Stan culture is the extreme support of a person, usually a celebrity and often resulting in the doxing, harassment or bullying of anyone viewed as opposed to the object of their worship. The term comes from the 2000 Eminem song about a very intense fan called ‘Stan’.
While celebrities have always had fans, the much more recent accessibility of these celebrities through social media has fuelled the parasocial relationships of celebrity and fan. Celebrities can now talk to us on Live, Periscope, Twitter etc. And we can see their lives unfold on their Snapchat stories or Instagram stories closing the gap of perceived proximity, culminating in what we see now as fandoms or in more extreme cases stans.
With that let’s talk about the internet’s most notorious fandoms. We have the Barbz, the Swifties, the Beehive, the BTS army – who have won the IHeart Music Award for best fandom since 2019 – and most sports fans. We talk about stan culture as though it erupted with Millennials and Gen Z on Twitter. I think this continues with the misrepresentation and sanitisation of the past, similar to how we forget about festivals like Freaknik. The agenda to present newer generations as crazier and more outrageous than the previous ones has been working like a well-oiled machine. So, to interrogate that notion I pose the question: were our parents stans?
Social media has definitely had a huge role in shaping stan culture into the beast we know and love today (debatable), but our parents definitely have idolised musicians, actors, or sports stars, usually showing their love through collecting memorabilia, attending concerts or events, or generally just talking about them to others. While the term “stan” may not have been in their vocabulary, the fervour and loyalty they exhibited towards their favourite artists mirror the dedication seen in our current ideas of stan culture. I know we have all seen one picture or another with Micheal Jackson surrounded by thousands of fans who probably waited for hours in different conditions to catch a glimpse of him. Our parents also enjoyed a boy band war or two; let’s not forget Boys II Men vs New Edition or Backstreet Boys vs NSYNC.
Calling into the radio. Multiple blog posts. Sport hooliganism. All examples fervourent behaviour from different fandoms in the 80s and 90s. Obviously, this looks different to what we associate now with fandom behaviour but that’s simply because the tools have changed. Instead of calling into the radio we just stream or buy the music outright and listen to it an ungodly amount of times. We also don’t really use blog posts to express ourselves anymore, especially when you can just tweet. Sport hooliganism still looks relatively similar – but with a lack of creativity.
In conclusion, some of our parents were definitely stans and probably would be if they were growing up in 2024 instead of the 80s or 90s. Luckily, they have probably grown out of it and so will most current stans. But I implore everyone to ask their older family members about their super fan experience because there have always been super fans around and we definitely are not the first and will likely not be the last.
Written By: Ozioma Ofoezie
Edited By: Eloise Barnes