Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Celebrity Stans

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

These days, the lines between celebrity, religious figure, political leader, lifestyle guru, and best friend have blurred so hardcore that enthusiastic celebrity fans have morphed into a whole new kind of beast: rabidly loyal, obsessed stans. Is worshipping and defending megastars like Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and Elon Musk a harmless pop culture phenomenon, or is it decidedly cultier than that? On this episode, Amanda and Isa analyze the “cult” of celebrity stan culture with the help of insightful and hilarious listener call-ins. Which celebrity do you think has the most extreme stans? And does that make them a “cult leader” of sorts??

Hey, this is Jeffrey from Salt Lake City, and I think Britney Spears has the most incredible cult following ever. She's an icon. People love her. She came on with hit after hit after hit after hit. And the people really believe that we need to stand up and free Britney. Thank you very much. Goodbye.

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina, a comedian and documentarian. And I'm Amanda Montell, an author and linguist. Every week here on the pod, Issa and I are going to deep dive into one lucky fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist, from sororities and fraternities to Lulu Lemon, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? Okay, so this week we are going to talk about something that truly frightens me.

I have never seen fear in your eyes the way that I saw them this morning when we were preparing to talk about this week's potential cult. This week we are going to talk about the cult of celebrity stands. Yeah. I think your fear really says something about the level of power that these followers may or may not have. I'm scared of what the followers will say because we are going to be talking about specific celebrities.

Yeah, and their fanaticism is very intense. I mean, I'm not as afraid of them as you because I just don't think they're going to find us. And I think that we're going to be fair. We're going to be fair. So Amanda, to start off, where does the word stan come from? The origins of stan are up for debate, as is often the case with slang. It's a word that I find extremely useful and I use a lot.

Some people credit the term to the 2000 Eminem song stan, which is about an obsessed fan. That's what stands are, right? Like there are these camps of online super fans who religiously worship and defend celebrities, mostly music stars like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, that sort of thing. Some people have described the word as a portmanteau. Your favorite word? My favorite kind of wordplay, portmanteau of stalker and fan. So stalker plus fan gives you stan.

Stan Twitter is one of the most robust tribes of Twitter. A lot of stan Twitter is very queer, very LGBTQ plus. It's been said that these groups have provided people with a sense of community and friendships they might not otherwise meet, but there are some negative qualities associated with it as well. Yeah, you mentioned the word fan and the word stan. What is the difference between a fan and a stan? So intense celebrity fandoms have always existed, right, like I picture teenage girls in the

60s going apeshit at the Ed Sullivan show over the Beatles. Ladies and gentlemen, here are the Beatles. But I think there are two key differences between a fan and a stan. First of all, because of social media, the boundaries separating these intense parasocial relationships between fan or stan and celebrity become really, really hazy. So people come to feel like they really know these celebrities that they're really connected to them. And in the absence of other types of moral and spiritual leaders, they come to look

up to these people as a best friend meets a guru meets a God on earth. I think the other key difference is that, okay, like let's pick an example. I'm a fan of Lord. Love her. Love her. Oh my God. Thank God she has new music out and her new music video. So culty.

So culty. Very Midsommar. Um, but yeah, so we're fans of Lord. And if someone was to say that they don't like Lord, I might disagree with them, but I'm not going to freak out or bully them for years for their taste. And also, if something unflattering were to come out in the news about Lord, like let's say this is not true to my knowledge, but let's say it came out that Lord was secretly mean to puppy.

Oh, okay. We're canceling Lord. Well, okay. So exactly. So you would probably reevaluate your fandom of Lord if some, yeah, puppies over everything. We stand puppies. So if something unflattering were to come out about Lord, you and I might reevaluate how much we like her, but this is not the case for stands.

Celebrity stands will defend the celebrity they worship no matter what. So we'll go to town for that celebrity. Totally. And they'll base all their decisions around that celebrity from what to wear to who to vote for. Like they're really their guru. And if someone makes a critique, even a light critique of the celebrity, the fans will jump on them and silence them and wind up making enemies for no reason behind a screen.

And I guess this is like why you're afraid. Literally going to get canceled by celebrity stands. So in order to get into celebrity stand culture and like whether it is a cult or not, we decided to pick out a couple celebrities who we think have stands. We are going to be talking about Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, a couple others. So we're going in with the big guns, with the big names. And for anyone out there, please don't come for us. You're so scared.

I'm so scared. Why aren't I scared? Am I just too old to know the wrath of Jen? I think it's because you don't engage with middle schoolers and tick talk as much as that. Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not on Twitter. I'm not really on tick talk.

