UNITED WE STAN

How fangirls built the social internet—and where they might go from here.

By Morgan Becker

“Fangirls: Who We Are And What We Can Teach You About Love.”

This is the title of one of many fangirl manifestos smattered across the web, in defense of dedicating all your idle hours to a person who might never know you back. “The act of fangirling,” it reads, “requires patience and dedication, two virtues required in any loving relationship… To sum it up, it’s not a diet. It’s a lifestyle.”

There’s the saying that love is synonymous with the act of paying attention. It gets a bit fraught in the digital age. The so-called “attention economy”—founded on the principle that human engagement is a finite resource, necessary to wrangle if you want to make some cash—existed way before the internet did. Like logging or livestock farming, it’s an industry that can and has flexed its muscles sustainably. Billboards, magazine spreads, direct mailers, and radio commercials relied on potential customers looking up and around at the world; taking in their surroundings on the way to the shops or at least down to their mailbox. We weren’t just gazing at a screen across the living room. Or worse, one clutched eternally in the palm of our hand.

Like what we’d expect from razed forests or from overcrowded slaughterhouses, the attention companies vie for today has devolved down to terrible quality. As the “products” of the so-called “free” internet (insofar as our eyes on ads are what generate value), our capacity to critically engage with information has been sucked dry. Our attention is diverted in a million directions. What was meant to be a bastion of democratized information—the internet—grew up to be an overstimulating shopping mall.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, all across the modern web, campaigns are springing up that hack at the framework of the postcapitalistic attention economy, potentially restoring some control over what, how, and why we consume. Who might we have to thank? Those same fangirls! Hunched over their laptops from dusk till dawn, these young zealots wield more combined online power than the celebrities they idolize—not to mention independent world leaders, influencers, and corporations. From the Bobby Soxers to the Beatlemaniacs, to the Barbz to the Swifties to BTS Army, the evolution of stan culture is intimately tied to how the web looks, works, and, prospers in the here and now. These collectives built the social internet, tying it to the world’s economy. And now, they’re flirting with the notion of turning it against itself.

The world scoffed at the first fangirls, labeling them raving fools—a double-edged sword they wield to this very day. They marched on underestimated, largely due to their majority gender and to the fact that, unlike groupies, they admired from afar. These girls built a community with few barriers to entry, tended to it hour after hour, year after year. They shared records and interviews. They broke them down over the phone. As time went on, they designed forums that would amass trillions of clicks. They made hashtags go viral—reliably, exponentially. They created an engagement superabundance advertisers couldn’t ignore. Then, they started to call the shots: influencing not only their idols, but also the brands that came to ride on their backs, recognizing an untapped attention well deeper than they’d ever seen.

Cue Chromatica Oreos. The Travis Scott McDonald’s special. Brands talking in first-person, play fighting with other brands, posting in all lowercase, as any true fangirl would. When news broke that BTS hit record pre-orders, Target’s Twitter rejoined, “We have no choice but to stan.” Social media departments all over the world stumbled upon an invaluable shortcut: If you needed a spike in engagement, you just had to get on a strong fandom’s good side.

The roots of stan history reach way back, too winding and expansive to do justice in one go. Not that many have tried: Internet historians didn’t see their reign coming. Journalists sensationalized all their screaming and fainting and sobbing. “Publicly, the fangirl wastes money and refuses to make her time useful,” Kaitlyn Tiffany acknowledges in her book Everything I Need I Get from You—a veritable case study on 1D’s Directioners. “She’s not considered normal or sane; her refusal to accept things the way they are is one of her defining characteristics.” You might, as most do, see fangirling as a display of mindless consumerism or shallow obsession. Or—despite the fact that the fangirl’s idol is about as mainstream as one can get—you might buy Tiffany’s argument that refusing to make yourself useful is the basic requirement of any true subculture.

