Stan culture goes crazy

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I remember the first time I was cheated on. It was in 2010, after he criticized a collaboration between Kanye West and the K-pop group JYJ. After my comments, I received an avalanche of death threats on social media. My photo and address were posted in fan communities and there was an organized effort to publicly shame me. It was a pretty jarring experience, but I also found it a little strange, since I assumed that most of the people tweeting at me were based in South Korea.

In the decade since then, I've been fooled on a few other occasions. In particular, after I mocked Lana Del Rey for wearing a mesh mask during the pandemic, my phone was inundated with angry voicemails from LDR fans. It was annoying more than anything else, but I'd also recently moved into a new apartment and I figured if some really angry fan was going to do something, they'd show up at the wrong residence.

Of course, these experiences pale in comparison to what some of my colleagues have faced over the years, especially those bold enough to put their name to a critical review. There are too many horror stories of writers who were tricked, received death threats, and had to go into hiding until things calmed down. For example, the author who wrote PasteTaylor Swift's unflattering 2019 review Lover received so many threats of violence that when it came time to review Swift's latest LP, The Department of Tortured Poetsthe publication chose not to include signature. And yet the fans are I keep attacking a writerthey assume incorrectly written PasteThe review.

Artists dream of achieving the level of fame where they have a group of people so committed to their work that it becomes part of their personality. After all, there is no better marketing apparatus than a group of die-hard fans who work around the clock and for free, spreading the gospel of their favorite artist.

But rarely do you find examples of artists holding their fans accountable. As far as I know, there has never been a case where Taylor Swift, or any other major pop star, has asked her fans to cool down her airplane.

It's okay to have a mediocre album. Bowie, Dylan and Springsteen all have clunkers to their names, yet their legacies are intact. One could even argue that unwavering critical praise for every release by an artist does them a disservice, because the really good stuff is put on the same pedestal as everything else. I mean, it's okay to have a 3 star album! It's nice to have a clunker! What is not okay is attacking writers for putting their opinions on paper. But until the artists themselves step forward and say something, music critics will continue to unfairly weather a storm of toxic culture.