Middle schoolers on tick talk scare me like I have nightmares. Well, middle school is a cult. Yeah. Middle school is a cult. Everyone in middle school is you're either a bully or you're being bullied. It's not a great time. So to start off, we're going to be talking about the beloved Taylor Swift. You are a fan of Taylor Swift, right?

Oh, right. Yeah. I am a fan of Taylor Swift. I honestly love her music and I know that comes off as basic, but like that shit bops. You can't deny it. I think I admire her more as a business woman than anything else because she cranks out hits fucking more power to her. Yeah.

I mean, I think she's talented. I have respect for her, but I would say you're definitely a fan because I've heard you criticize Taylor Swift. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm not a stan because like there are times where I loved her. There are times where I did not love her and I didn't just blindly follow her. I honestly did not even understand the religiosity of Taylor Swift stands until I went down

to YouTube rabbit hole the other day. YouTube clearly knows that we're doing this episode because the algorithm recommended this channel to me where these two women who are my age, so they're in their late 20s, basically react to her album releases, her album drops, and I swear to God, I am so desensitized to cult footage after so many years of researching this shit. If I am to come across a video of like a satanic ritual or fundamentalist speaking in tongues, I'm just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen it all. I swear to you.

I have not gone down a wide-eyed rabbit hole like I did watching this Taylor Swift stan account. I think it's because they like are close in age to you. You're like, oh, I want to have fun with them and be a part of this. Okay, so I wasn't initially like, oh, I want a piece of that. I was initially like, holy shit, I did not realize how zealous these stands really are because in their videos, when they're like, say, listening to the Evermore album for the first time, these two full grown women will start like shrieking, chanting, rocking back

and forth on the ground, convulsing. It really does look like some sort of devil position or like exorcism. They have their own little language. They have all their friends surrounding them. And it became clear that this is in part about Taylor Swift herself. These two girls could have a PhD in Taylor Swift, but it's really about the rituals and the community. And after enough hours of watching them, I was like, these girls, Stone Cold Sober in

the middle of the day reacting to Taylor Swift, are like how I behave when I'm on shrooms. They were so in ecstasy. And I was like, shit, I'm a little jealous. Like I want to feel that. I want to have fun. The damn. I want to feel that passionate about someone. That's how I felt.

But doesn't that kind of, isn't that kind of a red flag because you want to be a part of the little click? I don't know. I mean, I think humans by nature really crave connection. But I think the problem is where it gets dangerous. Those girls are so dedicated to Taylor Swift and they stand Taylor Swift so much that if Taylor Swift tells them to do something, they're going to do it. I mean, most recently, the example I can think of is like Taylor Swift heard that a Netflix

show, Ginny and Georgia had a line in it that was technically dissing her. Ginny and Georgia is about a mom and her daughter. And it's actually like a very female empowered show because it's about an independent single mom taking care of her daughter. And there's one line at the end of the season where the daughter tells the mom, you go through more men than Taylor Swift. And I guess Taylor Swift got wind of this line and tweeted, Hey Ginny and Georgia 2010 called and it wants its lazy deeply sexist joke back.

How about we stop degrading hardworking women by defining this horseshit as funny. Also at Netflix, after Miss Americana, this outfit doesn't look too cute on you. Maybe women's history month, I guess. Okay. I saw that too. I found it very annoying. It was so infuriating to me as a fan of Ginny and Georgia because it's like watch two episodes of the show and you will know that this show that was written and sold by a woman is very

empowering to women. Her fans went on Rotten Tomatoes and destroyed the ratings of a female written and sold show. Yeah. And I was annoyed by it too, like you were saying, because I'm like Taylor Swift, you're fine. Like take a joke. You're fine. Take a joke, dude.

Yeah. I think that's like the one thing that Taylor Swift has never been able to do is take a joke. I mean, say what you will about Taylor Swift's personality or her music or whatever. But at the end of the day, as far as cultishness is concerned, I don't think that every single one of Taylor Swift's stands would rally around her in that sort of bullying way. And also, I don't think that Taylor Swift is purposefully setting out to exploit people. But did she tell them to stop when they were tanking the show reviews?

That's a fair point. And this also reminds me of Ariana Grande stands. She has been accused of appropriating black culture a ton. But I remember like after her seven rings video came out, there was valid criticism, like extremely valid criticism. And she got kind of defensive and her stands rallied behind her and started attacking and bullying people who sided with the criticism. And it just created this like almost warlike dichotomy.

