Stan Culture Run Amok

Alex Young
·3 min read
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I remember the first time I was doxxed. It was in 2010, after I criticized a collaboration between Kanye West and the K-pop group JYJ. Following my comments, I received an onslaught 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 it also felt a bit foreign, as I assumed the majority of the people tweeting me were based in South Korea.

In the decade-plus since then, I’ve been doxxed on a few other occasions. Most notably, after I mocked Lana Del Rey for wearing a mesh face mask during the pandemic, my phone was inundated with angry voicemails from LDR fans. It was annoying more than anything else, but I also had recently moved to a new apartment and figured that if any really angry fan was going to do anything, they’d show up to the wrong residence.

Of course, these experiences pale in comparison to what some of my colleagues have faced over the years, especially those audacious enough to put their name to a critical review. There are far too many horror stories of writers being doxxed, receiving death threats, and having to go into hiding until things cooled down. For example, the author who penned Paste‘s 2019 unflattering review of Taylor Swift’s Lover was met with so many threats of violence that when it came time to review Swift’s latest LP, The Tortured Poets Department, the publication opted to include no byline. And yet, fans are still attacking a writer, who they incorrectly assume penned Paste‘s review.

Artists dream of reaching the level of fame where they have a group of individuals so invested in their work that it becomes a part of their persona. After all, there is no better marketing apparatus than a group of diehard fans working work day and night and free of charge, spreading the gospel of their favorite artist.

But you also rarely find examples of artists who hold their fans accountable. As far as I know, there has never been an instance in which Taylor Swift — or any other major pop star, for that matter — asked their fans to cool their jets.

It’s OK to have a subpar album. Bowie, Dylan, and Springsteen all have clunkers to their names, and yet their legacies are in tact. One could even argue that unwavering critical praise of an artist’s every release is a disservice to them, because the really good stuff is put on the same pedestal as everything else. All that’s to say, it’s OK to have a 3-star album! It’s OK to have a clunker! What’s not OK is attacking writers for putting their opinion to paper. But until the artists themselves step up and say something, music critics will continue to unfairly weather a storm of toxic stan culture.

Stan Culture Run Amok
Alex Young

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