2:00

with their favorite celebrities, we'll

2:02

be exploring the relationship fans form with

2:04

one another, and the lengths they will

2:06

go together to assert the

2:09

dominance of a pop star quietly reaping

2:11

the prophets. To do that,

2:13

we are joined today by Amanda

2:16

Montel, host of the prolific podcast

2:18

Sounds Like a Cult and

2:20

author of multiple books, including Cultish,

2:23

The Language of Fanaticism, and her

2:25

new book, The Age

2:27

of Magical Overthinking. Amanda,

2:30

welcome to the show.

2:32

Hi, thank you so much for having

2:34

me. We were just discussing before we

2:36

started recording about how uncanny it can

2:39

feel, but also really validating and satisfying

2:41

when someone whose internet presence you are

2:43

so intimately familiar with comes out as

2:45

also being a follower of yours. It's

2:48

an honor to be here, Matt. Well,

2:51

I mean, I've asked, I've called you

2:53

here to theropize me through my trauma

2:55

of being the target of the

2:58

Swifties for the last two weeks.

3:00

So I hope you're ready. I

3:02

really, I valued what you were

3:04

saying earlier about how, you know,

3:06

the conventional wisdom when you've been

3:08

dogpiled is to cut

3:10

off the mob's fuel supply,

3:12

right? But the royal family's

3:15

trademark PR strategy of never

3:17

complain, never explain is sort

3:20

of at odds with what

3:22

I understand to be increasing

3:24

cultural values on the internet

3:27

of authenticity and transparency, never

3:29

complaining, never explaining, doesn't appear

3:32

very authentic. But

3:34

how could a person ever portray

3:36

true transparency and authenticity on the

3:38

internet when everyone is going to

3:40

interpret your statements differently? Everyone

3:43

is going to bring their own biases and

3:45

backgrounds to your points of view. So it's

3:47

really hard to know what to do. And

3:49

ultimately, I like really respect that

3:51

you're just kind of going with your gut.

3:54

And I feel maybe naively

3:57

confident that we'll be able to have

3:59

this conversation. in a way that I

4:01

hope won't further fuel the fire. Okay,

4:03

we should first establish how we

4:05

got here, shall we? Yeah, let's do

4:08

that. A little bit of background for

4:10

why exactly we're making this episode, because

4:12

after last one, I was like, I'm

4:14

done talking about celebrities and parasociality and

4:16

all of that. I was like, I've

4:18

closed this chapter, I've gotten my piece

4:20

out. That was before last

4:22

week. So, if

4:24

you haven't been following page six

4:26

or the New York Post or something, Taylor

4:29

Swift has a friend named Brittany Mahomes. Brittany

4:32

Mahomes is the wife of Austin Mahomes, the

4:34

quarterback... Don't you

4:37

love when I talk about sport? I

4:39

don't have the terminology either. I'm

4:43

just like, they were doing like

4:45

a ball rehearsal, what is that called?

4:47

It was intermission at the ball show.

4:49

Brittany Mahomes is the wife of Austin

4:51

Mahomes, who

4:54

is the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, which

4:57

is the same team that Taylor Swift's

4:59

boyfriend, Travis Kelsey, plays for. So,

5:03

Brittany and Taylor are essentially, you know,

5:05

football wives. Brittany got

5:07

into a whole thing a few

5:09

weeks ago where online she was

5:11

liking some pro Donald Trump content,

5:14

which got people on her ass, and then

5:16

she basically doubled down, which was... The

5:20

way she chose to do this was really funny. I

5:23

want to send you what she

5:25

posted on her Instagram story amidst the backlash for

5:27

her publicly supporting Donald Trump. Can I send you

5:29

this? Please. So,

5:32

her response went like this. To

5:34

be a hater as an adult, you

5:36

have to have some deep rooted issues

5:38

you refuse to heal from childhood. There's

5:41

no reason your brain is fully

5:43

developed and you hate to

5:45

see others doing well. A

5:47

little inscrutable. I know what she's saying. I

5:51

don't know. It could use a copy editor a

5:54

little bit next time. But that

5:56

was her response, which like, at first

5:58

blush and with no context. I'm

6:00

like, yeah, no, honestly. If you're

6:03

coming from a really un-resourced place,

6:06

you might be more likely to

6:08

spread venom on the internet. With

6:11

no context, fine. I just

6:13

love the idea of everyone

6:16

who's criticizing me for supporting

6:18

an aspiring fascist dictator is

6:21

a hater. Is a hater. This

6:23

is the end game of like, fuck

6:25

the haters. I don't need to prove anything

6:27

to anyone. I'm a girl. It's like, okay,

6:30

yeah, all the haters and the losers. This

6:33

is also clearly like the

6:35

bastardization of therapy speak that

6:37

we're seeing propagate everywhere

6:39

these days. And yeah, just when you

6:41

have the context, that being

6:44

fascism, you know,

6:46

stripping of rights, etc., this

6:48

starts to seem a little insidious.

6:51

If you don't like Donald Trump, you need

6:53

to heal your inner childhood wounds. Yeah,

6:56

I mean, what an unbelievably 2024 statement, right? Unbelievably.

7:01

But so Donald Trump

7:03

ultimately publicly thanks Brittany

7:05

Mahomes on Truth

7:08

Social. He posts, I want to thank

7:10

beautiful Brittany Mahomes for so strongly defending

7:12

me and the fact that MAGA is

7:14

the greatest and most powerful political movement

7:17

in the history of our

7:19

now failing country. It's also a side

7:21

note. I can never just stay on task, but

7:23

it's so interesting how every time he like talks

7:25

about a woman he likes, he always calls her

7:27

beautiful. Tell me about it. Or even a woman

7:29

that he doesn't like. I mean, watching

7:32

him try to make sense

7:34

of and work his way around Kamala

7:36

Harris and her appearance and her speech

7:39

and her identity and her in

7:41

the debate. I found it

7:44

really striking that he would

7:46

manage to like insult her

7:48

in a gendered capacity, but

7:50

also compliment her for seemingly

7:52

sharing some MAGA principles in the

7:55

same breath. She really throws him

7:57

for a loop. Women throw

7:59

Donald Trump. for a loop. All

8:01

this is happening amidst growing calls

8:03

for Taylor Swift to say something

8:06

about the election. Taylor Swift has

8:08

famously over the years branded herself

8:10

a feminist. She's branded herself a

8:12

sort of figure unafraid to take

8:15

political stances she deems correct and

8:17

progressive regardless of the blowback that

8:19

she might receive and amidst people's

8:22

ongoing calls for her to basically

8:24

endorse Kamala Harris for the election, which at this point

8:26

she had not done, she

8:28

is photographed at a Chiefs

8:30

game in the crowd hugging

8:32

Brittany Mahomes. This photograph of

8:35

Taylor Swift hugging Brittany Mahomes got a

8:37

ton of blowback from Swifties who had

8:39

been hoping to see at this point

8:42

some political statement by Taylor Swift whether that

8:45

be an endorsement of Kamala Harris, a

8:48

comment or perhaps sharing fundraisers

8:50

for Palestine, any

8:52

sort of comment about the rising

8:54

tide of bigotry against queer people

8:56

and trans people in the United

8:58

States. At this point she'd done

9:00

none of that and this felt

9:02

like the most politically substantive thing that

9:04

she had done in a very long

9:07

time and so people were pissed. I

9:10

was one of those people. I want

9:12

to clarify at this point my own

9:14

personal feelings about Taylor Swift. I first

9:16

of all have been a big fan

9:18

of Taylor Swift's music since Fearless. That

9:20

was I believe her second album. As

9:23

most people my age, you know, I'm 25, like

9:25

we grew up with her. I was in elementary

9:27

school when she started to get really popular around

9:29

the Fearless era and now I

9:32

am a working adult, allegedly

9:35

working, and she

9:37

only continues to become more famous,

9:39

which is a pretty unbelievable and

9:41

unprecedented career trajectory. But while I've

9:44

mostly continued to love Taylor Swift's

9:46

music, I have ethical

9:48

questions, as I think many

9:50

people do, around her accumulation

9:53

of capital, both financial, political,

9:55

social, and I think it's

9:57

gotten to a point where she is so

9:59

famous and so influential that and we're all

10:01

free to debate about this. I

10:04

do think especially if she's going to

10:06

brand herself a sort of progressive political

10:08

figure which she's done a number of

10:10

times in her documentary Miss Americana,

10:13

in her gay themed music video for You

10:15

Need to Calm Down, I think if she's

10:17

going to posit herself that way and in

10:19

doing so endear herself

10:21

to largely marginalized especially

10:23

queer audiences, she

10:26

does need to step up to

10:28

the plate a little bit when

10:30

so much is at stake. And again

10:32

at the time of this photograph of

10:34

her hugging Britney Mahomes, she had not

10:37

done that. Yeah, I'm personally a lot

10:39

more interested in the fan behaviors and

10:41

dynamics and how those have evolved and

10:44

what they say about this particular time

10:46

in history, what they say about the

10:48

general zeitgeist and psychological state of

10:51

particularly American fans these days

10:53

than I am in Taylor

10:55

Swift herself. I regard Taylor

10:57

Swift as a person

11:00

who I could speculate

11:02

all day long about who she might

11:04

be in her private life. Clearly

11:07

she values expansionism in a sense, you

11:09

know, like she's not someone who decided,

11:11

you know what, I have enough, I'm

11:13

gonna quit while I'm ahead, kind of,

11:16

you know, like retire on

11:18

a cloud. No, she likes

11:20

to persevere and I

11:22

don't necessarily really care to speculate too

11:25

much about her personal life.

