg. 68 which is a perfect example in how Stan Culture is participatory media and challenges the way we interact with media.
From our text, Lindgren has a section entitled Active Users, Mutual Relations in this Lindgren talks about computer-mediated communication and states “media that are interactive offer their users the ability and potential to directly intervene in the content in different ways.” pg. 68 which is a perfect example in how Stan Culture is participatory media and challenges the way we interact with media.
Lindgren, S. (2017). Digital media and society. Los Angeles: SAGE.
The Beyhive are kind of the OGs of Stan-like behavior before Stan was fully realized.
Even if you don’t tune into Beyoncé like that, you know how big Beyoncé is. She’s a talented vocalist, performer, businesswoman, and overall artist (in my opinion). Her talent has gotten a lot of praise but also a lot of fans. Her journey as an artist has been a long one. She’s been around since the 90’s and most artists can’t build an empire big as hers. I would know because I would consider myself a Bey Stan, like why wouldn’t you? Her fandom goes by the Beyhive and they’ll do anything to protect Queen Bey.
The Beyhive are a prime example of Stan culture and utilizing participatory media to show that. I feel like they are the most obvious fandom that has shown throughout time what it means to be a “Stan”, transitioning from regular fan to obsessive Stan. The internet has given them power and they are not afraid to use it at all. Any bad press or criticism against Beyoncé will be reprimanded by the Beyhive through the keyboard.
Beyonce Stans solution of choice is basically spamming the person and harassing them on every social media until they forfeit. It can come across as extremely off putting because at the end of the day it’s cyberbullying. Sometimes the consequences are justified sometimes it’s not.
When Kid Rock said this statement about Bey in 2015,
“Beyoncé, to me, doesn’t have a f–king ‘Purple Rain,’ but she’s the biggest thing on Earth,” he said. “How can you be that big without at least one ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ or ‘Old Time Rock & Roll’? People are like, ‘Beyoncé’s hot. Got a nice f–king ass.’ I’m like, ‘Cool, I like skinny white chicks with big t-ts.’ Doesn’t really f–king do much for me.”
The Beyhive responded with:
Which in return got Kid Rock a little bothered by posting this:
When lemonade was released, the song “Sorry” got a lot of attention because of the context of a cheating man, which many presumed to be Jay-Z. She sang the iconic line, “He better call Becky with the good hair”, which was an obvious diss to her man but also to the side woman. The Beyhive exhibited what I would call “Stan” behavior and rushed to find the suspect of this statement. Very quickly the Beyhive went from enjoying the song to being an investigation team. They were finding many potential home-wreckers who fit the lyric from Rachel Roy, Rita Ora, and Rachael Ray.
Rachel Roy being Attacked:
The Beyhive basically took her caption and her connection to Jay-Z as proof, is that delusional or reasonable?
This was her response, as you can see the Stans did NOT believe her one bit:
What’s so funny but so sad is that Bey stans can be so delusional that they targeted the wrong Rachel, Rachael Ray, the Chef.
So what can we conclude with all this evidence?
I want to highlight how participatory media has gotten to a point where it’s invasive, justified or not. The fact that many Stans have access to ruining people’s livelihood is concerning. They use social media as a tool for communication but also destruction. They way these comments are being presented shows they take pride in defending their artist because it gives a sense of purpose and community, especially when there are other Stans doing it too. It’s almost like being a soldier. It becomes normalized behavior to attack because in their head it’s protection.
These two cases are not the only ones, there is an actual list of celebs who’ve been blacklisted or have had a feud with the BeyHive created by US WEEKLY.
But don’t be fooled, there’s still good moments with Bey Stans.
Beyonce recently released her highly anticipated documentary, Homecoming (2019), showing her Coachella concert accompanied by a Live Album. It was a historical moment as it showed the work Beyonce puts into her performance on such a large scale. But besides that, there was a bonus song on the Live Homecoming Album called “Before I Let Go”. In the song, she sings dance commands where you can easily follow it if you wanted to bust a move. The Beyhive took the opportunity and ran with it. They started the #BeforeILetGoChallenge. It’s a perfect example of how participatory media continues to extend connectedness in many facets. Not only can you talk about Beyonce all day on social media, now you can show it. The dance challenge created buzz and people wanted to take part in such a fun activity. It brought stans and maybe just regular users together who love the song also.
