"Y'All Jus' Jellus!" The Scary World of Fandom

[Ginger]

If Marc Maron, who is not very well known at all, needs to hide his address, every celebrity does. And buy a house behind gates.

I sympathize with the Jeffrey Dean Morgans of the world who are probably trying to live a life as normal as possible and not wall themselves up in an impenetrable fortress, but you gotta do what ya gotta do.

[peachybean]

Especially when you figure that a number of those “super fans” will interpret the message as being for other people and it doesn’t apply to them. Thought process: “Those assholes should stop bothering him. He’s going to be so happy to hear my theory about season 2!”

Side note: What if some of those visitors are One Tree Hill stans and really want to talk to his wife, Hilarie Burton? Still terrible but in a different way.

[Augustus]

I remember a long, long time ago (yikes, nearly 20 years ago! Egads!) I was following Ioan Gruffudd - this was after Hornblower, very swoonworthy LOL, and I was about 18/19. This took place at a mailing list though, so you'd have to wait for replies. Boy, that was a different time!

And once there was an incident, where one of the many members worked for an airline. She used her resources to track down his London home address, and while visiting the UK with a friend decided to drop on by. By all accounts he was polite, gracious, and actually let them in! But it must have been very perplexing to have 2 complete strangers, these middle-aged American women, knock on your front door. On their return she came back to boast about it, how they were welcomed in, etc.
I remember quite well how the majority of the members were very much disagreeing with her actions, and disapproved of it greatly. I think some even tried to report her to her employer. She stopped posting shortly thereafter as she probably did not expect such a blowback. She firmly believed that he didn't mind, as his interviews always portrayed him as fun-loving, laid-back etc etc.

Best of all though, in quite a few interviews thereafter he talked about this particular incident. He labelled them as these 2 crazy ladies, or something similar. Definitely not a positive experience of the visit. Some relayed how she got her panties in a twist when he described their visit as such.

[chonies]

Wow, augustus. That sounds like it should be included in a textbook or training module for 21st century etiquette.

Obvious, faux-deep post: I'm not condoning stalking at all, but there is something weird and disconcerting about the mix of celebrity culture and social media, and before social media, even things like powerful search engines that could look up basic information. In college in the 90s, it was amazing to be able to look up university directories.

With Marc Maron, part of his current fame is that he recorded his podcast at his house with an audience (or did, I haven't listened in a while), and that blurs the public/private line. An amateur athlete I follow complained (reasonably!) about being stared at while she was at a neighborhood swimming pool--I know would have been staring, too. Not because she's a hijabi but because I would be wondering if that was really her, or if I should say hello. (I also don't want to turn this around and sound like I'm indignantly minimizing her assumption that the women were staring because of the hijab). I was running in a half marathon and pacing near another internet-famous amateur athlete and wondered for a long time if it was her, should I say hello, etc. I didn't, because it felt like stalking and I didn't know what to say. Other celebs have public conversations on social media with their non-famous children or spouses. It's weird and it's hard to understand the rules of this fake, accidental or crafted intimacy.

[gremlin45]

Jul 5, 2018 12:25:49 GMT -4 @roisin54 said:

I have a sneaking suspicion it's more the Supernatural fans than Walking Dead fans who are doing this. In any case, people are dumb.

They're possibly hoping to persuade him to support Jared and Jenson dumping their fake wives and running off together to live happily ever after.

Talking of crazy fans turning up on doorsteps, it's not only the celebs themselves who have to worry. I remember hearing about 2 fans unexpectedly going to visit Lewis Collins' dad. (Lewis Collins was most famous for playing Bodie from The Professionals. A 1970/80s TV series.)

[WestEndGirl]

Jul 3, 2018 16:25:34 GMT -4 Ginger said:

That Lorde powerpoint is a hoot. (She's even lying about her name!) I'm guessing that this Hillary Benton is very young as she's not aware that "Sonja" is a common name in Norway and not an attempt by Lorde's mom to be "sexy/unique". Hillary Benton stopped being active on twitter 3 months ago, right after publishing this infamous powerpoint. I personally think the writers of Buzzfeed shouldn't have used this girl's name and just tagged her "an obsessed fan". You gotta have a little compassion for the young, immature and troubled, especially when they have grown up in the age of social media and don't know enough to protect themselves with a screen name.

I don't think you can write an article like that and leave out the Kardashian effect. The Kardashians lie, manipulate the tabloids, play games on social media, stage paparazzi photos almost daily, and either hide or exploit their messy personal lives depending on what will benefit them most at the time. It's hard to tell the conspiracy theorists that they are crazy for thinking that other celebrities are doing the same.

