Close All Tabs - Stan Wars, The Fandom Menace

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

This episode was originally published October 26, 2024. In this episode of Close All Tabs, host Morgan Sung examines the rise of “stan culture” in politics, where passionate supporters rally around political figures with the same fervor typically reserved for pop stars. Morgan is joined by tech and culture reporter Kat Tenbarge to unpack the evolution of cults of personality in digital spaces, what makes some candidates more “stan-worthy” than others, and how all of this has troubling implications for public discourse. Read the transcript here. Want to give us feedback on the series? Shoot us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The singer, Charlie X-CX, tweeted last night, Kamala is Brats. What you're hearing is everywhere. What you're hearing is a tweet. TikTok video. It's different clips of Kamala Harris dancing and they're all colored this bright lime green. If you've been online this year, you might recognize it as Brat Green, named for the latest album by pop singer Charlie XEX. This is her song, 360 with Kamala Harris's now iconic coconut tree speech cut into it. This is the kind of video that fans usually make for celebrities like K-pop idols and movie stars. They're often called fan cams or fan edit.

This summer, we saw a tsunami of Kamala edits taking over people's feeds. But well before the vice president became the nominee, people were making fan camps of her. At first when I posted it in early July, it had like 100,000 likes, and I already thought that that was a lot. Ali McCormick is a college student studying political communications, but she's also been very involved in online fandom. I used to run some fan accounts. I used to do a little editing on the side. Ellie was behind one of the most viral Kamala Harris Brat edits this summer, the one we played at the top of this episode. It has more than 4 million views on TikTok, and it's been reposted all over X and Instagram. And then after Biden dropped out and Kamala became the nominee, it starts to blow up a little bit more.

Mark Cuban reposted it on his story, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. And then the next day, it was just like I was watching CNN. And I was like, oh, there's my video. So it's the idea that we're all kind of brat and Vice President Harris is brat. You don't have to become Brad. Oh, okay. You have to try. You can't work at it.

I think edits humanize people a little bit in ways that people don't expect. A lot of my friends at first, they were like, oh, I don't know about Kamala. Like, you know, she's, they had some issues with the Biden administration and they thought that she was carrying it on. But I kind of forspend them information a little bit. I was like, but look at her record here and here, and especially like with women's rights and stuff. And then one of my friends texted me.

She saw a video of Doug Emhoff. And she was like, oh, I love him. And then she was like, oh, my God, it's working. Allie's working. Even Allie's grandma got into Brat Summer because of the Kamala edit, even though she didn't know that Ali was the one that made it. She saw it on Fox News. She saw the brat stuff on Fox News.

And then I texted her like, oh, I made the edit. And when I went to go visit her this summer, she was telling me how she had like a lime green shirt, like a lime green shirt that she was Bradden. I was so happy. fandom and Stan culture are starting to really shape the way that people engage with politics, both on and offline. Now, even though Kamala Harris had a pretty dedicated supporter base when she first ran for president

in 2020, we didn't see anything close to this amount of widespread excitement for her candidacy. So in the last couple of years, how did a former prosecutor who ran on a relatively moderate traditional platform suddenly becomes synonymous with pop music icons. The Kamala social media team is on top of it, but it's not just their digital savvy. Our relationship to the internet and, by extension, fandom, has evolved significantly since 2020. So let's talk about how Stan culture and politics go hand in hand, and why that might not be so great for democracy.

This is Close All Taves, a special series. from KQED. I'm Morgan Sung. I'm a tech journalist, your chronically online friend, and your guide to the weirdest and most fascinating corners of the internet. Together, we're diving into election memes, disinformation campaigns, political influencers, and we'll open as many browser tabs as it takes, all to better understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let's get into it. So, as we do with all our little deep dives, let's open a new tab. When did Stan culture hit politics? So Stan culture derives from this idea in early 2000s pop culture that actually came from an M&M song.

