What Happens When Interests Become Our Identities?

Let me set the scene. It’s 2011, Lady Gaga’s biggest hits have blanketed radio for a few years now, and you decide to finally buy her new album—you’re instantly hooked. You catch a few of her late-night appearances as she promotes the new release, leaving you wondering more and more about who she is as a person, her creative process, and her off-stage life. Combing back through her old magazine interviews and performance compilations on YouTube, you feel so seen by her lyrics, understood by her explanations of them. Reblogging sets of Gaga gifs on Tumblr, you’re finding yourself enmeshed in the Little Monster community—you’ve officially crossed over from Fan to Stan, and the new label is one you internalize.

So what happens when, gushing to a friend about the album, they offhandedly reply that they don’t get the hype?

For someone not embroiled in the more parasocial aspects of a fandom, you might roll your eyes at the disagreement and move on, or engage in some friendly debate. However, it feels like the days of casual fandom are over—now, more than ever, interests have become our whole identities. Criticism of your favorite popstar is no longer just an insult to what you like, but who you are.

Fandom as an Identity Marker

Deep-seated and intense fan behavior isn’t a new phenomenon, of course, we’ve all seen the black-and-white footage of The Beatles getting mobbed at JFK Airport in 1964. What’s different now though is that level of devotion has gone mainstream—and how marketing teams are cashing in.

Fandoms have been united under a single self-assigned name for decades now, as evidenced by the cultural imprint of Trekkies in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but the concept of media-as-personality really hit a fever pitch in the 2010s, dovetailing with the birth of app-based social media. Some artists would address their fans by name (“shoutout to the Bieliebers”) while others started to quietly integrate the stans into their marketing strategies. Beyoncé’s most ardent supporters have referred to themselves as the Beyhive for years, but her official team started using it on her website in 2011. What this seemingly subtle shift ushered in, however, was a widespread social acceptability—with a co-sign from the artists themselves, suddenly it wasn’t so strange to hear teenagers and adults refer to themselves as Swifties, Little Monsters, or Barbz.

Dr. Stephen Reysen, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Special Education at East Texas A&M, has dedicated a significant portion of his career to unspooling the cognitive pull of super-fandom. While he notes that fervent followings have been around forever, he has noticed a wider-spread adoption of highly engaged non-sports stanning and its newfound cultural normalcy. He uses anime as an example, a media category that not too long ago was still considered relatively fringe. “Now, anime is everywhere in the U.S. [and] it isn’t unusual to be an anime fan. There have always been intense fans, [but] perhaps it’s just more visible now with social media.” 

The shift from appreciating an artist’s music or a specific director’s aesthetic style is multifactorial, though experts like Reysen are still working to parse out exactly what catalyzes it. He lists elements like time in the fandom, knowledge of the interest, and number of social connections within the community as driving forces, and mentions that the type of fandom can inspire different levels of obsession, too. He theorizes that the more content, lore, and interfandom knowledge there is to sink into—he points Swift and her now-legendary web of hidden messages and cryptic coding—the more all-consuming it can become.

Reysen also points to the something called the Optimal Distinctiveness Theory as a possibility for the popularity of fan behavior. “It suggests that people become most connected to groups that make people feel distinct from others, but also feel connected. Highly identified fans feel they are unique, but also have a place to belong.” These two qualities are at odds with each other, but deeply belonging to a unique group creates a sweet spot that satisfies our physiological desires. Running a popular Wicked fan account, for example, sets you apart from the casual fan while solidifying your place in an extremely dedicated community.

From a marketing perspective, tapping into identity-based fandom is almost always a slam dunk. Remember those mid-aughts Apple commercials starring Justin Long? The now-iconic advertisements literally personify the product—“Hi, I’m a Mac”—as cooler, younger, more creative and progressive than the comically inept P.C. stand-in. When boy bands are assembled, there’s ostensibly a member for every female taste: the bad boy, the pretty boy, the mature one, and so on. And for post-pandemic tentpole events like the Wicked franchise or “Barbenheimer”, or Brat Summer, there’s the social media-based incentive to not only participate, but to prove you’re the biggest fan by cashing in on merch, tickets, and limited-edition albums.

Unhinged Behavior

Community, acceptance, and an extended social network all seem like great things in a society where people increasingly report feelings of alienation or loneliness. The pitfall, though, is when that sense of identification starts to get a little too personal. Dr. Sanam Hafeez, a New York-based neuropsychologist, explains that people often view their favorite artist or franchise as more than just a hobby, but rather an extension of themselves. “When someone critiques it, it can feel like a critique of their own taste, values, or identity,” she says. “Criticism of the artist can feel threatening because it challenges the version of themselves they see reflected in the artist or in the community they’re part of.” Additionally, she adds, social media can exacerbate the reaction to criticism as it turns fandom into something of a public performance. That helps shed some light on the outsized reactions from many fandoms when, say, a negative album review is published, or the object of their fixation experiences a public sleight.

For example, in 2024, Paste Magazine made the decision to redact the name of the music writer reviewing a new Swift album, “due to how, in 2019 when Paste reviewed ‘Lover,’ the writer was sent threats of violence from readers who disagreed with the work,” the outlet shared to Twitter. And to be fair, such an extreme reception is hardly unique to the Swifties. After years of what they would describe as vigilantism on her behalf, Nicki Minaj had to tell her Barbz to stop issuing death threats, and Chappell Roan wrote a now infamous open letter about how fearful she is of “predatory behavior” by so-called superfans. 

The low-stakes nature of pop music makes these violent overtures feel even more fringe, but interestingly, they’re not so different from the type of political and religious violence that’s been a societal fixture since forever. Social media may make it easier to say something shocking with the freedom of an anonymous username, Reysen says, but the urge to defend and attack isn’t so novel. “Why would someone do those same things for a political party or a religious group? It goes back to identity.” Interestingly, however, Reysen does pinpoint a newer theory called identity fusion. It’s suggested that—and echoed in Reysen’s own research—that rather than just high identification with a group, those with identity fusion view that group as family. As such, extreme behaviors start to seem more rational to those individuals. 

What Does It All Mean?

Looking at the ubiquity of stan behavior among everyday people, it’s hard not to draw a line between its sudden significance and the proliferation of identity politics. A term popularized in the 1970s, it simply centers political movements and beliefs around core individual tenets like race, gender, or religion. Identity-based platforms normalize defining ourselves through affiliation, and, in turn, community. It makes sense, then, that we’d see that phenomenon expand further and further. “I do think fan groups are just like any other group,” Reysen says. “The psychology of fans is the same in terms of identity and group processes, regardless of the fandom. The same psychological mechanisms are working for furries as they are for sports fans.” 

Hafeez agrees that there are so many positives to engaging in a fandom, like finding fresh inspiration and acting as an emotional outlet, but it’s important to step away if you find yourself in a little too deep. One way she suggests disengaging a bit is to hang out with the other people in your fandom, but to do something that doesn’t revolve around the object of your worship.  

Of course, there’s always the nuclear option: muting certain words or phrases on social media, or simply deleting a few apps altogether. Because really, if The Life Of A Showgirl critically flops on a timeline with no one to read it, did it even really flop at all?