11:27

I don't really pay attention

11:29

to her music, forgive me,

11:31

but I am fascinated by

11:33

the parasocial dynamics that she

11:35

has participated in probably more

11:37

than the average pop star

11:40

with her fans. Yeah, I'm interested

11:42

in the socio-cultural context of her

11:45

fan behaviors, but my personal relationship

11:47

to Taylor Swift kind of doesn't

11:49

exist. I listened to the Red

11:51

Album when I was in college,

11:53

living in Brooklyn, and I enjoyed

11:55

it. I think the song Trecherous

11:57

is underrated. You can probably... I

12:00

probably also sense that years

12:04

and years of commenting on

12:06

Taylor Swift's fan community have

12:08

rendered me perhaps overly cautious

12:10

about expressing my personal opinions

12:12

of her because I'm really

12:15

motivated to take the temperature down on some

12:17

of this discourse so we can really get

12:19

into it. And if I share

12:22

too much of my chitty chatty

12:24

brunch opinions on a public forum,

12:26

I feel like it might distract

12:28

from some of the meat of

12:30

what I want to bring

12:33

to a public forum, if that makes sense. Mmm,

12:35

totally, totally. So I think we can safely

12:37

say neither of us are Swifties

12:40

nor are we anti-Swifty.

12:44

We are observing each

12:46

side like a tennis match. Like a

12:48

tennis match from the movie Challengers. We're

12:51

looking at a lot of people and we're

12:53

saying kiss. Yeah,

12:56

exactly, exactly. So the photograph

12:58

comes out, I tweet, perhaps

13:00

naively, I don't expect

13:03

a billionaire to lead the revolution or anything,

13:05

I'm just confused as to why one would

13:07

make a movie about standing up for what's

13:09

right at any cost only to literally never

13:11

stand for anything again. Those

13:14

were some fiery words coming out of me

13:16

and that was before I understood the wrath

13:18

of the Swifties. Now, would I say the

13:20

same thing again now? Absolutely,

13:24

but I certainly

13:26

learned a lesson here and I'm still figuring out

13:28

which lesson that was. So that

13:30

tweet gets about a quarter of a million likes

13:33

and the initial response was some

13:35

people agreed with me, some people

13:37

disagreed with me, but that's Twitter.

13:40

It wasn't until Taylor Swift did

13:42

endorse Kamala Harris one day after

13:44

I sent my tweet and

13:47

you know, for the most part, people

13:49

who were happy that she had done

13:51

that moved on to other things that

13:54

the Swifties returned to my doorstep with

13:56

a vengeance. Now is

13:58

when I would like to read a collage

14:01

of messages and mentions I received

14:03

over a two-day period. All right,

14:05

here we go kids. Strap

14:08

in. Trigger warning also for everything.

14:10

Trigger, if you have a trigger,

14:12

you know, warning.

14:15

Respectfully, here is a present

14:17

rope emoji. She

14:19

didn't speak up because a faggot told her

14:22

so. Okay, wait, also, sorry, something that's funny

14:24

to mention is a lot of times, because

14:27

they know that writing faggot will sometimes,

14:29

not always, thanks Elon Musk, but

14:31

sometimes flag Twitter's community

14:34

guidelines. So a lot

14:36

of them do, they write faggot as

14:38

like FA and then the goat emoji,

14:40

which I actually think is hysterical. Next

14:43

message, you hideous beast. When you die

14:45

because of AIDS, we will be celebrating.

14:47

Next message, you're a grown man with

14:49

dick and balls. Grow up. I

14:54

mean, that's true. I do have those things.

14:57

Thank you. All right. All right. Here's a string

14:59

of tweets from five different people. Once

15:01

again, you have made yourself look unintelligent.

15:03

I hate an annoying senseless twink. Next.

15:07

Oh, so now you switch sides, you faggot.

15:10

Next. Damn, you really can't pick a

15:12

side other than bitch and moan, can

15:14

you? Next. Count your fucking

15:16

days, you stupid motherfucker. Next. Shut

15:18

the fuck up. Next. It's

15:21

always the horrible FA goat emoji.

15:25

I really do. I appreciate the creativity. Next.

15:28

Where's the apology you faggot this time

15:30

spelled FA 990T. People

15:34

like you make me wish for Trump's victory

15:36

so he can take away your rights. Good

15:38

luck rummaging through garbage bins with those shitty

15:40

ass nails that you probably put in some

15:43

other FA 9's asshole.

15:46

Next. Hope you die

15:49

like dice emoji of AIDS,

15:51

you filthy FA goat emoji.

15:54

Next. You did nothing but run

15:56

your dumb twink mouth. Focus on

15:58

your nails, not politics. from

16:00

an adult gay man. Like what? With with

16:02

photos attached to his profile that was shocking.

16:05

Next, but I thought she was a coward

16:08

48 hours ago. She will make more impact

16:10

than your f-goat, that would

16:12

just be like a goat, ever can

16:14

in this election. And

16:17

then finally, at this point you're

16:19

mentioning Taylor for the Twitter paycheck,

16:22

which is funny because I am

16:24

not subscribed to Twitter Blue. I do not

16:26

give Elon Musk any of my own money

16:28

and I am not making a cent from

16:30

my tweets on Twitter no matter how viral

16:32

they go. So I am not mentioning

16:35

Taylor for a paycheck, but thank

16:37

you at Pepsi romantics. Amanda, what's

16:40

your hot take? I

16:42

mean, I'm just like, so

16:44

sorry. Oh, I'm f- come

16:47

on. No, I know

16:49

it's not because for

16:51

most people like receiving a message like

16:53

that would send you into fight or

16:55

flight, you know, it really, it can

16:57

feel really threatening and really dangerous. Even if

16:59

those people would never dream of interacting with

17:02

you in person like that, and I have

17:04

to believe that most of them wouldn't, it

17:07

feels really scary. And I deal

17:09

with internet confrontation that I feel

17:11

is unjustified. I'm still not good at

17:13

it. And I still feel like I'm

17:15

pretty sort of doily skinned.

17:17

Well, it reminds me of that hat

17:19

or t-shirt or whatever, or perhaps a

17:21

meme that just says like, don't you

17:23

dare come for me, I will cry.

17:25

My response

17:28

is more like that t-shirt that says don't bully

17:30

me, I'll come. I will say, you know, I

17:33

did a little bit of analysis in real time

17:35

as this was happening on Twitter. And someone wrote

17:37

to me saying, I know that analyzing this from

17:39

sort of a bird's eye view perspective can help

17:42

deal with the pain while it's happening and

17:45

distance yourself from the pain. And

17:47

I realized that with this podcast, that's a little

17:49

bit of what I'm doing, you know, analyzing

17:52

why these people told me to die of

17:54

AIDS and how they'll celebrate it, it is

17:56

a little bit easier to metabolize that through

17:58

the lens of like, analysis.

18:01

I totally agree. That's the only thing

18:03

that's gotten me through moments when I

18:05

felt really misunderstood or like I was

18:08

going through something incredibly painful and unnecessary

18:10

having to do with the internet, developing

18:12

a sense of curiosity about why, about

18:14

why they're acting this way, why my

18:17

brain is responding in this manner. It

18:20

really does help. Amanda,

18:22

before we interrogate

18:25

what happened here, I want

18:27

to talk a little bit about Stan Twitter

18:29

and Stan culture, which some listeners might be

18:32

intimately familiar with, but others might have no

18:34

idea what I am talking about. And so

18:36

I feel like to get everyone on the

18:38

same page, let's discuss a

18:40

little bit of history. First of all, what

18:43

is a Stan? Could you describe to

18:45

your best ability what a Stan is? Yeah,

18:48

a lot of the literature, and there

18:50

is formal academic literature on this

18:53

topic, tends to define Stan's

18:55

as a coalition

18:58

of particularly obsessive,

19:01

zealous acolytes of

19:03

usually pop stars. So they

19:05

usually exist with regard to

19:08

musicians, particularly in the

19:10

pop space. Some attribute the

19:12

origins of this term Stan

19:15

to Eminem, who had a

19:17

2000 song titled Stan, which

19:19

told the story of a

19:21

sort of obsessed superfan who

19:24

lost his mind when his idol

19:26

wouldn't answer his fan letters. And

19:29

then conspicuously, the word Stan is

19:31

also a perfect portmanteau of stalker

19:33

and fan. So that kind of

19:35

demonstrates the intensity of

19:38

this type of fandom, which has

19:40

grown even more zealous

19:43

and even more diffuse over the

19:45

past few decades, which we can

19:47

discuss as well. With regard to

19:49

Stan Twitter, I want

19:51

to reference a really fascinating paper

19:53

that I found connecting Stan

19:56

Twitter and reactionary fandoms

19:58

with cancel culture. because

20:00

I saw that one of

20:02

the topics that you wanted to discuss today was,

20:06

you know, hyper reactionary, zealous

20:08

fandoms, appropriating some of the

20:10

mob mentality and methods of

20:12

far right groups and using

20:14

them for, you know, different

20:16

aims, different means with a

20:18

different aesthetic, a different flavor.

