KT: I’m not convinced that there’s some major Tumblr Renaissance right now. Do you think there are any platforms right now that offer fans the same kind of opportunity to frantically stockpile inside jokes and shape their own lore the way Tumblr did? As a fan, I know it’s fun to be a part of something that no one on the outside can truly understand. The craving for intimacy within fandom - something that immediately makes you one of the crowd - is interesting to me. The DIY approach to pop music fandom started with these early fans. There are rumors that certain international fans taught each other to use VPNs to fake American streams. At one point, fans decided that a certain song should be a single, so they made it happen unofficially. The mythology - whether this is actually true or not - is that the amount of social media action they got is what made them into stars and gave them careers. For example, One Direction lost The X Factor, and fans decided that they lost the show but won the world. They embodied this idea that fandom is responsible for the artists they’re supporting and should have a creative role in their career. KT: There were honestly a lot of fandoms making early use of the internet, like Beliebers and Rihanna’s Navy, in addition to One Direction. Is there something that originated with One Direction fans that is still around today? They are explicit about what the goal of the internet is for them - finding other bands, connecting with other bands, sharing art with bands, and coordinating to promote the interests of the fandom. KT: They have a head start in having a really clear reason why they would be using the internet, so whenever fans arrive on a new platform, they don’t have to wander around figuring out what it’s for and what features they need. Why are fans so consistently the best at using the internet? I heard from almost everyone I interviewed that fandom became more important to them during crisis points or transitional points - adolescence is one, but it can happen again in marriage or parenthood. It’s a tumultuous time when you’re trying to figure out who you are and what you want from life. Kaitlyn Tiffany: I think fandom in general is a broad set of practices where there are lots of demographics presented, but the reason young women are so popular - especially in pop music fandom - is that adolescence is a time in your life when you have a lot of free time and not a lot of control over how you spend it. Why do you think so many of the biggest fans on the internet are young women? BuzzFeed News spoke with Tiffany about what made One Direction fans so special and what other fandoms can learn from them. They went into every new platform and forum with two goals in mind - to make their faves known, and to share in their love with the other people who get it.įrom the creation of still-relevant fan language (like “I want to run me over with their car”) to fandom-dividing conspiracy theories, Directioners went through it all. Directioners talked so much about a group of four young British men (and one Irishman), a running joke goes, that they ran out of things to say and fully leaned into the absurd.
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