Is Stan Culture Dangerous?

I'm sure if you're reading this you know what stan culture is, but if not I'll give a quick explanation. 'Stan' basically means obsessive fan and it came from Eminem's song by the same name, in the song a fan is so obsessed with Eminem, after multiple letters and no replies from Eminem, Stan takes drastic action and drives his car off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend inside, insane I know but some stans really do get that obsessed. Stan culture didn't just automatically start with the Eminem song though, I believe the first real stans where of course the fan girls of artists such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

I want to talk about stan culture today though, with the rise of social media, stan culture and fandoms have never been this popular. Like anything, stan culture has its positives and negatives, but the negatives surrounding stan culture are pretty major, which is why I want to know is stan culture dangerous or just a harmless hobby?

From my own personal experience, my own friends and hundreds of people online I know for a fact stan culture and fandoms create a great community online. It has helped so many people who may not have many friends local to them, find people who share the same love they do for their favourite artists. It's so easy to make an account on twitter, instagram, tiktok and find a massive community of people who are all just as obsessed as you are with a certain band, artist, actress, actor etc. I know from experience that the people you meet in these communities quickly go from strangers to some of the best friends you will ever have. A lot of the time, the friends you make through your favourite artist end up becoming the people you go to every concert with, the people you spend your birthday with etc. I've met friends from London, Kent, Ireland, America and Canada all through online artist communities. Stan culture and online communities have also been known to majorly improve people's mental health, it gives them a safe place to go to, to talk to people about whatever their passionate about without judgement and to escape whatever shit is going on in their own lives. In short, I think the sense of community and the friends you make are a really strong positive of stan culture.

Despite the positives I've mentioned and of course many more, stanning a celeb and being apart of such an intense community comes with negatives. Even though the idea of stans online coming together is to create a safe space to talk about their fave, so much bullying and negativity ends up being spread. I've seen so many fandoms attacking others because they don't like the artist they like, or their fave won award and someone else's didn't, literal targeted harassment, death threats and bullying over music taste. As you can tell, my personal opinion on this is that it's crazy. I will never understand people who feel the need to voice such hateful opinions towards those who enjoy whatever they hate. Like cool, you don't like an artist, that's great for you, keep it to yourself and let people enjoy things without your unnecessary hateful comments. From my experience in stan culture, I've noticed hate and bullying being spread because of artist interaction. Of course people are going to get jealous over an artist interacting with another fan more than they're interacting with them, but is that any reason to hate that fan or bully that fan? At the end of the day, bullying and being hateful certainly isn't going to make the artist want to interact with you, they see more on social media than you realise.

Another negative that comes with stan culture that I want to mention is stalking. On so many occasions fans have leaked celebrities' locations on twitter mainly and other fans have gone to those locations to meet their faves. See it how you want but this is a form of stalking, if an artist hasn't made their location public, 9 times out of 10 they don't want fans there. No matter how nice they may act to you when you show up. Does being famous mean you're not entitled to privacy? No it doesn't.

So, do the negatives cancel out the positives when it comes to stan culture?

I know it comes across like I hate it but, to me honestly, despite all the toxicity and people who love to cause drama, I think the communities that stans and artists create together is a beautiful thing. You can easily ignore the minority of people who try and make it a bad experience for you. You will meet the best friends you have ever had, you'll find your people and your voice, and I think being involved in stan culture is worth it just for that. If you take anything away from this post let it be, never let people with shitty opinions or negative attitudes put you off something or someone you love. You will always find your crowd.