If you say you never had a fan-page you are a big ol’ liar! Or you’re telling the truth, so this article isn’t for you. Now that I got you, fellow fan-page owner, what was it? Don’t be shy – tell me! 5 Seconds of Summer? No? Ariana Grande, One Direction, jeez, I don’t know…Troye Sivan?
It was quite an interesting cultural experience, to say the least. Whatever “fandom” you were in in your pre-pubescent years, why were all of our first thoughts like – oh, I need to make a social media page where I just post about this! Wow a picture 4,000 other people have posted, yep I need to share this!
There’s so many things that I, as a young adult woman now, can never understand about things we did when we were in…those…years.
There must be thousands of just dead, completely inactive Instagram pages full of cringey over-edited photos of people who don’t really matter to us anymore, but I would like this to think what made this a very common younger girl experience was…I mean I can guess, we wanted to fit in, as always. Maybe the need to feel like a part of something?
Fandoms had always been posed as this “boy-crazy,” or weird obsession by the media. And those “crazy” qualities are most certainly attributed partially because of the reason that girls having interests and hobbies and being excited about it is, you guessed it, crazy! But don’t say that about the same little boys kicking in a TV at a baseball game, no. They are just passionate about their hobbies.
That could partially explain why most girls or people who had fandom accounts made it – it removed oneself from the interest they had. I would say it is completely plausible that many individuals, particularly girls or those who managed fandom accounts, created these digital spaces to distance themselves from the stigma associated with their interests. This in turn popularized fan-pages in general.
In the world of fan-pages, what the interest was became the focal point – faces blurred, identities not important. It wasn’t about the individual behind the screen; it was about the shared love for a particular celebrity or fandom.
Admittedly, we all outgrew our fan-pages as interests evolved and matured. Yet, when we reminisce about those days and the now dormant fan-pages we once meticulously curated, there’s no need for shame. These digital time capsules represent a snapshot of our younger selves.
So, if you ever find yourself scrolling through the archives of your old fan-page – don’t cringe! (Or try not to). Instead, smile at the memories of a time when passion and shared interests brought us together, one fan-page at a time. After all, it was a unique chapter in our lives that deserves its own special place in the album of nostalgia. (But that doesn’t mean we have to go telling each other our old usernames). Of course we grew out of it, like any interest. But when we think about those dead fan-pages we used to have, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s something we should appreciate.