This is Kat Tenbarge. She's a reporter for NBC News, and she covers influencers, fandom, and tech. A Stan is like a stalker fan. And it kind of was born from this idea that, with the rise of the internet and digital community to stand someone is to not just be a fan, but to be an obsessive fan and to monitor people and to obsess over people as part of your daily life and sort of entwined in all aspects of your life. What's your relationship to Stan culture? Are you part of any fandoms? Were you ever part of any fandoms? Yes. I would say, especially growing up, being in high school, that was when I first got onto Tumblr,

I got into, at the time, this was 2014, so this was really like the peak of what was called Super Who Lock. Super Wholock is a portmanteau of Supernatural, Dr. Who, and Sherlock. Three TV shows that dominated pop culture and Tumblr in 2014. You know that phone two hours, Dean. Who'd you give the number to? Nobody. Hello, it's me.

Get him. Tell him we're going out and it's all on me except for the money and the driving. I was a huge supernatural fan in particular. I did all the conventions. I have like a supernatural tattoo. Oh my God. So I definitely consider myself a Stan. And then as an adult, I think I've grown out of some of those aspects of stand-dom.

But I just have a lot of empathy and appreciation for fan communities while also kind of acknowledging that there can be a lot of toxic elements of standing as well. This kind of toxicity can show up sometimes when stands take their dedication to personally and end up with things like harassing anyone who disagrees with them. Or even docks and critics leaking private information like their phone number and home address. And this is something that I think culturally has really like expanded beyond the boundaries of Tumblr and the internet to influence so many aspects of life today from like what gym you go to, what credit card you use, what airline you fly. And of course, it has also become a huge.

huge part of our political environment. Kat said that we first started to see Stan culture bleed into politics back in 2015 when Donald Trump first ran for president. Remember, this is when modern fandom started to really pick up and really drive the way that we consume entertainment. People weren't just enjoying music or TV shows or books anymore. They were diving headfirst into these niche online communities and starting to really shape their core identity around these aspects of culture. And it really makes sense with a figure like Trump because he was an entertainer. He was, before even entering the political landscape, somebody who was an idol to, like, broad groups of people. And now you cut them off as they're fighting each other for who should be fired?

Michael, Michael, you're fired. He pushed this ideology of, like, individualism and the art of the deal. like winning and dominating, which are things that really appeals to certain segments of the population and can drive like really obsessive and fanatical communities. Trump's campaign called for a version of the United States that excludes almost all marginalized people. But a lot of people are still nostalgic for that version. And the campaign built a whole fandom identity around this sentiment.

You still see it now in the bright red hats that say make a marriage. like a great again. So I think that in 2016, you really saw like the rise of the Trump stand, and it crossed the border, the boundary between part of leisure and part of entertainment into active political engagement. Why Donald Trump? I'm here to judge for myself on whether Donald Trump is a reality TV star or is he really have a political platform and agenda. And sort of in response to this, over the past eight years, you've now seen this effect kind of be repurposed on the other side of the aisle. For example, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has her sheriff stands. Wow, this is amazing. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just called out Republican Matt Gates after Marjorie Taylor Green showed unclothed photos of Hunter Biden on the House floor today.

And although Bernie Sanders said that he himself doesn't have any apps on his phone, he also had very online supporters when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020. Like in early 2020, we saw Hot Girls for Bernie takeoff, which was basically Hot Girls posting pictures of themselves and endorsing Bernie Sanders. You may also remember the OK Boomer video. When a creator went super viral for dancing in a cropped Bernie shirt, as a kind of rebuffed. to less progressive older voters. Back in 2020, many of the Democrats united behind Biden, but we didn't see anywhere near this intensity of excitement. This year is different. I think that in this election, for people on both sides, the stakes feel exceptionally high.

And particularly when it comes to Democrats and people who are liberal and left-leaning, there is this strong sentiment that it's important to. to rally behind Kamala because no matter what, like, they don't want Trump to get reelected. And then another part of it is how we interact with politics in this current moment has become very online and very centered around memes and iconography and, like, viral posting. And so you see these kinds of like microtrends bubble up that are very reminiscent of fandom and standing. exist in the context.