20:21

And I found it really interesting

20:23

that someone named Haley Roos at

20:25

the, at Muhlenberg College wrote a

20:28

paper, her honors thesis actually, about

20:31

how techniques of cancel

20:33

culture have been bastardized

20:35

by stan communities. So

20:37

Haley Roos talks about

20:39

how cancel culture began

20:42

on black Twitter and

20:44

the original intention and

20:47

mode of interaction of cancel culture.

20:49

Some listeners might already know this,

20:51

was to sort of, you know,

20:53

take your consumer behavior into your

20:56

own hands when you found that

20:58

a public figure or a celebrity

21:00

is behaving in a problematic fashion,

21:02

is acting in a way that

21:05

is racist, misogynistic, homophobic. You can

21:07

sort of call in, call out,

21:09

abstain from consuming their products, resist

21:11

putting money in their coffers. And

21:14

that was a form of social

21:16

justice empowerment. But Haley Roos goes

21:18

on to say, and I'm gonna

21:20

quote her here, the

21:22

social justice logic and activism

21:25

behind cancel culture has been

21:27

appropriated by stan Twitter. Stan's

21:29

noticed the power that cancel

21:31

culture had to end careers,

21:33

twisted the activism into harassment,

21:36

and restructured cancel culture as

21:38

an excuse to censor anyone

21:40

who questions, competes with, or

21:42

critiques their idols. And

21:45

one of the reasons why

21:47

cancel culture now is perceived

21:49

as bullying or honestly something

21:51

really amorphous that means something

21:53

different to different people, but

21:56

oftentimes can be really venomous,

21:58

is because of their, this bastardization, bystand

22:01

Twitter of some of these

22:03

social justice tools. Wow,

22:05

you've gotten some foreshadowing into the

22:08

rest of my outline. Sorry,

22:11

I hope I didn't like spill the beans or anything. No,

22:13

you didn't because I actually come at it from

22:15

a different place. Quick

22:18

break from the show to shout out

22:20

the girls at NordVPN for sponsoring

22:22

this episode. I write and make a

22:25

podcast for a living. So I work

22:27

for and by myself, which I love.

22:29

I don't have a real office because

22:32

first of all, office space in New York

22:34

is expensive. First of all, everything in New

22:36

York is expensive. But I actually like being

22:38

an office nomad, if you will. Working

22:41

from various coffee shops allows me to

22:43

cheesy though it sounds, explore all the

22:45

nooks and crannies of this giant city.

22:48

The problem though is that I am

22:50

always using a ton of different public

22:52

wifi networks and public wifi networks are

22:54

famously not so secure. They're very insecure

22:57

networks. They need a little ego boost.

23:00

And wifi network not being secure means

23:02

it's not encrypted, meaning that things like

23:05

your web history or any passwords or

23:07

credit card numbers that you put in

23:09

while you're using that public wifi network

23:12

is much more easily hackable to

23:14

cyber criminals. NordVPN helps keep me

23:16

safe from that. Nord encrypts your

23:18

internet connection so that nobody, not

23:20

the internet service provider, nor the

23:22

business, nor a potential hacker can

23:25

access your information while you're on

23:27

a public network. The diehard, swiftie,

23:29

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episode description. It's nordvpn.com/fruity.

23:55

Now back to the show. I

23:59

wanna do a... tiny bit of Stan

24:02

history because standom is

24:04

not new, right? Like super fans

24:06

of different musicians have existed and

24:08

have acted out for a long

24:10

time. You might recall John

24:12

Lennon was killed by a Beatles fan

24:15

who was increasingly jealous of the Beatles

24:17

fame and wanted it for himself. Selena

24:20

Cantanilla was killed by the president

24:22

of her own fan club. Joe

24:24

Coscarelli wrote this interesting piece in

24:26

the New York Times where he

24:28

explained that fandom before the internet

24:30

was generally relegated to concerts and

24:33

like isolated in-person meetups between fans.

24:35

It was competitive not in like

24:37

my fandom should be better than

24:39

your fandom and we can get

24:41

more streams on our song than

24:43

you can on your artist song

24:45

but it was more of just

24:47

about like within the fandom like

24:49

I've been to 10 concerts and

24:51

you've only been to eight. Kind

24:53

of innocuous shit like that and

24:55

he points out that American Idol

24:57

was really like a symbolic turning

24:59

point in the culture where fans

25:01

could vote for their favorite artist

25:04

to succeed or fail and then

25:06

that the availability of streaming analytics

25:08

on places like Spotify or Apple

25:10

Music turned music fandom into this

25:12

inner community competition. I'm

25:14

gonna get Miley Cyrus's song to outstream

25:16

the Lady Gaga songs that like the

25:19

Miley Stans can like beat out

25:21

the little monsters or whatever. In

25:23

2010s we see the real introduction

25:26

online of what would become stan

25:28

culture. Justin Bieber had his believers,

25:30

Nicki Minaj has the barbs, Ariana

25:32

Grande has arianators, Beyonce has the

25:34

beehive, Taylor Swift has swifties and

25:37

it turns into this sort of like

25:39

evangelical twitter-based movement. What's interesting too is

25:41

that you mentioned that stan comes from

25:43

the 2000 song by Eminem

25:46

called stan and the

25:48

thing about stan was it

25:50

was a cautionary tale. Stan

25:53

was a super fan of Eminem who grew

25:55

so angry with the fact that Eminem wasn't

25:58

returning his letters that he locked

26:00

his pregnant wife in the trunk of his car, and

26:03

drove off a bridge. Stan

26:05

is a pejorative when Eminem uses

26:07

it, but it's been sort of

26:09

twisted into like, I stan you

26:12

so hard. It's now like a

26:15

competition of who can be

26:17

the biggest Stan. Stan Twitter

26:19

today has hundreds of thousands

26:21

of Stan accounts, almost

26:23

all anonymously run, usually

26:25

with profile pictures of their favorite pop

26:28

stars. Joe Coscarelli again

26:30

explained it best. He wrote, on

26:32

what is known as Stan Twitter, these

26:34

devotees compare number ones in streaming statistics

26:37

like sports fans do, voice

26:40

crack, like sports fans

26:42

do to battling out, battling, battling,

26:44

I can't talk about fucking sports.