What makes a subculture anyways? And why would it matter that fandom be labeled as such? For one, the distinction rebukes the notion that fringe movements are the domain of young men, offering a lens through which to take in the weight of all this free labor. Stanning is no easy task. Political subcultures might associate it with the act of organizing: for instance, a fan-led “exposure campaign,” in which a lesser-known track is streamed on repeat, purchased on every platform on a pre-selected date, requested constantly on the radio, written-in for awards, and boosted via hashtags and fan cams. These measures—collectively sustained—can easily surpass the promotion attempts of any major record label. Artistic subcultures might compare it to building a distinct symbolic-aesthetic language: working together to develop inside jokes, canonical memes, and a knowledge of masterworks, suitable merch, and the arguments that’ll put down rivals. To make sense of a fandom’s internal communications, you’ve got to study up on its underground dogma.

In their 1977 essay “Girls and Subculture,” Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber positioned the teen bedroom as a domestic site of cultural production. Sons roamed the streets, trying on offbeat identities—punks, skinheads, leathers, mods—socialized to break rules and to flirt with danger. Daughters, faced implicitly with greater risk, stayed at home. They had sleepovers, voraciously consumed mainstream media like taped music and pop magazines. And eventually, they went online, at a rate considerably higher than that of their male peers. Online anonymity meant this uniquely girly revolution could stay under wraps. “Girls negotiate a different leisure space and different personal spaces from those inhabited by boys,” write McRobbie and Garber. “These in turn offer them different possibilities for ‘resistance,’ if indeed that is the right word to use.”

When “Girls and Subculture” was penned nearly a half-century ago, fangirl resistance mirrored second-wave feminism: There was a low-stakes sexual assertion as well as a shunning of familially-surveilled chores and school assignments, in exchange for daydreaming; also, a rejection of the stereotype of “the girl as the passive fan, and the star as the active male.” Fangirls borrowed their identities from these artists—just like their male peers—to portray themselves as serious consumers of music. This approach to fandom is sometimes called “mimetic,” in that it celebrates the icon just as they are. Matt Hills, author of Fan Cultures. denotes it “culturally masculinized,” offering, as the quintessential example, cosplaying. The internet was a pathway toward what Tiffany refers to as “transformational fandom,” which is comparatively the brainchild of young women: Think fanfiction or fan theory, which pull bits and pieces from an icon’s practice and personal life, teasing out bonus lore that’s either speculative or entirely fake. It might extend to fans’ involvement in creating the icon, via relentless collective and individual support. Fans built celebrity, after all. Their attention fuels it and funds it. Thus, they take credit for their icon’s wins, and great shame in their losses, flops, and scandals. It’s facilitated the expectation of something in return: influence over the star’s overarching output. Who they’re friends with, who they love, where they vacation, what they release, who they vote for, where they shop, and on and on.

Which brings us to right now: protests outside the Met Gala, diligently tracked private jets, Instagram blocklists, and the rise of the micro-influencer. The fall of the A-lister has never seemed so nigh. For better or worse, with social media’s surge came virtue signaling and cancel culture—raising the bar on what we expect from public figures and the companies they sell for. We want stars to “leverage their platform,” defending the environment, condemning apartheid. We want politicians to package themselves like stars.

What fandoms want their icons to say depends on their leading demographic. Sometimes, there’s a clear consensus—more often, in-fighting that leads to deserters and, down the line, homogenization. At least in pop music (which boasts the most organized fandoms, compared to film, literature, art), politics skew left, mirroring trends amongst the young women and gay men who dominate their ranks. Swifties get pressure from climate activists, who rail against the singer’s short and frequent private jet rides. The BeyHive, from anti-capitalists who claim anthems like “Break My Soul” profit massively from the very financial systems they critique. In the summer of 2020, Ana de Armas’s best-known fan account took to posting the actress’s trysts with Ben Affleck, captioned tongue-in-cheek like: “[Ana and Ben] share a tender moment before he whispers into her ear that they forgot their face masks at home.” Presumably annoyed, de Armas hit block, jumpstarting a drama that would supersede any mild pandemic wrist-slaps. As stan account after stan account fed in on the foolishness of a rising star pushing away her most devoted admirer, @ArmasUpdates opted to diversify, making use of the unprecedented buzz. To tens of thousands of followers, they boosted resources around Black Lives Matter and the Yemeni Civil War, temporarily changing their username to Ana Defund the Police Armas Updates.