Like, Kamala is brat and the Kamala coquadet tree means of all in which you live and what came before you. Right. I mean, you have like Kamala HQ posting, like almost fan cams of Kamala and other DNC leaders, which is wild

that, you know, it's the same political party that, you know, nominated Joe Biden last, like the last election. Who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking? He might just be one of those black jobs, those black jobs. Donald Trump is an unsurious man. Yes, and I think part of this is that you have a lot of younger people working on these communications teams.

And even within the Biden administration, they were starting to pull young, fresh political communications talent. But with Kamala, I think that the moment is sort of unique. having the presidential nominee, the presumptive nominee, step down and endorsed his vice president this late in the game, has clearly activated a kind of just desire to jumpstart her campaign and really push it in any way possible. And Stan communities over the past really decade have just grown and grown and grown and grown on a platform like X, or, you know, what was once Twitter, everyone is mixed together. It's this big melting pot of all these different communities.

So you have, like, politics and Stan Twitter completely colliding. And this is a perfect example of what happens when these factions collide. But it's not like all candidates can amass this level of support and excitement online. In fact, when most politicians try to be trendy and engage with voters online, a lot of people can see right through it. politicians are rightfully called out all the time for trying too hard to pander to young people. So what is it exactly that makes politicians stand out online? Is there a secret recipe to engineering standum? We'll open a new tab on that after this break.

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his TV show, he had the merch, he had that chaotic charisma that made him a kind of outsider in politics which appeal to certain voters. In this campaign, Kamala Harris is portrayed as this person who's very accomplished, but fun and approachable. It's really interesting to see how much her image has shifted from when she first ran for president in the 2020 primaries. What exactly happened since the last election that turned this stern former prosecutor into a pop culture icon? So it's super fascinating to watch sort of the evolution of Kamala as a cultural figure because, yes, in 2020, when she first came forward as a primary candidate, her sort of selling point hinged on her career as a prosecutor.

The summer of 2020, we saw the Black Lives Matter movement have this massive resurgence in response to the killing of George Floyd. And so you had protests and movements culturally and physically around the country and around the world. And for Kamala to be branded as a project. prosecutor figure at this time ultimately really undermined her success. And that's where you saw, like, the Kamala is a cop meme, like, really come to play. Kamala's campaign, a lot of people talked about how it was ultimately pretty unsuccessful. And then over the past four years, as the vice president, what we saw happen is that a lot of times it's more about appearances

and it's more about how you're presenting, like, the narrative of the administration to the public versus, like, the policy work that you're doing. And so Kamala would do a lot of appearances out in public. And it also helped that she was very young compared to Joe Biden. We did it. We did it, Joe. You're going to be the next president of the United States. And so we see these moments that were recorded for campaign materials, or for administration materials that then went viral online,

even before she announced her candidacy. And some of these moments were, like, her singing the wheels on the bus go round and round, but, like, seeing that incredibly off-to-moon. There's a clip that is so well-known that it's now been put into one of her official campaign videos where she's, like, dancing with a marching band. And these moments, over the past four years,

even before anyone had any inkling that she would be the presidential nominee, people really liked this. The perception of Kamala shifted from like this sort of formidable, negatively associated cop prosecutor figure into this like fun loving like aunt. She's like the cool wine mom now instead of the cop. Yes. And that's the perfect blend for like viral video content. Add to this shift, the fact that Charlie XEX, an artist who already had a very dedicated fandom, connected her wildly successful album to Kamala Harris. Her campaign rode the cultural phenomenon that was Brat Summer. And so I think it was a natural opportunity for Kamala's days old, like fresh presidential campaign to be like, okay, let's just seize this moment that's already happening.

Let's jump on this thing that's already. viral. So all of them propelled Kamala is brat from like a couple, a handful of viral TikToks into the narrative that shaped the early days of her campaign. But where is a line between, you know, embracing the meme and then just blatant pandering? It's a fine line to walk. And I remember there was a viral tweet early on where someone basically said like Kamala, like, please read this. Like you cannot try to own this. joke yourself or like the flame will be extinguished. And I think some of that is the nature of internet culture comedy where there's an in-group, out-group sort of mentality behind a lot of memes.