26:46

Like sports fans do batting averages,

26:49

championship wins and shooting percentages. They

26:52

pledge allegiance to their favorites like

26:54

the most rabid political partisans or

26:56

religious followers. They organize

26:58

to win awards, show polls,

27:00

boost sales, and raise money

27:02

like grassroots activists. And

27:04

they band together to pester or harass

27:06

or even docs, those who may dare

27:08

to slight the stars they have chosen

27:10

to align themselves with. Last thing

27:13

I want to say about Stan Twitter is, there

27:16

are two main news sources on

27:18

Stan Twitter. Their CNN and New

27:20

York Times are called Popcrave and

27:23

Popbase with 1.8 million and

27:25

1.6 million followers

27:27

respectively. These are two

27:29

huge Twitter accounts that basically just

27:31

report on the comings and goings

27:33

of different celebrities, whether they release

27:35

music or appeared in a paparazzi

27:37

photo. You may have heard

27:39

the lingo Taylor Swift's stuns in

27:42

new photo, but these accounts have

27:44

gotten so big that they're now

27:46

getting invited to the DNC. Both

27:49

Popcrave and Popbase were on the ground

27:51

at the DNC. Think Kamala

27:54

stuns in new photo. I also want

27:56

to mention you can be a huge

27:58

fan or scholar. you can have

28:01

an extreme admiration for a celebrity

28:03

without being a stan. You know,

28:06

people who write books or make

28:08

documentaries about people like Michael Jackson

28:10

or Madonna or, you know, drag

28:12

queens who base their entire career

28:15

around impersonating a specific celebrity like

28:17

Cher, that's not necessarily standom. The

28:19

thing I think where

28:22

fandom tips into standom is

28:24

when your interest or adoration for

28:26

an artist becomes a

28:29

parasocial obsession. Totally. That's totally

28:31

fair. And it actually it prompts me

28:33

to want to cite

28:35

some research that attempted to

28:37

quantify certain categories of celebrity

28:40

worship or fandom to paint

28:42

a clearer picture. The first

28:45

chapter in my newest book, which is called

28:47

the Age of Magical Overthinking, is called Are

28:49

You My Mother, Taylor Swift? And

28:51

I guess that's one of the reasons why I'm here

28:53

today because since, you know,

28:55

long before this election season, as

28:58

you mentioned, you know, Taylor Swift's

29:00

level of influence and level of

29:02

capital only continue to skyrocket. I

29:04

was really inspired to ask the

29:07

question of like what culturally and

29:09

psychologically is responsible for these extreme

29:11

cycles of celebrity worship and dethronement

29:13

that we're seeing right now. And

29:16

I came to some answers that felt

29:18

pretty satisfying. And a bit of foreshadowing

29:20

here is that in a

29:22

way they have to do with,

29:24

you know, our relationship to religion

29:26

and worship in the United States,

29:29

the conflation of celebrity with

29:31

religious authority, political authority,

29:33

business authority. They

29:35

also have to do with, you

29:37

know, emotional resources that are being

29:39

fulfilled or not in our personal

29:42

lives, communities, families. But I

29:44

want to talk about that spectrum

29:46

of standom. First of all, I

29:48

want to say that celebrity worship

29:50

has materially increased over the past

29:53

few decades. So in

29:55

2019, there was this one Japanese study that

29:57

found that about 30% of adolescents called

32:00

Intense Personal, the Intense Personal Feelings

32:02

category. And this was classified by

32:04

statements like, I have frequent thoughts

32:06

about my favorite celebrity even when

32:08

I don't want to. So

32:11

we're inching along the spectrum, but this is

32:13

maybe still not quite a stand. Me with

32:15

Britney Spears. Yeah, you're just

32:17

like falling asleep thinking about her even when you

32:19

don't want to. I'm like hitting myself in the

32:21

head, and we're like, make the thoughts go away,

32:23

but it can't stop. Well,

32:25

and we can talk about how to get yourself

32:28

out of a thought spiral surrounding Britney Spears or

32:30

anything else later. Cognitive behavioral

32:32

therapy for Britney Spears' obsession.

32:36

I think there's a real market

32:38

for that. And we can explore

32:40

endorsing such a thing. Yes, this

32:42

episode is sponsored by my new

32:44

app, which offers discounted

32:47

cognitive behavioral therapy for stands.

32:49

That's seriously, that's becoming a

32:51

more and more important thing. So OK,

32:54

so the third category was called

32:56

borderline pathological. And this level was

32:58

characterized by delusional thoughts, including my

33:00

favorite celebrity and I have our

33:03

own code so we can communicate

33:05

with each other secretly. This

33:07

might remind you of certain

33:09

fandoms ranging from QAnon type

33:13

Q drops to Easter

33:15

eggs, if I may say so. I'm not

33:17

naming anyone. They can't yell at

33:19

me if I don't say it by

33:22

name. This category was also defined by

33:24

certain implausible expectations, such as if I

33:26

walked through the door of my favorite

33:28

celebrity's home without an invitation, they would

33:30

be happy to see me. So now

33:32

we're talking about that parasocial separation

33:35

of reality and fiction that you were alluding

33:37

to. Another sentiment expressed

33:39

by this category was self-sacrifice. So

33:41

sentiments there included I would gladly

33:43

die in order to save the

33:45

life of my favorite celebrity. There

33:48

was a fourth category as

33:50

well, labeled deleterious imitation. And

33:53

these fans expressed a willingness to engage in

33:55

illegal behaviors on behalf of their fav. So

33:57

they would say things like that. or they

33:59

would agree with sentiments such as, if I

34:02

were lucky enough to meet my favorite celebrity

34:04

and they asked me to do something illegal

34:07

as a favor, like January 6th, I

34:09

would probably do it. I'm like gripping the

34:12

sides of my chair. This is like so

34:14

horrifying. Yeah,

34:16

no, it is, especially because

34:18

these behaviors are increasing in

34:21

a measurable capacity. You

34:23

know, I attribute it in

34:26

part to the era

34:28

that you were describing earlier where

34:31

we were seeing some of those celebrity

34:34

assassinations. So that

34:36

is obviously extreme, violent,

34:39

dangerous, but uncommon,

34:41

thankfully, IRL behavior. Fortunately,

34:45

you know, we're not seeing violence

34:48

quite like that as much anymore, although

34:50

with the past two Trump assassination attempts,

34:53

it's like, can we even really say

34:55

that? Although that's a different context and

34:57

it's hard to say what those people's

34:59

motivations were. But what we are seeing,

35:01

I think in general, is

35:04

a longing for community,

35:06

ritual, spirituality, and

35:08

meaning that before that 70s

35:11

era, like when

35:13

we started seeing the most intense

35:15

celebrity stands of the modern era,

35:17

such as Beatlemania, ever since that

35:19

era, celebrity worship has started to

35:21

become more intense. And I really think that

35:23

that is due to the sort

35:26

of exodus, if you will, away from

35:28

mainstream religion in the United States and

35:30

away from trust in the mainstream government.

35:32

There's a wonderful piece, an op-ed, that

35:35

the writer Jessica Gross wrote for the

35:37

New York Times, and it's titled something

35:39

like, When Did We Start

35:42

Taking Celebrities Seriously? And in

35:44

that New York Times piece, she reported that in

35:46

1958, about

35:48

three quarters of Americans, quote, "'trusted

35:50

the federal government to do the

35:52

right thing almost always or most

35:54

of the time.'" That was

35:56

according to Pew Research. But then

35:59

a few noteworthy... cultural events happened, including

36:01

the Vietnam War, the economic recession of

36:03

1960, Watergate, the

36:07

formation of many different

36:09

cults and spiritual groups. People were

36:11

leaving their childhood Protestantism behind. Sorry,

36:14

go ahead. I

36:16

just like that we're tracing my many Swifty

36:18

death threats to the

36:20

Vietnam War and Watergate. No,

36:23

but it is not a coincidence that

36:25

so many of Taylor Swift's

36:28

stand scandals are modeled linguistically

36:30

in the style of Watergate,

36:32

Tumblr Gate, Lavender Gate, Jet

36:35

Gate, because to a certain

36:37

faction of America, a

36:40

certain niche, but increasingly

36:43

not so niche corner of our

36:45

culture, it felt like Watergate, right?

36:47

I mean, that controversy gate is a form

36:50

of internet slang now, but it comes from

36:52

somewhere and it's not a coincidence. So

36:54

by 1980, only about a quarter of US citizens trusted

36:59

the government to do the right thing anymore. But

37:01

that didn't mean that we didn't

37:04

need and want a

37:07

different kind of public paragon to

37:10

suggest that they could save us. And

37:12

that can be directly connected to the election

37:14

of our very first celebrity president in the

37:17

form of Ronald Reagan. And

37:19

kind of our relationships to celebrity

37:22

worship changed forever from there. Yeah,

37:25

yeah. Wow, that is a

37:27

hallmark of my personality though is finding a

37:29

way to blame Reagan for everything. And

37:32

thanks to Amanda, we've done it. Yep, oh

37:34

my God, 100%. We can

37:36

blame Reagan for everything, including this. But

37:39

it's telling, I think that,

37:41

you know, at first ironically,

37:43

and then earnestly, and we

37:45

can talk about the ironic

37:47

to earnest pipeline, we are

37:49

now seeing prayer candles emblazoned

37:52

with the images of Taylor

37:54

Swift, Harry Styles, St. Dali.

37:57

And, you know, there is a conversation. to

38:00

be had, I don't know if anyone

38:02

has the definitively correct answers about

38:05

the role of celebrities in influencing

38:07

politics as celebrity worship combines with

38:09

late stage capitalism if that's a

38:12

term that we're using. But what

38:15

can be said definitively is that there

38:17

are some major negative side

38:19

effects to extreme celebrity worship. I'm going

38:21

to rattle off a list of what

38:24

basically are going to sound like the

38:26

side effects on a

38:28

pharmaceutical commercial. And I want

38:30

folks to know that I

38:32

am quoting from this empirical

38:34

research and I don't want

38:36

folks to feel judged or

38:40

I'm communicating that there's something wrong with them

38:42

for being a stan if you identify as

38:44

such. Because again, that word can mean

38:46

different things to different people depending on the context.

38:49

I have said so many times like I

38:52

stan Jeremy Allen Way or I stan chapel

38:54

or whatever and it

38:59

can mean different things to different

39:01

people again. And I also want

39:03

to communicate that these communities provide

39:05

so much solace, particularly for marginalized

39:07

communities. It is not

39:09

the case that every stan

39:12

is going to suffer psychologically from

39:14

their engagement with these communities. However,

39:17

there has been research to

39:19

suggest that an excess of

39:21

celebrity worship can come with

39:24

some deleterious consequences. According

39:26

to this one 2014 clinical examination

39:28

of celebrity worship,

39:30

some psychological difficulties that were

39:33

found to be associated with

39:35

high levels of standom included,

39:37

quote, concerns about body image,

39:39

greater proneness to cosmetic surgery,

39:41

sensation seeking, cognitive rigidity, diffusion,

39:44

poor interpersonal boundaries. Some

39:47

other observed qualities included depression,

39:49

anxiety, dissociation, narcissistic personality tendencies,

39:52

thirst for fame, compulsive shopping

39:54

and gambling, stalking behavior, excessive

39:56

fantasizing to the point of

39:59

social which was termed

40:01

in this piece, and I love this phrase, maladaptive

40:04

daydreaming, relatable, addiction

40:07

and criminality. Yeah. I

40:10

want to pause quickly to mention

40:12

that like, stan

40:16

Twitter can be very funny. You know,

40:18

the power of standom is incredible. Do

40:20

you know about the Trump rally in

40:22

Oklahoma? Was this the K-pop

40:24

situation? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so,

40:26

this is a good memory. In June

40:28

2020, Donald Trump was running for president.

