The fandom greenhouse

How "the medium" facilitates and fosters stan culture.

Consuming Content, by Mabel Ye

People roll their eyes at discussions of extreme fans and toxic fandom because it seems detached from their realities. But these attachment formations are not exclusive to pop culture by any means. I write mostly about pop culture fandom & standom because it is closest to me, and it is what I can look at most directly. But I don’t want the takeaway to be that I’m harping on fangirls specifically: I am harping on the environment that conditions us into these fannish responses.

The proliferation of these unhealthy attachments and idolatry are self-perpetuated, but they are also an inevitable result of the architecture of consumption and shared experience we partake in through modern technology.

“A medium works on you much like a chiropractor or some other masseur and really works you over and doesn’t leave any part of you unaffected… It is a process and it does things to you. The medium is what happens to you and that is the message.”

—Marshall McLuhan, The Toronto Telegram, March 18, 1967, via Andrew McLuhan’s Substack

The digital environment we click through in perpetuity is the greenhouse that allows for fannish tribes to establish themselves ad infinitum.

The global village that Marshall McLuhan presaged has come to pass, and the new tribalism is palpable. These tribes are the new fandoms—or the standoms, as I like to think of them, as there is a difference between appreciation and idolatry.

Stan culture, toxic fandom, and the rise of cultic parasocial dynamics are baked into the online waters we swim in—and it’s fostered because it’s profitable and good for business— far beyond the business of the fan objects themselves or their brands. The business of YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, even Substack, depends on these attachments.

The desired engagement that is being chased is attached to people, to humans with nervous systems that profoundly affect our behaviours, our perceptions, and interactions with reality and each other.

That is to say: none of us are immune. And I include myself in that. I have tried to be as transparent about my fandom cult and toxic standom problems because I always want it to be clear that I am very aware of my vulnerabilities. Writing about it is one of the ways I keep myself in check.

I’ve already suffered the consequences of diving into the deep end in the past. It is not something you can see clearly when you are in the middle of it. It feels good, righteous, fulfilling.

Anything and anyone can be a fan object, as long as it’s out there, in our digital environment.

I’ve been observing what I call anti-Scientology fandom (or perhaps, Scientology anti-fandom?) as an example of a weighty cause afflicted by stan culture dynamics. The fandom has formed around former Scientologists, anti-cult activists, and other participants of what is referred to as SPTV (short for Suppressive Person Television, a nod to Scientology’s Suppressive Person doctrine as well as ScientologyTV).

These people do not all identify as activists, and they did not set out to be fan objects. Some of them are selling books that detail their experiences, but even the authors are incredibly generous with their work. Mostly it’s about bringing Scientology’s crimes to light, exposing what they went through as children and what horrendous acts they may have committed themselves in the name of Scientology, it’s about reaching people who are still inside, about the generational differences and longterm repercussions of cultic abuse.

Yet, the creation of fandoms around the umbrella brand of SPTV and its creators was inevitable. Even without the zero-sum battle of the charts and playlisting, the lobbying for news coverage, and the hawking of limited edition merch the architecture of our online lives facilitate and promote stan culture. It's good for business on all levels. Engagement is the key, so of course you want people to foster parasocial attachments, to enrich their inner lives--their imaginary social worlds--with.

This is a good cause. I cannot stress that enough. I continue to hit roadbloacks on writing about it because I believe in the cause and I don’t want to be seen as attacking it: I want to look at the audience’s behaviours, the unasked for attachments and engagements that develop because, as McLuhan put it, technology has become an extension of our nervous system, and so our emotional responses are to be expected.

In the trenches of Scientology fandom, the word “parasocial” is thrown around a lot like an accusation of a personal failing: you are being parasocial, you are exhibiting parasocial behaviour -- but the reality is we all have parasocial relationships, it is the cost of online existence that is mediated by default.

Slavoj Žižek

wrote in 2006,

[I]s there a "real" person at all behind a screen persona, is the screen persona a mask for a multiplicity of people, or am I simply dealing with a digitised entity which does not stand for any "real" person?

"Interface" means precisely that my relationship to the other is never face-to-face, that it is always mediated by digital machinery. I stumble around in this infinite space where messages circulate freely without fixed destination, while the whole of it remains forever beyond my comprehension.

The Guardian very helpfully informs us that his piece “is more than 16 years old”—which to me makes it all the more relevant, as we have only accelerated in this direction, not backpedaled. Our world is not less mediated than it was; the interfaces are simply more numerous and varied.

When I look at anti-Scientology fandom it doesn’t just exist in Youtube live chats or Youtube comments. There are subreddits, Discord groups, Facebook communities, and probably even more that I haven’t encountered yet. Each of these locations act as greenhouses, where tribes can mature and opinions and social norms marinate.

And the differences help us enforce our tribal affiliations; we can see the absurdity in others’ behavior while deeply committed to our own self sealing systems. It’s human, and it’s a survival mechanism.

I return to McLuhan’s theory that technology extends our nervous system. Our immediate reactions to online content and interactions are informative, but it is also far from the complete picture—not just of the world at large, but of what happens within us.

We develop attachments, opinions, feelings based on our own perceptions, and we can know this intellectually, but altering perceptions, changing attachments, de-escalating emotional storms: these are not easy actions. And they can only occur on an individual basis.