In the same vein as the Kardashians. I was thinking about this with the Larry Stylinson stuff. Yes, the Larry shippers have crossed the line in the past and some of that fandom has completely gone around the bend.

I've been keeping an eye on Harry Styles' solo tour and he has been playing all sides of the coin since he went solo. He has been courting the Larry rumors hard core in the last year+ since he left the band - playing up Louis associations on stage and giving fandom hints that they'd pick up on. It seems (to me) so clearly like a marketing tactic to keep this part of the fandom engaged and buying his music. (I am not a Larry shipper but I am/was a One Direction fan so I was following what happened to each of their solo careers.) It's been whipping them into a frenzy of "see, he's totally with Louis, he's telling us so clearly, what's he going to do next" while at the same time, to the general public, they wouldn't pick up on these 'cues' and they just see that he has a girlfriend. His team was pushing this 'sex, drugs, rock n roll' image when he first launched and trying to get a rock Grammy nom and all that.

So yeah, while the conspiracy theorists can be told they are crazy in some cases, sometimes they have a nugget of encouragement because the object of their obsession needs something from them.

[chiqui]

I'm not condoning stalking at all, but there is something weird and disconcerting about the mix of celebrity culture and social media, and before social media, even things like powerful search engines that could look up basic information. In college in the 90s, it was amazing to be able to look up university directories.

With Marc Maron, part of his current fame is that he recorded his podcast at his house with an audience (or did, I haven't listened in a while), and that blurs the public/private line. An amateur athlete I follow complained (reasonably!) about being stared at while she was at a neighborhood swimming pool--I know would have been staring, too. Not because she's a hijabi but because I would be wondering if that was really her, or if I should say hello. (I also don't want to turn this around and sound like I'm indignantly minimizing her assumption that the women were staring because of the hijab). I was running in a half marathon and pacing near another internet-famous amateur athlete and wondered for a long time if it was her, should I say hello, etc. I didn't, because it felt like stalking and I didn't know what to say. Other celebs have public conversations on social media with their non-famous children or spouses. It's weird and it's hard to understand the rules of this fake, accidental or crafted intimacy.

Yes, it is very strange compared to pre-internet days. I follow a lot of writers and writing boards, and even authors are getting their public/private lives blurred. Maybe more so, as when you write fiction it's more personal than when you're acting in a role.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the rise of rap music has had a lot to do with it, with its emphasis on the raps being "real" and reflective of the authentic experiences the artist has had. They are entertaining us with real life, in other words. The artist IS the music. Whereas way back when, I don't think you could say that of a singer like, say, Whitney Houston. When she sang "I believe that children are our future" I doubt she really believed this and wanted to get the message out to everybody... she was just interpreting a song for entertainment purposes. Many years later you have Beyonce whose song "Lemonade" may or may not be about her husband cheating, but the extra publicity sure made people want to hear it. There's always that doubt now, because now the expectation is artists should be authentic and truthful about their lives and not present anything that wasn't. Except that's BS of course.

[seat6]

I live in a popular tourist destination and many celebs have second (or primary) homes here, so it’s not unusual to see famous people out and about. All the locals pride ourselves on being totally cool and not letting on that Chris Rock just ordered the same carrot-ginger-beet smoothie that we just did.

A friend ran into one of the American Pickers (I think Mike?) at Whole Foods and took a selfie with him and Lordy, was she ragged (in a good-natured way).

“What are you doing? Let the man do his shopping in peace!”

“You know better than that!”

“You’re acting like a tourist!”

The last famous person I encountered was Timothy Busfield. He stuck his hand out, said “Hi, I’m Tim,” and that was it. He seemed low key and ready to work. Although a friend of mine was at a film festival with him and said that Busfield drove him insane because he was late to everything and kept on asking to switch seats.

That’s the level of awesome celebrity gossip I have access to.

[Ginger]

Gavin DeBecker wrote in The Gift of Fear that small-time celebrities are more often the victims of stalking because they seem within reach somehow. And he advised all those years ago that celebrities never do interviews in their own homes because it invites people into the private part of their lives. That was way before all of these celebrities were starring in reality shows based on their privates lives and filming them in their private homes, and before celebrities posted photos of themselves every day on the internet. I think it's bizarre that more celebrities aren't stalked these days as their comings and goings are so easy to track on social media.

[chiqui]

I think they are. We just don't hear about it.

The Kardashians always have bodyguards around, don't they?