40:34

I... Donald Trump has been running for president

40:36

for a very long time. Donald Trump is

40:38

running for president, and

40:41

he was holding a rally that June

40:43

in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The

40:45

Trump team was boasting to media

40:47

outlets that they had gotten millions

40:49

of ticket requests for this rally,

40:52

and reporters noted a shockingly small turnout. And

40:54

if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm going

40:56

to throw some pictures up on the screen

40:59

because they are very, very

41:01

funny. The Trump team said

41:03

that the reason it was pretty empty was

41:05

because protesters outside were preventing

41:07

the true Trump supporters from getting

41:09

into the rally, but reporters were

41:11

like, not really, there were like

41:13

very few protesters. And

41:16

what actually happened was K-pop

41:19

fans en masse registered

41:21

for tickets beforehand and

41:24

coordinated a campaign to artificially

41:26

drive up demand for this

41:28

rally and then not go. And

41:31

interest, which is so smart on its own

41:33

and something that made it even smarter, was

41:35

that many of these K-pop fans were quickly

41:38

deleting the content that they made about it

41:40

in real time so

41:42

that the Trump team would not catch

41:44

on to the fact that they were

41:46

doing this. And they basically successfully thwarted

41:48

a Trump rally, and it was very

41:50

funny. You know, there are so many

41:53

occasions of stands really

41:56

banding together in a grassroots fashion

41:58

that I think are really beautiful. And

42:01

the range of like outcomes that

42:03

can come from, you know, celebrities

42:06

treading outside of their lane into

42:08

politics or activism can be,

42:11

you know, Donald Trump to Dolly

42:13

Parton. You know, would

42:15

we want to sacrifice Dolly Parton

42:17

to save the world from Donald

42:19

Trump? That's an interesting philosophical exercise.

42:23

But, you know, would we want to

42:25

give up Jane Fonda and so many,

42:28

you know, profound activist figure celebrities in

42:30

order to protect our society from the

42:32

worst of the worst? I don't know.

42:36

But I, yeah, I'm, I'm heartened by that

42:38

K-pop stan story. It's hysterical. There's also, I

42:40

mean, and this is kind of in the

42:42

Hall of Fame of stan

42:45

Twitter situations, but do

42:48

you know about, okay, I'm just going to tell you in 2019. There

42:52

was a Taylor Swift stan account called

42:55

legit te updates. Okay, which

42:57

wrote update as most of you know, I haven't

42:59

been very active in the past couple of months

43:01

because I was in prison. I'm

43:04

back now, though, more Taylor Swift updates

43:06

coming soon. And

43:08

someone responded, OMG, why? And

43:10

Taylor wrote, I refuse

43:12

to join the IDF LMAO. Basically

43:17

legit te updates refused to join

43:19

the Israeli military and was put

43:21

in jail and then returned to

43:23

Twitter to be like, I'm

43:25

back for more Taylor Swift updates. Like

43:28

the resilience is unbelievable. Yes, yes,

43:32

yes, yes. But,

43:34

you know, there is a darkness

43:36

here as I experienced and as

43:38

one music critic, Julian Mapes experienced

43:40

in 2020. So

43:42

in 2020, Taylor Swift dropped folklore,

43:45

the album and Jillian

43:47

Mapes, then a writer for Pitchfork,

43:49

the music publication, wrote a review

43:51

for it that Swifties did not

43:53

find to be sufficiently positive. Jillian

43:57

Mapes was doxxed. She

43:59

had found a new album. physical threats

44:01

of violence made against her. She was

44:03

receiving repeated incessant phone calls to her

44:05

home from Swifties. And this

44:07

is all insane behavior, but also the

44:10

Pitchfork review was in 8.0. That

44:15

is so high on Pitchfork. Like

44:17

that is crazy. That's

44:19

crazy. I have a

44:21

similar story. So one of

44:24

my pals, Jill Betowitz, who is a

44:26

very, very funny writer, has

44:28

had a long standing Twitter presence

44:30

and is a self identified Swiftie.

44:33

She penned some truly

44:35

hilarious and glowing reviews

44:37

of Taylor's Lover album

44:40

for Vulture. She

44:42

was the victim of a

44:44

Swiftie Twitter dog pile because

44:46

in one of her articles, she

44:49

referred to Taylor Swift's then boyfriend,

44:51

Joe Alwyn as human oat milk,

44:54

which like just is not cruel.

44:59

No, it's just like saying he's a white boy.

45:01

It's so mild. There

45:03

is this really fascinating dynamic

45:06

I've observed among Swifties where

45:08

they've always felt protective of

45:10

her as if she's like sort of

45:12

ever needed the protection of like millions

45:15

of strangers. But like there's this weird,

45:17

do I want to call it incesty?

45:19

There's like, there's this like, you're my

45:22

mother. I'm your mother. Who's mother am

45:24

I? Like what

45:26

is our relationship? There's this really

45:28

conflation of like maternal,

45:30

but also sibling, but also bestie,

45:32

but also fan idol dynamics that

45:35

I think prompts some

45:37

Swifties to get defensive of Taylor

45:39

Swift, even when critique

45:42

is so mild, even when it's

45:44

not critique, it's just a bit.

45:46

And Jill told, she

45:48

told me on an episode of Sounds Like A Cult where

45:50

we covered the cult of Swifties, which was quite

45:53

the tightrope walk. She once had the FBI

45:55

show up at her house because of something

45:57

that she tweeted, but the

45:59

FBI cleared. when they determine that

46:01

this is no longer a problem, she

46:03

was never proverbially cleared by

46:06

the Swifties. And so it

46:10

is fascinating to me how Swifties will

46:12

even sort of come after their own. They'll

46:14

even come after Taylor Swift as

46:17

she violates some

46:19

standard of mothering that they've set for

46:21

her. So it's all fascinating. Well,

46:23

to your point, I mean, something that I think, and I think this

46:25

is kind of unique to

46:28

the Taylor Swift fandom, is

46:31

that they can kind of infantilize

46:33

her as someone who would

46:36

disintegrate at the tiniest bit of

46:38

criticism. Like, you know, I think

46:40

the criticism I wrote of Taylor

46:42

Swift for her lack of political

46:44

action was pretty tame.

46:47

And yet for days, I was

46:49

receiving hundreds of messages from Swifties

46:51

about how I was bullying her.

46:53

Right, right. While these same people

46:56

are telling me to kill myself.

46:58

Yeah, no, it's truly, it's sort

47:00

of ironic to put it mildly.

47:03

It reminds me of when there was

47:05

all that discourse during the pandemic where

47:08

people were complaining that the term Karen

47:10

was a slur. If Karen is a

47:12

slur, then yeah, you critiquing Taylor Swift's

47:14

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47:16

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48:57

let's jump back down the rabbit hole.

49:01

I want to talk about an important

49:03

through line between gamergate

49:06

and stan twitter and the tactics

49:08

of stan twitter that again Joe

49:10

Cuscarelli identified in the New York

49:12

Times. Gamergate I've talked

49:14

about it a little bit on this

49:16

podcast in various episodes but basically the

49:19

TLDR is it was

49:21

a coordinated loosely coordinated 2014 harassment

49:25

campaign mostly by very

49:28

online young white gamers.

49:31

My favorite demo. Male

49:35

gamers against a few women

49:37

who were video game developers and

49:39

critics basically on the basis that these

49:42

women were woke of fighting video

49:44

games that they were pushing for

49:46

you devastating things

49:48

as complex female characters with

49:51

realistic breast sizes. It was a

49:53

harassment campaign that mostly happened on

49:55

4chan and 8chan which is even

49:58

crazier than 4chan and reddit. Oh

50:00

my God, what would 16-chan be? 16-chan

50:03

is just hell. The

50:05

three main targets of Gamer Gate were

50:07

Anita Sarkeesian, who was a video game

50:09

writer and critic, and the

50:11

video game developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu,

50:13

who sadly is now just kind of a

50:15

right-wing troll herself. But they

50:17

were all doxxed. They received death threats

50:20

and rape threats for months, and in

50:22

some cases, years. What's

50:24

interesting is you're probably hearing this right now

50:26

and being like, OK, this just happens every

50:28

single day. And you

50:30

would be correct. This became

50:32

basically the textbook of internet

50:35

harassment adopted by not only

50:37

Stan Twitter, but other fandoms,

50:39

including those of Andrew Tate

50:41

and accounts like Libs of

50:43

TikTok, who just does this

50:46

every single day to random

50:48

gay and trans teachers. And

50:50

now accounts like stop underscore

50:52

anti-Semitism, which also every day

50:54

just doxxes random Palestinian

50:57

people for having a pro-Palestine pin

50:59

or something and then being like,

51:01

we have to get this flight

51:03

attendant fired for being anti-Semitic. It's

51:05

like this is just directing

51:07

their thousands of followers to find

51:10

the person's address and harass them into oblivion.

