Taylor Swift fans bombing Netflix stars is Twitter’s norm

On March 1, Taylor Swift posted a tweet criticizing a joke in an episode of Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia, a joke made at her expense. Twelve hours and a half million likes later, the general feeling about the comment was that Swift was right to tell a tiring and misogynistic joke. And that may have been the end of it, except that Taylor Swift fans live on Twitter, and are part of a growing trend in using social media to protect favorite celebrities and attack anyone who brings down the stars.

In this case, the object of Swifties’ anger was not Ginny and Georgia creator Sarah Lampert or any of the show’s executive producers. Even the writers did not notice the smoke from Swift’s furious fandom. Instead of going after someone with significant power over the future of the show, Swifties turned most of his anger over to Antonia Gentry, 24, who plays Ginny. They responded hundreds of times to Netflix posts on Instagram and Twitter, as well as to Gentry’s personal accounts, telling her (and sometimes, bizarrely, the real character) to apologize. The theme of the comments is the same: Taylor Swift has been harmed and it is Gentry’s fault. Although Gentry is responsible, in part, for the widely criticized “Olympics of Oppression” video that went viral on social media last month, she is not responsible for the words her character says in the rest of the series.

I have already found people spamming comments on their social media posts, telling Gentry to “respect Taylor Swift”. People are directly accusing Gentry of misogyny and telling others not to watch Ginny and Georgia. Some did openly racist tweets. Even though Gentry is not credited as a writer, hundreds of people are demanding that she take responsibility for the only “joke” on the show they disagree with. Fueled by Taylor Swift’s public irritation, these fans – and trolls who pretend to be fans – feel empowered to act aggressively to protect Swift’s reputation. This is a normal day on Stan’s Twitter, where everything serves to protect the object of the fans’ parasocial relationships.

Parasocial relationships are emotional connections with media figures, from bloggers and journalists to YouTubers and politicians, who form over a long period of time and involve repeated engagement with the figure or his work. We tend to think of parasocial relationships in terms of how fans behave towards the celebrity they have a fixation for – in the case of Real Person Fic (RPF), border changes on social media and even the extreme cases of fans chasing their favorite celebrity. The assumption is that stanning is a hardcore expression love of celebrities. And while it can start from a positive place, this fandom can and does go in the opposite direction.

In Swifties’ targeted response to Gentry, as well as his reaction to this tweet about Ashley Reese’s essay on Jezebel (not to mention their harassment of a reviewer last July, after Folkloreof the launch), we’re seeing the other side of the stan coin: the fixation that drives fans to cross borders with a celebrity they claim to love can also be targeted at detractors like a vitriol turned into a weapon.

Stan Twitter can come together to express care – you can see that in the responses to Azealia Banks about social media posts last year – but today we often see fans choosing aggression in response to any perceived threat against their favorites. Consider the practice of “clearing searches”, a common practice on Twitter to prevent certain topics from becoming popular when people search for celebrity names during a scandal. However, fans don’t just spam themselves. If a celebrity’s mental health is in a fragile state because of a critic or producer, fans will inundate the mentions of “perpetrator” with definite phrases (for example, “Funny Doja Cat”, “Best rapper Han”) along with aggressive memes, insults or even threats. One of the motivations behind all this is the fear is that, if the polls are not canceled, the celebrity will find themselves tending to use negative words (for example, “bullying”, “racist”).

Reporting accounts are social media accounts created by fans to report people who may be harmful to a particular celebrity, both to Twitter and to the celebrity’s management via a dedicated email. These accounts can be for an entire group, for individual artists or members of a group, or for an actor at a show or film. The follower count can range from just 300 followers to more than 30,000. All seven members of the K-pop BTS group have several reporting accounts in their orbit – and that is to say nothing of those dedicated to the group as a whole. Notable reports of reports emerged for everyone, from rapper Jackson Wang of GOT7 to young women from Blackpink and Twice.

Fans who follow report reports get detailed explanations, or even models, of what types of emails should be sent to idol management. They are also told how to bulk tweet to get users suspended. If the problem is with a public figure (like the one we saw with the racism directed at BTS by the German broadcaster Matthias Matuschik at the end of February), the fans turn in the direction of from them management. Fans act as detectives on the Internet and provide contact information for radio station managers. They mark the editors of the journalists. They send emails to other professional contacts. (And yes, this can count as a form of doxxing, as some of the information these fans find is not easily found public information.)

While some of these accounts target people who spread malicious rumors or attack a celebrity with insults, a large number of these accounts target other fans. Although fandom provides a community for people to connect because of their interest in an artist, fans can connect with each other in an instant. They are coming after people who write RPF, who draw fan art, who criticized an aspect of celebrity art, or who made a joke about a celebrity who was misinterpreted. The “offenses” that can cause an outsider to be booked for mass reporting are no less forgivable if they come from an internal fan.

Stan Twitter It is a form of fandom fueled by intense emotions (usually love or hate), and when there are no strangers to direct your frustration – a journalist, a DJ, an avowed anti-fan – all that energy has to go somewhere. More and more often, it is directed towards other fans or, as we saw with Swifties coming to Antonia Gentry, another celebrity gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.