Is it possible to step out of the stan culture?

More often than not, the effects of overinvested fandom remain on the fringes, in the nooks and crannies of individual fandoms and fanbases, specific platforms that serve as the proverbial teacups that contain the stormy meltdowns. This makes it easy for outsiders to ignore the intrusion of stan culture into the culture at large, unable to see just how far its roots extend beneath the surface.

Sometimes, news of disturbing fan behavior breaks through and gets attention, causing most observers to worry about what’s going on. Earlier this year, Swifties targeted Joe Alwyn, as Romance and rivalry by proxy is as predictable as album cycles become in the current climate, especially within that fanbase.

The most recent example is Chappell Roan, who was harassed and spoke out about it, inspiring many pieces on the way public figures are treated by the public, and the parasitic demands of spoiled strangers.

I don’t disagree with any of the pieces I’ve read, especially those from people who have themselves been the recipients of unreasonable, insatiable demands from the public. What makes me hesitate, however, is the lack of acknowledgement or recognition that what we’re seeing and what public figures are experiencing isn’t just the result of toxic fandom: it’s a result of standard business practices.

Individually, we can choose not to participate. We can embrace casual fandom and get off the merry-go-round. But as a general dynamic, stan culture is here to stay, and I suspect it will only get worse as it’s fueled. Part of the playbook is to convince fans that they have more power than they do, which increases their sense of entitlement. It’s positive when it’s to your advantage, devastating when fans oppose what you’re doing.

Individually, we can remind ourselves and each other that we owe nothing to public figures, that our attachments are entirely one-sided. But even if we break free and step around the pits of quicksand, the industry that depends on “customer evangelists” will continue to plod along, enabling or even encouraging the antisocial behavior in which we are enmeshed. The search for super fans rages on, and the platforms for “verified” fandom and general fan management continues to increase.

A major problem is that when fans who overstep their bounds are rewarded, their behavior becomes normalized and perpetuated. In practice, this can look a lot like what happened with hockey fandom and the book-focused corner of TikTok known and referred to as Booktok.

The Booktok turn to hockey was due to the popularity of hockey novels. As might be expected, real hockey players were “fancast” as the beloved fictional characters. That is, fans chose real players to embody specific characters. Specifically, players from the Seattle Kraken team. As is the way, the fans’ attention was shifted from the fictional book characters to the players themselves, making them objects of fandom to be rooted for.

As newcomers to the NHL, it makes sense that the Kraken would focus on the attention. They were still building their fanbase and public profile. But as they embraced the attention, the lines between fandom and official coverage began to blur. Official accounts engaged in “thirst posting” about their players, amplifying and engaging with content that did the same, which was seen as team-sanctioned.

One particular book toker who was courted and caused controversy was Kierra Lewis. With over a million followers, Lewis’ social footprint was more than three times the size of Kraken’s official accounts, so it made sense to engage with her and her content. Outside of social media, Lewis was also flown to multiple games and given custom merchandise. The problem was that much of Lewis’ content was sexual in nature and was unwelcome to some of the players she hosted.

It is striking that Alex Wennberg and his wife are speaking out against the new reality they live in. They emphasize that part of the problem is due to the fact that their personal stories are flooded with unwanted sexual comments.

Emily Rath, the author of one of the popular hockey romance novels Wennberg was a fan for, also spoke out against the behavior she saw. She told ESPN that she reached out to the Kraken team directly and asked them to stop amplifying fandom and allowing the worst behavior to occur. Whether it was her request or the Wennbergs speaking out, the official Kraken accounts unfollowed Lewis and removed all content related to Booktok.

Lewis was not happy with this development and spoke out on TikTok and Instagram about feeling exploited and excluded by the Wennbergs.