51:12

The Gamer Gate through line is an interesting

51:14

one because what I felt when I was

51:16

getting all of these messages from Swifties telling

51:18

me to get AIDS and die, et cetera,

51:22

et cetera, you're just a faggot, da da da

51:24

da da, you know, whatever,

51:26

what hasn't been said to me? These

51:29

mirrored the exact messages that

51:31

I received from thousands

51:33

and thousands of 13-year-olds, straight

51:37

white male Andrew Tate fans when

51:39

I had a little tiff with him in 2022. Hey,

51:44

guys, you better f**king relax when you're f**king

51:46

saying you're f**king goose, f**king

51:48

gay cunt talking about Andrew Tate like that.

51:51

Look at you, bro, you're a gay cunt, man.

51:53

Go f**king die, bro. These

51:55

are largely the identical messages to

51:57

those that I received from... fans

52:00

of JK Rowling for her

52:02

turf stuff not her Harry Potter stuff.

52:04

These are identical to the messages that

52:06

I get anytime I criticize Elon Musk

52:08

from all of his like you know

52:10

crypto bros. The Stan

52:13

Twitter playbook mirrors the

52:16

reactionary celebrity right-wing fandom

52:18

playbook. That insight that

52:21

I quickly identified while it was happening

52:23

I was like oh if I cover

52:25

the username and it's not like Taylor

52:27

Swift updates 13 like this

52:29

could easily have come from like Andrew

52:32

Tate is my daddy 13 and

52:34

I would not know because the messages are the same.

52:37

Yeah I think I it speaks a

52:39

lot about what kind of language

52:41

is normalized on certain platforms mercifully

52:44

I am NOT on Twitter. I

52:46

tried to tweet a couple times

52:49

throughout my life. You're

52:51

gonna live longer than me. You know

52:53

someone has to be conducting some

52:56

kind of really longitudinal study about

52:59

lifespan and Twitter use. I would

53:01

love to see those those receipts

53:04

but yeah I think there is you

53:06

know a certain linguistic culture

53:09

that has developed on each

53:11

individual platform and people adopt

53:14

you know a linguistic vibe really quickly.

53:16

I talk about this in cultish which

53:18

is my second book that talks about

53:20

the language of cults from Scientology to

53:22

SoulCycle okay so like this wide spectrum

53:24

of groups and what's

53:26

really sort of insidious about

53:29

cultish language is that

53:31

you know an insidery language

53:34

no matter if it's as innocuous

53:36

as Pig Latin or as dangerous

53:38

as sort of like in celly

53:40

QAnon type verbiage when

53:43

you are involved in a community that makes

53:45

you feel really accepted that makes

53:47

you feel superior to

53:49

those on the outside like you have

53:51

access to some kind of transcendent wisdom

53:53

that makes you feel like your

53:56

life is meaningful that you have a

53:58

strong identity and can weather challenges that

54:00

life might throw at you because you have this

54:02

community behind you, you have this identity that you

54:04

can stand by. The language

54:07

that they use, even if it's really violent,

54:09

is the first thing you're

54:11

going to pick up because language is invisible

54:13

and seemingly commitment-free. And it's also the last

54:15

thing that you're going to let go. And

54:19

I found this in so many contexts

54:21

when I started talking to cult

54:24

survivors for that book, folks who'd

54:26

gotten out of everything from Heaven's

54:28

Gate to just a way too

54:31

intense fitness community. A lot

54:33

of them were still using the in-group jargon

54:35

that they had adopted when they were a

54:37

part of this group that they had since

54:40

defected and were now lambasting. So

54:42

language doesn't appear

54:45

powerful or influential to

54:48

some folks because we grow up with axioms like sticks

54:50

and stones, give her a key, but words will never

54:52

hurt you. We often fail

54:54

to recognize its material power. So

54:56

I think that's going on, especially

54:59

on Twitter, where the culture can

55:01

be so poisonous, this type of

55:03

language is normal no matter what

55:05

flavor or aesthetic your community has.

55:08

This is the kind of register that you

55:10

might be talking in. And

55:12

I also think that just generally in

55:14

certain corners of the internet, our natural

55:18

conspiratorial tendencies as humans

55:20

are set aflame. So

55:24

as a human species, we

55:26

really like to force cause

55:29

and effect relationships into situations

55:31

where there is no real

55:33

one singular villainous cause for

55:35

an unfortunate turn of events.

55:38

Sometimes it happened because of complex array

55:40

of events or it just happened because

55:42

of random misfortune, but we don't

55:44

like that as human beings because it makes the

55:46

world feel chaotic and unmanageable. So

55:49

in certain fan communities, stan

55:51

communities, really toxic ones like andrewtape,

55:53

but now it seems like also

55:55

swifty's, there's a reason

55:57

why like Q drops and Taylor Swift

55:59

Easter can seem

56:02

sort of analogous because

56:04

there's a conspiratorialism underneath it all.

56:06

It is that same parasocial thing

56:09

of like she or he or

56:11

whoever is leaving messages

56:13

for me that only I can read.

56:16

And if you are to threaten a

56:18

stan's understanding of reality

56:20

and, you know, your critique of Taylor Swift

56:23

in that moment seemed to threaten a lot

56:25

of these people's understanding of reality, it

56:27

makes the world feel chaotic. It makes

56:29

them feel like their community is at

56:31

risk or that you're a threat to

56:33

their community. And if they've

56:35

had a lot of practice using this vitriolic

56:37

language because that's the culture of Twitter, it's

56:39

going to lead them to a pretty dark

56:41

place. Well,

56:44

I mean, that segues perfectly into the

56:46

next part of my outline, which I

56:48

called standing as a religion. I

56:50

want to read off to you some of

56:52

the notes that I took while I was

56:55

getting death threats. Yeah,

56:57

quantify, quantify that bullshit. Okay, I was

57:00

taking notes because I was like, this

57:02

feels religious. The

57:04

way these people are attacking me, you know,

57:06

a few weeks ago for the first time,

57:08

I know I'm late, but I watched Going

57:10

Clear, the documentary about Scientology. It's

57:12

never too late. It's evergreen. It's

57:15

great. And if you haven't seen Going Clear, it is

57:17

a good one to get a

57:19

fundamental understanding of Scientology and also to just

57:22

understand how kind of the in-group, out-group

57:24

psychology of cults work. But

57:26

one thing that Scientology is notorious

57:30

for is going against

57:32

its defectors and going

57:34

against outsiders. And

57:36

as this was happening to me for, again,

57:39

my most mild criticism of

57:41

Taylor Swift, I was getting

57:44

this onslaught of harassment that felt like

57:47

the stories I was hearing about in Going

57:49

Clear. Evangelical. And so I started taking some

57:51

notes about like, okay, what about this feels

57:54

religious to me? And here is what I

57:56

wrote down. The things that make

57:58

Stan culture feel like it's a good thing. fundamentally

58:00

religious. You have a deified figure,

58:03

whether it's a pop star or a

58:05

CEO like Elon Musk or an influencer

58:07

like Andrew Tate. You have a community

58:09

of fellow believers that sometimes you may

58:11

attend in-person events with that you might

58:13

pay a lot of money for. Tests

58:16

of loyalty to the deified

58:18

figure, rejection of outsiders,

58:21

harassment of critics, and a

58:24

flow of money constantly towards the

58:26

deity. And I added that last

58:28

bit, flow of money towards the

58:30

deity, because stands spend

58:33

a lot of money on

58:35

these artists. Yes. I was reading this

58:38

2005 study. It

58:40

was in an academic journal called

58:42

Advances in Consumer Research, and the

58:44

study was called Parasocial Relationships in

58:46

Online Communities by Paul Ballantine and

58:48

Brett Martin. And they

58:50

were writing in 2005

58:52

how basically parasocial online

58:54

communities spend more money,

58:56

which I thought was really interesting because

58:59

that is true of stan twitter. These

59:01

artists are not only streaming a song

59:03

like a normal person would or like

59:05

maybe buying an album here or there,

59:08

but they're setting up hundreds of playlists

59:10

where they can add the songs, the

59:12

newly released songs of their favorite artists

59:14

and play them over and over and

59:16

over again. They instruct each other on

59:19

how to stream with the volume

59:21

all the way down so that you can stream

59:23

a song all day without actually listening to it,

59:25

but so you can boost those artists numbers. They

59:28

are buying all 40 variants

59:30

of Taylor Swift's Tortured Poets Department and

59:32

all the different vinyls and all the

59:34

different bonus tracks and all the different

59:37

live versions. They are spending so much

59:39

money. And so I do think it's

59:41

important to note who is

59:43

the ultimate beneficiary here? Yeah. Well, first,

59:46

I want to sort of highlight

59:50

that some folks get

59:52

they sort of bump

59:54

up against the conflation

59:56

of terms like religion,

59:58

cult, culture. I

1:00:01

really like the way that theologian

1:00:03

and journalist, Tara Isabella Burton talks

1:00:05

about the sort of porous boundaries

1:00:07

between these concepts. She talks about

1:00:10

how like there really is no

1:00:12

stark separation

1:00:14

between religion, cults, and culture. It

1:00:16

has so very much to do

1:00:19

with sort of cultural normativity. So

1:00:21

many mainstream religions in the United

1:00:23

States were once considered blasphemous cults.