Like memes as a form of communication are kind of like this populist idea of it's like, we, the people think this is funny. But if we're making fun of McDonald's with a meme and McDonald's official account plays into the meme, then it loses is the thing that made it funny in the first place. Kamala's campaign, you know, they took the brat format, like they took the font and the color, and they used that for campaign materials, and they reshared tracks that had, like, Charlie lyrics. And so people were willing to sort of play along with that. And I think people were sort of excited at the idea that the campaign was listening to them, but it's a really fine line to walk because you can very easily make it no longer funny and fun if it becomes too much.

Because now it's something that's being sold to you instead of something that you as the person is pushing. But Harris's campaign has shown that they can be adept with literally selling this version of the candidates without falling into the cringe trap that Kat describes. They were able to capitalize very quickly on another pop culture moment. by linking Tim Walls as Harris's VP pick to the meteoric rise of another pop star, Chapel Rhone. And Chapel's aesthetic is the Midwest Princess, where she's from a small town in Missouri, and she talks about her roots. So she'll wear like a camo trucker hat that says, she has merch that says, like, Midwest Princess. And almost immediately, Kamala's campaign, took this and repurposed it to do like a Kamala Harris to Molls hat. That was like the Midwest

princess hat. And it all happened. Right. Like Kim Walls is the Midwest princess. Yes. Yes. And it speaks to what they're also trying to do on a political level, which is reach the Midwest. They're trying to reach people who are in the quote unquote flyover states because these are obviously the people who determine elections at the presidential level. And so it all happened so quickly that Chapel herself even quote tweeted like a pop crave tweet that showed like Kamala Wall's hat and was like, is this real? Because you can also do to like the consumer nature of these types of merchandise, you can produce something like that overnight. You can mass produce a hat or a t-shirt that hinges on some sort of viral meme or moment very, very quickly. Yeah. I mean, it really reminded me of like

when artists do merch drops and everyone's scrambling to get the merch before it sells out. Absolutely. And they've responded to things that they see bubbling up online in really interesting ways. And a lot of times it doesn't have anything to do with policy. It's more of a vibe. So like when people started to express a lot of affection for Doug, Kamala's husband, they like put out like merch related to Doug and people ate that up really quickly as well. Can you talk more about how Stan culture impacts consumerism with elections? Like, we are being sold to candidate. Yes, absolutely.

Over the years, money has played an increasingly determinative role in politics. And so campaigns have become a lot more over the years about getting people to buy things, about getting people to send them money. And the campaigns have taken a lot of lessons from Stan culture. Because at the exact same time, Stan culture has become a lot more commercialized. And the reason why is because corporations and conglomerates that own entertainment properties have fully realized the commercial power of fandom. And so as a fan, you're going to be marketed to every single day of your life.

Think Disney Cruises, Harry Potter pajamas, Taylor Swift releasing a new themed cardigan for every album variant that she drops. And Kat says we can now see this with political campaigns as well. You have the clothes. You have the ideology and demographic driven campaign donations. You have advertisements on every single social media platform that are targeted to you. You have text messages that are asking you to send money to these campaigns. And when they see viral moments popping up online, especially if those viral moments don't have to do with policy, but have to do with an appreciation for Kamala's husband or an appreciation for the Midwest princess aesthetic. That's very easy to capitalize on because it's not a hard decision.

It's sort of like a knee-jerk emotional response. Like, I love Chapel Rhone, so I'm going to buy this Kamala Harris hat. Just because a group of people all like the same thing, whether that's a pop star or a movie franchise or, in this case, a politician, it doesn't mean that they all get along. And we know that fan communities aren't always purely wholesome spaces. Stans are known to be incredibly defensive of whatever they stand. We see this a lot during award seasons when fans believe that one star was more deserving of an accolade than another. And we also see this when people criticize an actor or musician.

Not all stands, but the most dedicated ones have been called out for dogpiling critics or trying to minimize scandals in an effort to maintain their idol's image. It's really hard to have nuanced conversations within fan communities when any negative discussion is shut down. And this makes it very difficult to hold celebrities accountable. It's one thing when fans swarm any criticism of their favorite pop stars excessive private jet use. What about when it comes to politicians who also have a very passionate supporter base? Time for a new tab. The dark side of standing politicians. Back to Kat.

