The Dangers of Fandoms

Hello all! I'm Kelsie and these are my thoughts.

Oh boy, this post isn't gonna make me very many friends.

      Now as someone who pretty much resides on the Internet, I've seen (and been in) quite a few fandoms over the years. Now for those of you who are too busy actually contributing to society and don't know what a fandom is, a fandom is a group of people who share a common interest in something or someone. I consider myself a member of quite a few fandoms but the ones I am most active in are the YouTube fandom and the Pentatonix fandom, aka Pentaholics (who I'll talk more about in a future post.) 

        First, let's get the positives of being in a fandom out of the way. You can make some of your best friends in a fandom, you can find people who love the same thing you do and maybe if you're lucky, find your future significant other. There are people who can support you in a time of need, when your idol notices your existence and, if you're lucky, you get to meet both said idol and the friends that you've made in the fandom. There are plenty of fandoms worth being in such as the Fanders, the fandom for Viner turned YouTube star Thomas Sanders (who I'll also go more in depth about in a future post.) Those folks are absolute dolls. Being in a fandom has both pros and what this post is going to cover, the cons.

     There are multiple cons to being in a fandom but before I get into that, let me just disclaim this by saying that I'm NOT in any way, shape or form trying to generalize or shame fandoms at all. I'm not trying to say that every single person in a fandom are a bunch of mindless idiots with way too much time on their hands. You're talking to someone who again pretty much lives online. I get it. I'd like to think that all fandoms have their share of civil, open-minded, respectful individuals whose heads aren't so far up their idol's ass, you'd need to send a rescue team to find them and more power to those folks but like everything in life, every fandom has its extremists that take things way too goddamn far.

     Let's begin with how a fandom handles criticism. Long story short, some handle it better than others, My friend Kylie was once called out by the Eurovision fandom because she didn't like a popular entry. Directioners and Beliebers are two fandoms notorious for being unable to take any form of valid criticism against their respective parties. But as music critic Mark Grondin (who I talk more about in this post) can attest to, it's not just the fans that can't take criticism. Some artists have paper thin skin as well.

      According to Mark, he has been blocked by at least two artists, rappers Cage and Scarface despite liking the latter's last album. Music critics (or just anyone with a differing opinion) seem to get the brunt of a fandom's wrath and sometimes even the artist themselves. Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder has repeatedly tried to sue reporters critical of his lackluster management of the team (you can find out more about that mess by watching this hilarious video by UrinatingTree here) despite the Skins' recent run of failure.

      Another negative aspect of fandoms are the fan wars. One popular fandom war is that between girl groups Fifth Harmony and Little Mix, who are signed to the same label Syco music. Now, it should be no surprise to anyone that the Harmonizers and Mixers have had beef for ages over which girl group is better and the record label constantly pitting them against each other doesn't help matters at all.

      But really, I think that I've danced around this issue long enough. The real issues with fandoms are the stalking, harassment and bullying. Stalkers have been a consistent fear of humans for a long time but celebrities even more so and with the help of our good friend social media, finding people's location has become significantly easier. 

      Panic At The Disco's Brendon Urie has had to deal with overly obsessive fans for quite a while now. Earlier this year, he had to move from the house that he wrote the album Death Of A Bachelor in due to fans sending gifts and showing up unannounced (YouTuber Infinity on Hannah explains more about that nightmare and a half here) Then in the summer, while playing Charlie Price in Broadway's Kinky Boots, he once again had to deal with rowdy fans to the point where he had to stop signing after the shows.

      And then there's the harassment and bullying. Holy titties on toenails the harassment and bullying. Now as a victim of bullying throughout middle school and my freshman year of high school, I can safely say that bullying someone just because of who they are is a pretty shitty thing to do. But with fandoms, it's twenty times worse. Back in 2011, I asked a singer who I was following at the time why he was unfollowing some fans on Twitter and one of his fans came at me and ended up blocking me (to date, that is the one and so far only time that I have ever been blocked by someone on social media although I suspect that will probably change once this post goes live.) despite the fact that I was as respectful as I could be.

      Now for the harassment, going back to Mark Grondin, his scathing review of the sophomore album Illuminate by fellow Canadian Shawn Mendes drew the ire of the Mendes Army who then proceeded to harass the hell out of him (one even made a video on Twitter berating him) and send him death threats. Now while the Mendes Army aren't the first fandom to send someone death threats(the Directioners did the same thing to YouTube star Tyler Oakley back in 2014 after he called out one of the members for siding with someone who had made homophobic remarks) but sending death threats to anyone is incredibly assholish.

      Twitter user Tenebyss wrote an excellent article theorizing why fandoms act the way they do (you can read that article here) but here's another one. Since fandoms are mostly comprised of younger kids who tend to be a bit more sensitive to criticism and act like they "know" their idol, they go into protection mode. While I kind of understand that behavior if the criticism being tossed around is flat out inaccurate, most of the time it's just that person's opinion.

      One opinion isn't gonna make or break someone's career. If you disagree with someone, just breathe and say "you're entitled to your wrong opinion" to yourself and move on. Also, if you are trying to defend someone who's being harassed by being an even bigger asshat to the person doing the harassing, you're no better than they are. 

      So in conclusion, fandoms can be an celebrity's best friend and their worst enemy. Rowdy fandoms can often alienate people who are trying to get into their work. And I haven't gotten to the entitlement! I mean I would but this post is getting too long so I'll save that for another time.

Thanks for reading! More thoughts coming soon!