1:00:25

There are plenty of groups. I

1:00:27

mean, this is one of the

1:00:30

themes that I discuss on

1:00:32

Sounds Like a Cult, albeit lightheartedly. There

1:00:34

are so many groups that on the

1:00:36

outside look really sort of like ritualistic

1:00:38

and, you know, fringy, whether you're talking

1:00:40

about like Disney adults or certain fitness

1:00:42

communities, that when you really break it

1:00:45

down, it's like, okay, well, no, they're

1:00:47

not as dangerous as Scientology. And

1:00:49

then there are certain like totally accepted

1:00:51

on the books, government institutions, Silicon Valley

1:00:54

corporations that when you, you know, check

1:00:56

off the list of red flags, you're

1:00:58

like, wait, no, that's actually more like

1:01:00

a cult than that other thing we

1:01:03

were roasting. So that's important

1:01:05

to point out. You know, there

1:01:07

are plenty of jokes told by

1:01:09

religious studies scholars to point out

1:01:11

those fuzzy boundaries between cult religion

1:01:13

and culture, like cult plus time

1:01:15

equals religion, or a cult

1:01:18

is a group where the leader thinks he can talk

1:01:20

to God, a religion is a group where that leader

1:01:22

is dead. Now, we

1:01:25

as a society are becoming

1:01:27

less traditionally religious, but we

1:01:29

are not becoming less ritualistic,

1:01:31

zealous, obviously the internet

1:01:33

carves out a space for us to

1:01:36

be ritualistic and zealous in a new

1:01:38

way. When I observe

1:01:40

hardcore, swifty behaviors, it absolutely

1:01:42

feels culty, religious-esque, however, you

1:01:45

know, whatever sort of equivocal

1:01:47

language you may or may

1:01:49

not want to use, because

1:01:52

Taylor Swift has fully participated

1:01:54

in creating a sort of

1:01:57

Bible-esque body of lyrics. that

1:02:00

people pick apart like versus

1:02:02

and interpret and lead their

1:02:04

lives by. She's created a

1:02:06

cinematic universe of aesthetics, you

1:02:09

know, and it is

1:02:11

no coincidence that people use

1:02:13

language like mother to

1:02:16

refer to her. Now, you know,

1:02:18

using terms like mother or, you

1:02:20

know, daddy or even aunt

1:02:22

to refer to celebrities does

1:02:24

have its roots in ballroom culture where

1:02:27

you would have, you know, your chosen

1:02:29

family, your mother in communities

1:02:31

where, you know, the family you were

1:02:33

born into might not have been able

1:02:36

to provide the parenting or mothering or

1:02:38

sort of familial support that was necessary.

1:02:41

So that sort of, you know,

1:02:43

chosen family idea has been adopted

1:02:45

in ways that are

1:02:47

not problematic and ways that are problematic

1:02:50

by stan communities. And so in one

1:02:52

sense it's a bit in one sense

1:02:54

it's a joke, but in another sense,

1:02:56

it's not a joke because I actually

1:02:59

did find some research to support the argument

1:03:01

that I made in that first chapter of

1:03:03

the age of magical overthinking suggesting

1:03:05

that celebrity stans that

1:03:08

were most inclined towards stalking tendencies

1:03:10

tended to be those who lacked

1:03:13

what were so called positive stressors

1:03:15

from their real life parental figures

1:03:17

and communities. And so

1:03:19

they would focus on these surrogate mommies

1:03:22

and this sort of uncanny

1:03:25

fictionalized drama in

1:03:28

place of those real life challenges

1:03:30

say your mom, you

1:03:33

know, telling you that like you have you cannot

1:03:35

quit the violin. You have to go to orchestra

1:03:37

practice. It's going to be good for you or

1:03:39

like your mom challenging you to, you know, repair

1:03:41

that relationship with a friend

1:03:43

when you wanted to cut them out

1:03:46

stuff like that. So I found interestingly

1:03:48

that there was the sort of connection

1:03:50

between religiosity, celebrity

1:03:52

fandom, and a profound

1:03:54

lack of adequate mothering.

1:03:57

Wow. So maybe when they call Taylor Swift mothering,

1:04:00

it's like there's truth or

1:04:02

at least empathy that I can give them for

1:04:05

putting her on the mother pedestal. I mean if

1:04:07

the mother pedestal is empty then... Yeah,

1:04:09

no totally and like I can

1:04:11

easily see that if you are

1:04:13

not someone whose relationship with your

1:04:15

mother, let's say, is nurturing

1:04:18

enough, you might look

1:04:20

for that type of support and

1:04:23

validation and nurturing in places that

1:04:25

fundamentally can never fulfill you because

1:04:28

they're parasocial. Hmm, we

1:04:31

just keep segwaying so nicely, Amanda. This

1:04:33

leads to the next part of my

1:04:35

outline, loneliness.

1:04:37

Here's where not

1:04:39

only do I have to give empathy

1:04:41

and understanding and, you know, perhaps a

1:04:43

warm hug to stans if they'll accept

1:04:45

it from me, but also

1:04:48

an admission. Amanda,

1:04:51

I had a stan

1:04:53

account. No, for

1:04:56

whomst? I know, that's the question, right?

1:04:58

Because if I made one now it would most

1:05:00

certainly be Britney Spears, but as a child, I

1:05:03

had a little monster stan

1:05:05

account. Oh wow! Which

1:05:07

is Lady Gaga if you're, you know, living

1:05:09

under a rock. I

1:05:12

can see that easily. Well, so this

1:05:14

was the thing. I was probably 12 years old,

1:05:16

which means this was 13 years ago. It

1:05:19

was in the early days of Twitter.

1:05:21

Lady Gaga had just come out with

1:05:24

Born This Way. And I remember that

1:05:26

because I clung to that album, couldn't

1:05:29

imagine why as a closeted queer kid.

1:05:32

I remember one summer making a stan

1:05:35

account and I actually remember the username and I looked it up

1:05:37

when I was writing down notes for this episode and it's not

1:05:39

there anymore. So I guess it deleted it at some point or

1:05:41

maybe Twitter got rid of it because it was inactive for so

1:05:43

long. But I was a closeted

1:05:46

preteen gay boy. I

1:05:49

did not have a lot of friends in

1:05:51

real life and I knew

1:05:54

someone from summer camp actually who

1:05:56

had a stan account for Lady

1:05:58

Gaga and I... I was like, oh, I'm going

1:06:00

to do that too. And I

1:06:03

remember immediately, and you know, I had the

1:06:05

profile picture was a picture of Lady Gaga

1:06:07

and everything was like all of the different

1:06:09

born this way photo shoots. And we were

1:06:12

streaming her songs and we were like, the

1:06:14

edge of glory stream the edge of glory

1:06:16

right now. Or actually it was probably by

1:06:18

the edge of glory because I don't know

1:06:21

if Spotify was really a thing yet, but

1:06:23

I remember being on my, you

1:06:25

know, iPod touch or whatever it was then

1:06:27

like constantly. And I was like checking and

1:06:29

I was like, I was like doing like

1:06:32

follow for follow with all of the other

1:06:34

Lady Gaga stan accounts. And

1:06:36

it did for a brief moment in

1:06:38

time, feel like a

1:06:40

real void for me where I

1:06:43

needed connection with other people.

1:06:45

And I wasn't getting that because I didn't

1:06:47

because people were not nice to me at

1:06:51

school. So I want to mention here too

1:06:53

that like, I think it's

1:06:55

hard to ever know exactly who's behind all

1:06:57

of these stan accounts, but

1:07:00

I think it's safe to say that

1:07:02

a lot of them are young queer

1:07:04

people. Who else famously obsesses over pop

1:07:06

stars in this way? I think the

1:07:08

loneliness I felt as a preteen, like

1:07:10

I'm not envious of people that

1:07:13

age now because I think loneliness has only

1:07:15

gotten worse, especially since 2020. I

1:07:17

was reading a piece by Nicole Cartes in Salon.

1:07:19

She wrote, according to the May 2021 American

1:07:22

perspective survey, Americans have fewer close friendships than

1:07:25

they did in the past. They talk to

1:07:27

their friends less than before and

1:07:29

they rely less on their friends for support. Could

1:07:32

it be that stan culture is the

1:07:34

result of us replacing in-person friendships with

1:07:36

the mirage of celebrity ones? In

1:07:38

other words, are we filling the gaps with

1:07:41

celebrities because we're actually lonely? And

1:07:44

that resonates with me on a personal level.

1:07:46

Oh, definitely. Oh, definitely.

1:07:49

I mean, not to

1:07:51

quote Brittany Mahomes. What's her name?