From a Latina perspective, which I am Latina, you know, she's low-key appropriating Latino culture, too, because she like lets people mispronounce her last name. Which like problematic cult leader ish? No, I kind of think Stan culture is a cult outside of what the celebrity tells them to do. Like they're going to do whatever they want to do and read into the celebrity's behaviors and tweets as permission to behave in whatever way they want. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But every cult needs a charismatic leader. But do they though? I think it's an interesting question because I think that there are literal get the fuck out level cults that exist online that don't have one unifying leader directing followers at all, like QAnon. But either way, like let's say that these music artists or celebrities or whatever really are intentionally trying to, I don't know, radicalize their stands.

I would rather see someone assemble around Taylor Swift than a deceptive, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, exploitative, conservative white man. Hi, this is Oliver calling from Oakland. And I think that a celebrity that has a big cult of superfans nowadays is Emon Musk because people view him as a super genius who's operating on another plane from everybody else. There have been a number of times where he's posted one tweet about a company that he likes and that company's stock will immediately skyrocket because so many people are hanging on its every word.

Our next celeb and his stands that we're going to talk about is Emon Musk. A man who I think has a cult following a cult stand following because just simply of the way that I hear like white men idolize him and talk about him, I think he actually has the same vibe as Keith Ranieri and that he's like pretending to be poor and coming from nothing. And he looks exactly like Keith Ranieri. Oh yeah. Well, if you look at all of the most notorious cult leaders, if you know middle-aged white

balding dude beware. Yeah. And nothing against balding. No, no, no. We love the balding community. But I think Elon stands do the same thing that Taylor Swift stands did in that Ginny and Georgia example, but it's a little bit more violent because when they bully anyone who criticizes Elon Musk, they are power hungry white dudes coming for you in almost an incel

type way. And I think the fact that the man that they're defending has the power to build AI and just physically building spaceships to like take people off to space and create like camps out there. Hello. I think that the Elon Musk stand is just on another level because they're not worshiping a celebrity who's like just trying to be a successful music artist. They're worshiping someone who's literally trying to take over the world.

Yeah. And the thing about Elon Musk, he has the power to do good. But the second he had an opportunity to join the Trump administration, he joined the Trump administration for his own benefit. I mean, in a direct exchange for him joining Trump's advisory council, he got Trump to support a partnership between NASA and SpaceX, which is like his jerk off company. Whenever you're like public policy master's degree comes out, I'm always like social. But yeah, like the second that we got into a pandemic and he had the opportunity to use

his wealth to help people, he did truly nothing. He knows that he has money and he knows that he can do whatever he wants with it. And he's very open and transparent about the fact that he's like an adult child and that he just wants to fuck around and do whatever he wants with his money. So powerful, so powerful. But I'm trying to think of like, what is the relationship between a celebrity and their stands, because there are certain celebrities who have a toxic relationship with their stands and who wish that their stands would back off, you know, like you get those instances

of really dangerous stalkers, obviously a celebrity is not going for that. I think Elon Musk is technically a businessman, right? Like he shouldn't have the stand that he does, but he's nourishing that stand. He leans in and I think that's what's problematic with him because it's like, bro, you're a businessman. Why are you behaving like you're some kind of rock star? The fact that we even decided to include him in this episode as a celebrity, which like I didn't even think twice about that.

The fact that he is considered a celebrity, I think it's culting. Yeah. Yeah. He's just like blurring the boundaries. Yeah. It's almost a question of what even is the role of a celebrity anymore? Politicians, influencers, celebrities, they all use Instagram, they all use Twitter. And so when people like Elon Musk are crossing in over to the influencer lane, it becomes

a little sketchy to me because Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato aren't out here telling people that they're going to build spaceships. Actually that reminds me of a funny story about Taylor Swift's stands. This was a story I came across while researching my book. Basically back in 2013, this troll decided to prank all of Taylor Swift's Swifties. That's when you know that it's a stand-in when they give themselves a name like that. But anyway, this troll decided to prank Taylor Swift's Swifties by photoshopping Hitler quotes from Mein Kampf over these very wholesome photos of Taylor Swift.

And they weren't like too overtly Nazi-ish. They were like, the only preventable measure one can take is to live irregularly. But at the same time, they obviously weren't like lyrics from All Too Well. Yeah. And the point of the prank was to see how quickly her stands would share or repost or whatever. Oh, and these images spread like wildfire because her stands are so devoted that they were willing to share any and all things Taylor Swift immediately.

And that's also like the wider issue with the internet as a whole is that when something looks legitimate, then like a fan is just going to reshare, repost. For sure. I mean, misattributed quotes are like the internet's kink. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it was a really fucked up prank. But like, I mean, wow, getting Taylor Swift's stands to unknowingly circulate Nazi rhetoric is like, hmm, that's, that's scary.