You actually see this pushback on both sides of the aisle where if someone wants to critique Kamala or critique Trump, other fans of Trump or other fans and supporters of Kamala will be like, save it. Like save the argument, save the nuance, save the critique until the... the election has been decided. And that is a huge idea from fan culture. And it has absolutely seeped into political culture because of those stakes that we talked about at the beginning. Like the stakes are seen as too high to criticize Kamala right now. But the issue with sort of the stand mentality that we've seen in the pop culture like arena is that stands will become so defensive of their idols, that they won't not just abstain from criticizing them, but they'll attack people who do criticize them.

And even idols themselves aren't immune from other people's stands. Chapel Rhone, for example, got a lot of heat from liberals for declining to endorse Kamala Harris. F*** the policies of the right, but also fuck some of the policies on the left. That's why I can't endorse. She's criticized the Biden administration for its opposition to gender affirming care for trans minors. And she also turned down an invitation to perform at the White House during Pride Month in protest of the administration's support of Israel's attacks on Gaza. Fuck Trump for fucking real, but fuck some of the shit that has gone down in the Democratic Party that has failed people like me and you. And more so, Palestine.

So yeah, I'm voting for fucking Kamala. but I'm not settling for what has been offered. A lot of Democrats were furious at her for this nuanced take. Like Kat predicted, many people said Chappell should have saved her criticism for after the election. And some even compared her to a Trump supporter, which she never stated she is. Still, amid the backlash, Chappell also got a wave of support. It wasn't just her fans rallying behind her. A lot of people who agreed with her pointed out that,

even when the stakes are this high, politicians still need to be held accountable for how their policies affect their voters. At the exact same time that people are questioning the overall influence of standing in politics, you're also seeing like the beginning of a reckoning for standing in general. And it's something where you have like this undercurrent bubbling up for a long time. But even with Chapel Rhone, you saw her really push back against the way that. that fans interact with her. I don't care that abuse and harassment, stalking, whatever, is a normal thing to do. Kat's talking about a video that Chapel Roan posted a few months ago, where she talked about the dark side of fame and basically tried to set boundaries with her fans.

I don't care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job, the career, for I've chosen. that does not make it okay. And it caused a lot of conversation where for the first time you're seeing a lot of people say, like, we need to reconsider our relationship with celebrity, period.

I think that that conversation is only going to continue and people are going to continue to evaluate how we can have a healthier relationship with elected officials and politicians. In terms of where the fan culture

is going to run into issues is when it comes to more serious aspects of the campaign, like if people have questions about specific policy or about specific controversies or real-world events that are happening right now that they don't have a good answer to. And if instead of focusing on those real questions, they lean more into the fan fervor, that's where I think you're going to start to see cracks in this foundation. Sand culture within politics might be. be problematic, but Allie, the college student behind the viral Kamala Brat edit, also points out how it can galvanize young people into getting involved with politics. It's just like so

cool to see like people be excited about politics, like stuff that I didn't really expect from making a 15 second edit. But it's cool to see how that can, these types of edits can resonate with people and make them look at a situation completely differently. At the end of the day, vibes alone cannot win an election. Embracing the stands is just a sliver of campaign strategy. But that sliver is more relevant with every election. Stans do show up for merch drops and album sales. This election is a test of whether or not they'll show up to the polls.

To see what can be, what should be, unburdened by what has been. And this wraps up our deep dive. Time to close all these tabs. Close all tabs. is a production of KQED studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our managing producer is Chris Agusa. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Jen Chean edited the series and is KQED's director of podcasts.

Original music and sound design by Chris Agusa. Additional music from APM. Audience engagement support from Mahasanaad. Katie Springer is our podcast operations director. Holly Kernan is our chief content officer. A special shout out to the team at Political Breakdown for, letting us share our episodes on their feed. We'd love to hear what you think about the series.

Hit us up at podcast at kQED.org. That's podcast with an S. Thanks for listening. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star One, you keep more of your money. Star One Credit Union in your best interest. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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