1:07:54

Oh my God. We

1:07:57

need to heal our childhood wounds. No,

1:08:00

but like honestly, let me quote a

1:08:02

different actual icon that being Elle Woods,

1:08:04

happy people don't shoot their husbands. And

1:08:07

like really resourced folks who

1:08:09

are like immersed in

1:08:12

IRL community are probably not

1:08:14

quite as prone to

1:08:17

engaging in the worst end of celebrity

1:08:19

worship or the most deleterious end because

1:08:21

they don't need to. Now that is

1:08:23

not to say that like, if you

1:08:25

feel isolated in your community and so

1:08:28

many people do in a way that

1:08:30

is totally outside of your control, that

1:08:32

you should like avoid fandom because you're

1:08:34

afraid it you might, you know, fall

1:08:36

down the rabbit hole. I don't mean

1:08:38

that at all. But, you

1:08:40

know, I talk about this a little

1:08:42

bit when I discuss cults in everyday

1:08:44

life, there are certain signs you can

1:08:47

look to, to know if

1:08:49

the particular corner of the internet that

1:08:51

you're in might be getting a little

1:08:53

too cultish for comfort. Like if you

1:08:55

really aren't allowed to express any kind

1:08:58

of critique or pushback, if you will

1:09:00

be censured for having one foot out

1:09:02

the door, like if you're a little

1:09:04

monster and a Swifty, you know, there

1:09:06

should be room for having

1:09:09

an identity that is more

1:09:11

complex and multifarious than the

1:09:13

identity of like just the

1:09:15

perfect Swifty or just the

1:09:17

perfect, you know, Barb or

1:09:20

whatever it may be. But the, you

1:09:22

know, the example that you brought up

1:09:24

from your childhood also made me think

1:09:26

of like specifically, Charli XCX's fandom. I

1:09:29

don't know if you're familiar with

1:09:31

the example of, you know, folks

1:09:33

sort of dehumanizing Charli XCX by,

1:09:36

and by folks, I mean hardcore,

1:09:38

Charlie's Angels, her biggest stans, they

1:09:41

would dehumanize her by bringing sort of

1:09:43

like unseemly props for her to sign

1:09:45

in meet and greets from poppers to,

1:09:48

you know, sex toys, to in one

1:09:50

case, a vial containing the ashes of

1:09:52

one stan's dead mother going back to

1:09:55

the mothering. And so many

1:09:57

of these sort of like extreme and

1:09:59

ritualistic stans. were once little

1:10:01

queer kids, because Charlie XCX is known

1:10:03

for having like a very gay fandom,

1:10:05

a very gay white male fandom. And

1:10:08

I have like incredible empathy. There's no

1:10:10

excuse for using violent language. And it's

1:10:12

not like, you know, just because someone

1:10:15

tweeted something horrible about you, but they

1:10:17

also identified as gay in their Twitter

1:10:19

bio, they're somehow absolved. Like that's not

1:10:21

the case whatsoever. But

1:10:23

I find that like, if I can

1:10:25

be more compassionate toward what someone who's

1:10:27

clearly very lonely is going through and

1:10:30

more skeptical of my own behavior, that

1:10:32

can be like a good place to

1:10:34

like reroute the conversation. I

1:10:37

have been reading currently actually

1:10:40

Naomi Klein's book, Doppelganger. Something she

1:10:42

talks about a lot, which I

1:10:45

mentioned in my episode previously about

1:10:47

the wellness to alt-right pipeline is

1:10:50

that sometimes people have correct

1:10:52

feelings, but their feelings are

1:10:54

pointed in the wrong direction

1:10:56

and oftentimes exploited by nefarious

1:10:58

groups or movements. And

1:11:01

so the example she cites is that

1:11:03

people have distrust in what

1:11:05

is an increasingly surveillance technology

1:11:07

that's ever present in all

1:11:09

of our lives through phones

1:11:12

and cameras and smart speakers and Siri.

1:11:14

But that valid concern gets exploited by

1:11:16

people who are like, all of your

1:11:18

information is gonna be put in the

1:11:21

vaccine QR code and it's the vaccines

1:11:23

are gonna be, used to

1:11:25

turn you into like sheep communists. And

1:11:28

so that's why you shouldn't get vaccinated. Yeah,

1:11:30

and it is kind of a distinctly

1:11:33

American thing too, I will say, because

1:11:36

we happen to be an exception

1:11:38

among wealthy nations

1:11:41

in that, despite having so much

1:11:43

money in the American

1:11:45

coffer, we don't

1:11:48

have adequate social support

1:11:50

systems in almost any

1:11:52

way. And that's becoming

1:11:54

increasingly true when I think

1:11:56

about, the barriers to

1:11:59

accessing healthcare. to women and

1:12:01

to queer folks, it's increasingly

1:12:03

valid to mistrust the powers

1:12:05

that be, which

1:12:07

is also a phrase that the crunchy

1:12:10

to all right pipeline has weaponized. It

1:12:12

is increasingly valid to mistrust them. And

1:12:14

because we have this

1:12:16

like every man for himself,

1:12:19

bootstrap your way to success,

1:12:21

no one's gonna help you but

1:12:23

you, general American attitude, that

1:12:26

like paves the way for potentially ill

1:12:28

intentioned figures to come in and be

1:12:30

like, the government's not gonna save you,

1:12:32

I will. And

1:12:34

I think like what distinguishes a

1:12:37

fan community from say an

1:12:40

Andrew Tate style community is

1:12:42

because like Andrew Tate would be

1:12:45

the cult leader, right? Like he's

1:12:47

actively participating and egging his followers

1:12:50

on in a material and direct

1:12:52

and violent way. Taylor Swift is

1:12:54

such a little mystery. Like it's

1:12:57

always hard to tell exactly how

1:12:59

much she's purposefully egging on her

1:13:01

fans. And that's like, I

1:13:04

would call it a beige flag. But

1:13:09

it is different. It is different from the

1:13:11

groups where there is one singular

1:13:13

charismatic leader, so to speak. Yeah, it

1:13:15

definitely is, it definitely is. I

1:13:17

guess in conclusion, I have

1:13:20

empathy for the stands. Wish

1:13:22

death on me though they may, I have

1:13:24

empathy for them. And I want something

1:13:26

good, something fun, something productive for

1:13:29

them. Where do we go from

1:13:31

here? Oh gosh,

1:13:33

I really wish I had some super

1:13:35

pithy piece of wisdom to leave us

1:13:37

all with. I don't know, I mean,

1:13:39

unfortunately I learned while researching the age

1:13:42

of magical overthinking that it is

1:13:44

really, really hard to change other

1:13:46

people's minds due to all of

1:13:49

the cognitive biases each of us

1:13:51

have at play in there. In

1:13:53

fact, one of the most disheartening

1:13:55

stats that I learned while researching

1:13:57

the book was that even an

1:13:59

increase in science literacy. does not

1:14:01

help people become savvier at distinguishing

1:14:03

real facts. It just helps people

1:14:05

become better at using science to

1:14:07

defend their existing beliefs. So

1:14:10

like it's a little chalked you know

1:14:12

but I just keep coming back to

1:14:14

this sentiment that we're actually much better

1:14:16

at changing our own minds and

1:14:19

if we can kind of like lead by

1:14:21

example with self skepticism and

1:14:23

you know sort of yeah I guess

1:14:25

like taking steps like this not

1:14:28

to not to be you know as sort

1:14:30

of like tribalistic as we might feel pushed

1:14:32

to be by people who are like positioning

1:14:35

us as enemies if we can extend

1:14:37

empathy if we can open up conversations

1:14:40

that's the only thing that's been able

1:14:42

to help me get through this particularly

1:14:44

culty time. I could

1:14:46

leave with this sentiment so on sounds like

1:14:48

a cult we categorize every cult of the

1:14:50

week as either a live your life a

1:14:53

watch your back or a get the fuck

1:14:55

out so like I remember

1:14:57

spoiler alert we said that Trader

1:14:59

Joe's was a live your life

1:15:02

surety rings where I get the fuck

1:15:04

out there are a lot of different

1:15:06

types of watch your backs from like

1:15:08

SoulCycle to like theater kids

1:15:11

and I would actually I would

1:15:14

call Swifties a

1:15:17

hardcore watch your back yeah

1:15:20

I would say it's sort of like a watch

1:15:22

your back Sun a watch your back

1:15:24

moon and a get the fuck out rising so

1:15:26

you gotta know maybe I would say it's a

1:15:28

watch your back Sun it's a live your life

1:15:30

moon and it's a get the fuck out rising

1:15:32

so it's a combination of all three and and

1:15:34

if we can have a sense of levity about

1:15:36

that it'll also help us get get through there

1:15:39

we go the astrological warning signs of being

1:15:41

a Swiftie thank you so much Amanda Montel

1:15:46

thank you so much Amanda Montel thank

1:15:48

you so much for being here today

1:15:50

where can people get more of you

1:15:53

get more into cults

1:15:55

question mark thank you so much this

1:15:57

was a total honor and a pleasure