TIA: These days, everyone’s a stan.
From Nicki Minaj’s Barbz to Ariana Grande’s Arianators, nearly every artist has their
own dedicated legion of fans.
TIA: And while “stan” has been used to describe many different groups in the past
few decades, the word has come to mean so much more in today’s cultural landscape.
TIA: “Stan” originated from a song of the same name on Eminem’s 2000 album,
'The Marshall Mathers LP.’
Is it based on real life?
Do you get crazy letters like this?
EMINEM: Yeah, I get crazy letters like that that’s why I was saying all this is crazy to me.
TIA: In the song, “Stan” was the name of a rabid fan desperate for Em’s attention.
DRE: Eminem is in this video very little, and it’s his song.
The first three verses is not him.
Of course, it’s him performing it but he’s playing a character, and that character is Stan.
TIA: The track eventually spent 15 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 51.
TIA: Since then, “Stan” has become a cult classic, and 17 years later, it was officially
added to the Oxford Living Dictionary, and defined as quote:
TIA: But as these online fandoms grew, researchers began to look at what exactly makes a stan
“a stan.”
DR ROCKWELL: Everyone needs people to look up to, people to model from.
To look to another person and say, I like how they show up in the world.
I want to be like that, too.
TIA: That’s Dr. Donna Rockwell, a clinical psychologist, researcher, and author of the
2017 article, ‘Celebrity Worship and the American Mind.’
TIA: Genius spoke to Dr. Rockwell to find out the psychology behind fandom.
DR: Fan relationships in the context of musical acts is much stronger because, oh, every time
we listen to that song, the reward center of our brain is stimulated.
TIA: According to Dr. Rockwell, most people are attracted to fandoms simply because it
helps them find others like them.
DR: We want to feel that we're not alone on the planet.
We want to feel a sense of kinship, a sense of community, a sense of connection, a sense
of showing up in some way.
TIA: But in terms of being a stan, the word as we’ve come to understand it today has
gone through its own history of transformations.
TIA: Eminem first came up with “stan” and made the word popular on his song,
but Nas took it to the next level on his JAY-Z diss track “Ether” just a year later in 2001.
TIA: By many accounts, Nas was the first rapper to weaponize “Stan” by using it as an insult.
NAS: I didn’t wanna do “Ether” I didn’t even wanna do a record talking about another rapper.
FLEX: But you felt you had to.
NAS: I had to, dog.
TIA: Since then, as it’s become a much more common slang term, we’ve seen other rappers
drop “Stan” into their own verses, too.
TIA: As far as “Stan” as a popular slang term, it’s unclear how it emerged on social
media but many point to this tweet from 2008 as one of the earliest recorded uses of “Stan”
as a verb.
TIA: Speaking of social media, according to Dr. Rockwell, online activity has played a
huge part in how fandom has changed over the last few decades.
DR: Today it has a lot to do with our immense interconnectivity through social media.
It just doesn't ever stop.
It's 24/7.
TIA: There’s been plenty of research around fandoms and some of their more negative traits,
too with two main branches of study: one focusing on what’s known as celebrity worship syndrome
and the other on parasocial relationships, which are the bond between fans and the stars
themselves.
TIA: And ultimately, there’s positives and negatives to both.
DR: Some of the questions are if my favorite celebrity met me, we'd be really good friends,
or if my favorite celebrity asked me to do something illegal, I would do it for them,
so that's where you're getting into these areas of no longer being in control of your
own choice-making, so that looks like addiction.
TIA: Today, it’s almost impossible to ignore most online fan communities.
TIA: They’ve made their presence known by confronting anyone who opposes them, like
in mid-2018 when writer Wanna Thompson found herself at the mercy of Nicki Minaj stans
after a seemingly harmless tweet.
TIA: This kind of harassment and online activity stretches across fandoms, and Dr. Rockwell
says there’s something to it.
DR: When there's no actual meaning ascribed to the qualities in the person you're following
or you want to be like or you feel like you want to know, so it really is dangerous if
it's just for things like you think they're cool or you like their music, but you look
away from a certain lifestyle that they have that is not healthy.
TIA: Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone, and all of us have a favorite artist, whether
we’re just a casual listener, or a superfan.
And according to Dr. Rockwell, there’s one thing we can all do to make our listening
experience even better.
DR: We need to be the celebrity in our narrative, in our own story, in the movie of our life.
TIA: I’m Tia with Genius News bringing you the meaning and the knowledge behind the music.