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

[bluemuna]

Jul 6, 2018 6:39:29 GMT -4 Augustus said:

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.

I remember this! I remember too that she was trying to describe the tea that he had offered her and she kept calling it Peachy Tips and someone finally realized that he had been offering her PG Tips. And also that every time he told the story, it got a little bit more exaggerated. I think there was a version he shared where he actually answered the door in his underwear because it was so late at night or something like that… Crazy day and also that every time he told the story, it got a little bit more exaggerated. I think there was a version he shared where he actually answered the door in his underwear because it was so late at night or something like that…

[Augustus]

bluemuna woohoo, someone else who also remembers this!
Yeah, I do think as time went by, his version of the visit got weirder and more extreme. Of course, he got some attention from it, prior to that all he had were the drunken stories he shared with housemate Matthew Rhys. Though to be fair, some were a real riot.

[bluemuna]

Like the abseiling down the side of his house!

[Ginger]

I barely know who Sam Heughan is and I don't watch Outlander, but I have definitely heard about the crazy cult of followers who have been tormenting him for years. He posted on twitter about it.

I feel really bad for him.

They sound worse than the Cumberbitches, and more persistent.

[Ladybug]

The Outlander fandom has some seriously unhinged people in it. I feel really bad for him and Cait (who has also put up with venom for years). This latest round seems to stem from the fact that he's isolating in Hawaii. Maybe there's some legit criticism there, but obviously unhinged people are taking it too far.

[eclair]

I barely know who Sam Heughan is also, Ginger, except I have a friend who switched from obsessively talking often about Shah Rukh Khan to talking obsessively about Sam Heughan. I guess she has a type, foreign actors who are rumored to be nice guys in real life. I can't get into Outlander. I tried. Poor guy, I hope he's doing well in HI.

[Deleted]

From his message, it seems that he was already in Hawaii before the stay-in-place orders were issued. I don't know if he's playing fast and loose with the timeline but he's always seemed to be a standup guy. I am sad that he felt the need to explain himself, just because he's on a TV show doesn't mean he owes anyone anything. But there is a faction of the Outlander fandom that disagrees. And they are scary.

[Ginger]

So far I have not been moved by any attempts to beat up on various celebrities because they have chosen to quarantine in their vacation homes. As long as they stay put inside, I don't see what difference it makes. (Although traveling with one's family 200 miles from one vacation home to the other just for the hell of it is something I have a problem with, Ivanka.) The dire prognostication that rural hospitals would become overwhelmed with COVID-19 victims due to vacation-home dwellers has not come to pass from what I can tell.

He was already in Hawaii and would have had to fly out at a time when it was questionable to do so and it seems like a reasonable decision to stay.

Anyway, even if his demented followers didn't approve, it sounds like they did more than leave a nasty comment on his social media about it. Comments can always be turned off, but they have a history of getting involved in his real-life affairs.

[technicolor]

Looking at the discussions over the years here, crazy just never changes, does it? It just migrates to new victims objects of obsession. The same BS going on with Cumberbatch, Fassbender and countless others is also going on in the Adam Driver fandom and I'm just too old and too tired for this nonsense now. There's the stalking and the harrassment and the doxxing and conocting storylines about what an evil witch his wife is. And then they wonder why he's wary of fandom, why he gives barely any access to his life, why neither he nor his wife have social media and why it only became known that he's got a kid years later by accident...

Celebs are not your friends. They don't owe you. They won't date a stan if said stan just "saves" them from their supposedly evil spouse. Go away with that crap. And why they always insist that rich men hitting forty who must be obviously hardcore savvy and ambitious to have the careers they do are somehow hapless woobies who can't tie their own shoelaces I will never understand.

It's doubly irksome when the spouse has barely a public profile like with Driver and they've been together over a decade. I mean, I know they're so hurtful and vicious because she's killing the fantasy. But ugh.

[scarlet]

I just saw this quote from Robert Pattinson that sums up the way some fans think:

"This thing with everyone knowing you, it's weird, because people have this one-sided relationship where they look at your picture and feel they know you more than someone they actually know. I don't really know myself that well."