There are many bands I like a lot, I consider myself a fan of many artists, but I have always wonder about what makes people turn into hysterical fans and even plain psychos?
Recently, a teenager from Hampshire sent a tweet saying she was not really a fan of Justin Bieber but that his acoustic album was good. Something totally innocent, but she got retweeted by Bieber, and, as a result she received an avalanche of awful messages from some of the 34 million Biebs’fans, calling her a ‘whore’, telling her to ‘go kill yourself’!! The little brats got all super jealous and went totally psycho on her and even on Bieber, tweeting stuff like ‘U notice her n she’s not even a fan. I am but you won’t notice me : ) Can anyone hear me crying?’ or ‘
she should kill herself, or hoping she would get raped. Her fans also sent threats to Los Angeles Times critic Randall Roberts before Gaga’s shows at the Staples Center fearing a bad review and – oh horror – that he would reveal that both shows were undersold. They have also claimed that Madonna was responsible for the spread of AIDS, and this ugly Gaga-Madonna war even produced The Lady Gaga Project, a blog which has now been shut down, encouraging Lady Gaga’s fans to bash Madonna, whereas it was actually run by pro-Madonna people who wanted to make it look like Gaga’s fans were trying to destroy Madonna,… that’s so evil and twisted I can’t follow!
Do we need other examples? And I am not even taking examples in the rap and hip hop world! I mean, we have always seen teenagers in tears, screaming and tearing their hair apart, Elvis, the Beatles and the Stones certainly triggered this kind of reactions, but this meanness, this plain awful behavior seem to be new. And it’s not that people are getting worst, I just blame the social media! Facebook and certainly Twitter have totally changed our relationship with celebrities, look at this girl who got retweeted by Bieber, it was almost a direct connection with god himself and the ultimate approval from him.
This accessibility has turned crazy adolescents waiting in front of a hotel in the hope to see their idol, into psycho teenagers waiting behind their computers and iPhones for a retweet from the idol. It has changed everything and not in a good way. A sighting at the end of a concert was keeping some of the mystery, and this has totally vanished in a tweet or a Facebook exchange. You talk to your favorite star the same way you talk to your pal, and you feel totally ‘special’ when this exchange do exist. For some, it is like interacting with a god (Bieber) or with a queen-goddess (Beyonce), and I guess the stars who cultivate this personality cult the most, will end up with the craziest fans. Beyonce is another good example, her desire to look perfect at all levels (just watch the super-boring self-contemplating egocentric documentary she did for HBO) has definitively made her reach this god-like status for her fans.
But the irony of all this is that social media are a total delusion, these people are not more accessible to you, they are just fooling you! These are just other marketing tools which are getting the worst of the fans.