The Bey stans uploaded their #BeforeILetGo challenge choreography to the song where they could potentially be reposted by Beyonce on her own personal Instagram. A pretty big deal if you ask me. The internet has afforded us closeness, shown through this artist and fandom interaction. Even though it can be quite minor to some, it feels good and it’s positive impact that people can carry with them.
So, now that we know more about what being a stan entails, let’s discuss the ways in which being a stan is super awesome, and the ways in which it’s toxic and harmful.
Let’s get the not-so-fun part out of the way.
Haaniyah Angus is a prominent figure on social media, primarily Twitter, where she talks about pop culture and film. As many people who have put in the time and effort to build up their social media and have a decent following, she had many contacts and networks that she relies on. She’s a freelance writer, so connections such as those as well as having that platform to help get the word out about her pieces is really important to her career.
As a black woman, she is well within her right to discuss issues such as appropriation. When Ariana Grande’s ‘7 Rings’ video came out, which is very blatantly Ariana Grande taking pieces of black culture as a white woman through the lyrics that she sang (if you’ve seen the video, you know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t, see it down below). Angus states that she “could not just ignore this,” and reposted a screenshot where someone was calling Ariana out for talking about “buying” her hair in her song a s a white woman, but Ariana had posted it on her Instagram story thinking it was praise. It was a little thing that caused a TON of Ariana stans to attack Angus and report the tweet, resulting in Angus’ Twitter account to be suspended permanently.
Again, as I’d highlighted before, Angus had built up this platform as part of her career, and because she, as a black woman, posted justified criticism of appropriation of black culture, got her platform and networks taken away from her. With the extreme stan mentality comes the inability to see when your favorite celebrity does something wrong, or attacking people for pointing out something that should be pointed out. Unfortunately, Angus isn’t the first person this has happened to, nor is she the last. If enough people get together and report a tweet, whether or not it deserves to be reported, the account can be suspended.
Though this instance definitely highlights the toxicity that can exist in stan culture, there are also wholesome instances where stans get together and get shit done for their fandom and for charity.
One of the greatest examples of this is when Glee fans got together and created the Box Scene Project. Sadly this website is no longer in existence, but what it was was this project based on two characters from the show named Kurt and Blaine. There was a scene written where Blaine gives Kurt a promise ring, but it didn’t end up making it in the show. Promotional stills were released, which is what made the fans aware that it exists, but Fox pulled the plug on it for certain reasons (aka it’s Fox and a scene featuring a gay couple. Let’s do the math). Because of this, fans wanted to get ahold of the script for the scene, and there was a huge uproar in the stan world on Twitter, Tumblr, etc. The script was then put up on a charity auction, which was what created the Box Scene Project. Created by Heather Kirkpatrick and Tamila Gresham on Tumblr, the two banded together and created different types of rewards that fans could get based on how much money they donated towards the Box Scene Project.
Christian Fuchs has written a piece that counters the way that Henry Jenkins views the rise of participatory media and social media. He brings up this idea of ownership, and how even though it seems like we are really making an impact and participating through what we post, it’s not taking into account the ways that true participatory democracy needs ownership democracy to be truly “equal.” Basically, what this has to do with what I’ve discussed is that it seems that we are given this sense of control and power through social media, and it’s important for us to take exploitation into account. Particularly in the case of the Box Scene Project, though it was for a good cause, Glee fans put in all this work for this scene to be released and to promote this particular scene. The only reason they were actually able to get ahold of it was at the writers’ discretion, and though they fought really hard to gain it and did all this work, they didn’t necessarily hold the power in this situation AND did labor for the show without any compensation.
Not necessarily a good or bad thing, just something to think about.
STAN CULTURE IN PARTICIPATORY MEDIA 