Good luck, babe; stars don’t owe their fans a thing

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/09/2024 (758 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In August, rising American pop sensation Chappell Roan took to TikTok to call out the normalization of troubling “superfan” behaviour, including abuse, harassment and stalking.

“I don’t give a f— if you think it’s selfish of me to say no for a photo or for your time or for a hug. That’s not normal. That’s weird,” she said in a video that now has 16 million views.

“It’s weird how people think you know a person just ’cause you see them online or listen to the art they make. I’m allowed to say no to creepy behaviour.”

She added further on Instagram that when she is onstage performing or doing press, she is working.

“Any other circumstance, I am not in work mode. I am clocked out.”

This is completely and utterly reasonable. As she says, “Women don’t owe you s—-”— not our time, not our bodies, nothing. And yet, the responses that rolled in before the comments were shut off only served to underline the premise of the posts.

Obviously, some fans are not used to an artist asserting — or even establishing — boundaries, which is perhaps why they chafe against them.

A decade ago, Canadian pop-punk singer-songwriter Avril Lavgine had a proviso about not wanting to be touched in fan photos taken during paid meet-and-greets, and people freaked.

“Avril Lavigne Charges Fans $400 To Stand Next To Her,” read one headline.

Yikes. What do you think $400 should be able to get you?

This kind of obsessive behaviour has always been endemic among people who consider themselves “stans” — a portmanteau of “stalker and fan.” But social media has made artists so much more accessible, creating a confusing space where posts by your favourite actors, musicians, comedians, authors, etc. exist in the same feed as posts by your actual IRL friends.

You can watch a chatty, front-facing video by a celebrity immediately followed by a chatty, front-facing video by a colleague, and the whole thing becomes a disquieting blur in which “people you follow” becomes indistinguishable from “people you know.”

It’s easy to understand how parasocial relationships — simply, intense one-sided relationships with people who don’t know you exist — thrive in this kind of environment. And when superfans put time, energy and money into loving someone, they can begin to have warped expectations about what they are “owed” in return. What they are entitled to.

This entitlement is often justified via the argument that artists such as Chappell Roan don’t exist without their fans. Except, of course, that isn’t true. Her job might not exist without her fans, but she is not her job. And what she does is, indeed, a job.

Roan’s rise has been meteoric, but she’s also not an overnight success, having toiled in the music industry for the better part of a decade. Her 2023 debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, blew up this year owing to a constellation of factors, including Hot To Go! and Good Luck, Babe! becoming popular TikTok songs.

Her current tour dates are booked in venues that are already too small for her; her appearance at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago this summer drew the biggest daytime crowd festival organizers have ever seen. All of this has required work.

Some people don’t like it when you call being an artist at this level a job, though. It’s supposed to be a dream or a calling or an identity or some other word that makes one easier to exploit. And some people don’t like it when people who are successful or rich or adored or talented or beautiful or famous or anything else we were promised were shortcuts to happiness express the desire for spheres of their life to be private.

No, some people like that think artists such as Chappell Roan exist only for them, because of them, because they created her. Which implies they can destroy her, too.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com