And she probably wanted nothing to do with that. If she had caught wind of it, she probably would have said something. That's what I'm saying. It's like, I almost feel like the stand-um is separate from the celebrity. I mean, you were going to talk about her in a second. But Beyonce, I think, does an amazing job of separating her personal life and herself from her fans. And her fans are stands and her fans are obsessed with her.

They love her. But you don't see Beyonce fueling flames. I do think that Beyonce kind of deserves to be worshipped more than the average celebrity, you know, because she is such a positive role model with boundaries. Like you were saying, I mean, her influence is transcendent enough to have inspired its very own Beyonce mass womanist church service for people who maybe don't feel connected or accepted in a lot of church or religious environments. This is the first time I'm hearing of Beyonce stands having a church around Beyonce.

And I see literally no problem around that because is Beyonce fueling that flame? No, she's just doing her thing and inspiring. She's not exploiting it. Yeah. And if you had a church service surrounding Elon Musk, I would be like scared. Yeah. Yeah. Now that you're talking about the toxicity side of it, I did come across this 2014 study

while researching my book, which found that celebrity stands tend to struggle with psychosocial issues more than the average person, body dysmorphia, cosmetic surgery obsession, poor judgment of interpersonal boundaries, as well as mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, social dysfunction, and the same study also found that stands themselves may display qualities of narcissism, dissociation. So you can't argue with science. Yeah. Wait, what does that mean?

Can you dumb it down for me? Yeah. Yeah. No, it was just saying that the participation in online stand communities, even positive ones like Lady Gaga or whatever, can bring out qualities like anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, narcissism, stalking behavior. So it's not even the leader, it's not even the musician or the celeb that is making it worse.

They are kind of like putting themselves into these holes that are they're digging. It's the community itself. Yeah. I wonder if celebrities like ever have those discussions with their management because they really, they have to feed the beast, but they also have to like be wary of the beast. Hi, this is McKenzie calling from DC. And I think that the celebrity with the most intense cult of super fans is Taylor Swift.

If you talk to any T-Swift fan, they immediately launch into ranking albums and songs and versions. And they're like the it's always sunny meme with the RedStream trying to figure out who the songs are all about or how the songs on an album connect to others. And I also think it's like a cult because they tend to be Taylor apologists like their defensive of her rather than holding nuanced opinions. So my answer is with these Taylor Swift fans. So like we were saying, I mean, ultimately we are discussing the stands and not the individual

celebs. And I think that's so important to reiterate because they are a beast of their own. So what category of cult do you think stan culture, celebrity stan culture falls into? Live your life, watch your back or get the fuck out. I want to say watch your back, but I always end up saying watch your back. Fuck. Honestly, this is like really hard because it's such a big group of people that you're going to have different intensities within those stands.

Yeah. But because it's a deep, deep internet based community, especially in the COVID time period where like you aren't physically going to concerts, it can get dangerous. I don't know if you're willing to get like someone's entire face tattooed on your back. Like what the fuck else are you willing to do? You know, I was so ready to drag all these stands to filth and be like get the fuck out. But after evaluating everything, I really, I think it's more of a live your life. And the reason for that is that I think, yeah, I really think that social media is more the

cult that we need to watch our backs for like social media itself. And you know, you can argue that stand them can't exist without social media, but when I look at these circles and analyze, okay, well, I'm not really necessarily seeing one intentional power abusive leader at the helm. I'm not seeing financial or physical exploitation. I'm not really seeing serious exit costs for the followers if they're like, oh, I think I'm going to stand Selena Gomez now, like no one's gonna come for them. No exit costs.

I'm not seeing psychological pressures on the level of a watch your back or I get the fuck out level cult. Even though there are absolutely downsides, I really feel very much like it's a live your life situation or at least like a live your life sun, watch your back moon, live your life rising, you know? Oh, yeah. Honestly, not to be like entirely suede, but you make a really good point. I think that's why it's so important for us to go through all of those categories of like

exit costs, charismatic leaders, etc. When you talk about it that way, I'm like, you're right. These people are just kind of using the celebrities to get away from their own life and their own troubles for a short period of time. Yeah, I just don't want to be sensational about it because the word cult can be used to apply to anything nowadays, right? And I do really think that celebrity stands are culty, but you know, we've described this cult spectrum and I think it's a live your life.

Yeah, I mean, it is a live your life. Maybe I will get a sleeve tattoo of Lord on my arm. Live your life, everyone. If you are obsessed with Harry Styles and you love his dresses, live that life. That's our show for today, please tune back in next week when we're going to talk about a whole other potential cult and in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. Sounds like a cult was created, produced and edited by Amanda Montell and Esa Medina. Our theme music is by Casey Colb and our production assistant slash intern is Courtney

Archer. If you liked this episode, feel free to give us a rating and review on Apple podcasts.