“Yesterday I came home to find that Seattle Kraken had unfollowed me and deleted all of their ‘thirst trap’ videos, which left me confused and angry. Seattle Kraken had not only been interested in my videos mentioning Alex Wennberg from the beginning, but actually encouraged me to keep posting. They also started posting their own ‘thirst trap of Wennberg’, to the point where people started calling it an Alex Wennberg fan page. And they (now deleted) changed their bio to ‘Mostly Booktok’. I also want to mention my comments on Seattle Kraken and my vlog led to them flying me to their playoffs and giving me a BookTok shirt. This led to them getting over 60,000 followers.”

— Kierra Lewis via Instagram, July 29, 2023

Part of Lewis’s complaint was that she and other book tokers were used and discarded at the most inopportune time. And, well, of course they were. That’s how it works. Riding on, enabling, and sustaining fan activity is commonplace. Little thought is given to what might be inappropriate to amplify or engage in until the consequences come, at which point withdrawal is the default response.

Rath, who spoke out against what the team did, said it well: “You shouldn’t treat your employees with the same degree of abstraction that you treat the fans.”

This is the crux of the problem. What is appropriate in fandom is not necessarily appropriate elsewhere. The people on the receiving end of fannish activity and attachment are called “fan objects” for a reason: they are objects for the fannish community at large. But they should not be objects for the people who are supposed to cover their backs and profit from their work.

At first glance, it seems like a good idea to use fan content and engage in fandom activities. But there are pitfalls everywhere that can punish, or even reward, bad behavior. Which of course means it will continue to exist, encouraged.

I said I think it will get worse, so how much worse can it get? Well, I see the adoption of something like the truck protests that are prevalent in K-pop fandom. Digital shaming is not impactful enough.

I’ve talked about truck protests before, but I haven’t really touched on this particular event. In this case, Seventeen band member Joshua Hong was rumored to be dating a model, and some fans weren’t happy about it.

Trucks with electronic signage are standard at these protests, and this was no different. Porsches were also thrown into the mix in response to rumors that Joshua had given his new girlfriend a Porsche. There has been speculation that anti-fans may have participated as well, complicating the intent behind the protest. The vehicles were sent on a special route in Seoul, targeting the offices of HYBE, SM Entertainment, and YG Entertainment. That wasn’t the end of the story, however, as other fans decided to support trucks to counter the protest. Online fan wars also moved offline.

The protest trucks demanded that Joshua leave the group and asked fans for their money back. According to the signs on the truck, the fans who sent them had purchased thousands of albums. The claim is impossible to confirm, but earlier this year Seventeen and their fans were criticized for dumping thousands of albums on the streets of Japan after their release. So fans buying thousands of albums at a time isn’t really unusual in this context. The excessive spending is ingrained in the fandom. (Stay tuned for a post on the bulk buying phenomenon and how it’s encouraged by official sources!)

These examples may not be enough to convince you that companies enable and encourage this kind of excessive behavior, but I’ve written about many more examples. the normalization of stalker culture in the One Direction fandom, to the fan microtargeting of a Harry Styles album campaignUnpleasant consumer markets in general rely on fandomUnpleasant the big business of stan cultureto marketers who explicitly talk about their brands being spiritually fulfilling and “love beyond reason“in their clients, to exploit negative attachments in the form of anti-fandom profit-seekingand so forth.

I want to be clear that I do not condone fan behavior, but I understand where it comes from and why it persists. I have come to view stan culture as a mint plant rather than a weed, seemingly harmless and useful but which will eventually choke out all other plants and become an invasive species. There is an entire infrastructure built on optimizing fan attachment and engagement, regardless of the consequences, which means that someone will always plant some seeds. I have seen strings being pulled and things being made worse by an infrastructure dedicated to optimizing fan attachment and engagement. I have been on the receiving end.

I write about fandom because that’s the perspective I have, but if you’re interested in what the people who ultimately become fan objects go through, I highly recommend Nancy K. Baym’s book: Playing for the Public: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of ConnectionI’ve referenced Baym’s work before, who has spent many years speaking to artists and performers about how our digital world and the new norm of extreme accessibility has affected them.

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