This case stopped short of turning against a previously-stanned icon; @ArmasUpdates still supports the actress, despite remaining blocked. But there’s precedent for that, too. When Kendall Jenner’s notorious Pepsi ad aired back in 2017, @KNJDaily ran a biting thread of all the model’s missteps, from donning a t-shirt plastered with the Confederate flag to her alleged “lack of work ethic,” culminating in the announcement that they’d elected to “un-stan.” The move went viral, reported on by Vogue, Perez Hilton, MTV, Complex, BuzzFeed, and more. Jenner was forced to join the ranks of a thousand shunned stars, launching PR-penned apologies, stepping back from the public eye.

Kim Kardashian deadpanned “free everybody” as protestors chanted for Palestine. JK Rowling stands behind every last transphobic tweet. All that quick and heavy online backlash can’t be easy to take—but then again, isn’t all press good press? Hadn’t we decided to separate the art from the artist? As celebrities lobby for privacy and the right to withhold their opinions, they’re being blocked and unfollowed in the millions—not only losing immediate audience, but also damaging their algorithmic reach. “A reduction in visibility can lead advertisers to perceive the celebrity as less valuable,” Eddy Borges-Ray told Al Jazeera, in regards to the financial consequences of the blocklist trend, “potentially cutting back on the amount they are willing to pay for ads on [a given] profile.” This is a big deal, considering that companies drop tens of millions on individual brand ambassadorships, when it gets to the level of a household name. A star squandering public favor can be financially devastating: Adidas stood to lose $650 million in doing away with Kanye’s Yeezy line.

At this point in time, tying products to people is a risk established businesses stay willing to take. They know that fangirls are viciously loyal—often, to a fault. They know that celebrity sponsorships have the potential to launch their stuff into the stratosphere: Bella Hadid wore those Uggs; they sold out around the world in an hour.

But there’s always a breaking point. Especially when you consider that fandoms exist in direct competition with one another, vying for the same finite attention as everybody else. If a faction shows any sign of wavering—of engaging with a rival’s critiques—there’s a domino effect that tumbles down into mainstream media narratives, sending publicity firms into crisis, and presumably, embarrassing the icon. “Is The Tide Turning Against Taylor Swift?” Forbes recently wondered. “Doja Cat Fans Clash With Rapper,” announced Rolling Stone last June. Whether stans are urging their fave to speak up, lauding them over a disgraced adversary, or engaging with a political issue seemingly unrelated to their stated mission (BTS Army, for instance, famously maxed out RSVPs for a Trump campaign event in Tulsa, credited for its subsequently low turnout), they’ve got to present a united front. Gambling with their icon’s marketability puts fangirls’ painstaking promotional efforts on the line; crucially, it’s also where they brandish the greatest leverage.

Gen Z—and primarily, its girls—are figuring out how to throw around all of this attention, drummed up by their deep connection to brands and to stars. They’re holding both accountable: not just to churning out that next album on time, but to a variety of demands, all the way down the ideological spectrum.

How deep could this go? It’s a potential antidote to the “women speak, men decide” phenomenon: #MeToo was empowering, but Weinstein might go free; #MyBodyMyChoice went viral, but Roe v. Wade was overturned. Fangirls hold more power than they realize: financially (just this year, Forbes reported that women account for 85 percent of discretionary purchases in the US) and in that they hold the reins on a good deal of what’s engaged with and what’s left in the dust. They might change the world, collapsing some of its uglier systems; they might simply make lots of chaos; they might render celebrity an unsound investment, damaging art’s connection to (and reliance upon) corporations acting as modern patrons. What might creativity look like, were it not so tied to fame and to money?

The fangirl’s internet was designed in the spirit of its original purpose: Democratized access to data and to real-time communication. Nearly anything that starts this way—for fun, for impact, not for profit—eventually gets wrapped up in plastic and sold back to the begetter: We’ve seen it with punk and hip-hop as they merged with pop culture, with Corporate Pride, with greenwashing schemes. Fangirling is unique because it never got its due: mainstream from the start, and mostly in agreement with the tastes of the masses. Free labor by young women is the movement’s baseline, taken for granted and then leaned on too hard. Arguably for the first time, the height of a community’s power coincides with the emergence of its revolutionary side. Listen up, or lose the money, the love—the attention.