There’s something deeply toxic happening in fandom, and it’s not new, but it’s getting louder. A celebrity responds to a fan, likes a post, acknowledges that people care about their work, and suddenly it’s a crisis. Suddenly we’re throwing around words like “parasocial,” “inappropriate,” “they're too involved,” “this is making people uncomfortable.”
But uncomfortable for who, exactly?
Let’s stop pretending this is about 'safety' or 'boundaries'. It’s about visibility. It’s about control. It’s about the fact that some fans can’t handle not being the one who gets the attention. So they dress it up in concern, as if they’re protecting the community, when in reality what they’re doing is punishing both the artist and the fans who got acknowledged.
And the worst part is... it’s mostly women doing this to other women. Every single time. Policing whose post got liked. Who’s “too close.” Who’s “too much.” Who should be embarrassed for engaging in the space we’re all here to enjoy. And it’s not because we’re naturally competitive or catty or whatever lazy stereotype people love to throw at us. It’s because we’ve been taught, structurally, repeatedly, that there is not enough room for all of us.
Adrienne Rich wrote about this. Women beware women. That’s the system. That’s the mechanism. That’s how patriarchy maintains itself. Not just by suppressing women, but by making sure we do the work of suppressing each other. We turn every space into a silent ranking system. Who’s being noticed. Who’s acceptable. Who’s allowed to be loud. Who should shrink.
We’re doing that here. Right now. In fandom. Over digital scraps of attention from someone who, let’s be clear, owes us nothing.
That’s what people need to sit with. These celebrities do not owe you a response. They don’t owe you interaction. They don’t owe you access, or availability, or emotional labor. And when they do offer any of those things—when they respond with grace, or humor, or kindness—and your reaction is to police it, to shame them, or to shame the fans they interact with?
The relationship between a fan and a celebrity is not transactional. You’re not owed access, closeness, or attention just because you streamed a show, retweeted a gif, or posted a headcanon. And the mindset of “if I’m not getting noticed, then no one should” isn’t righteous, it’s entitled. And when that entitlement gets turned against other women, it’s not just petty... it’s a repetition of the very hierarchies we claim to be pushing back against.
This is why so many spaces, especially fandoms led by women, become unbearable over time. Not because the content stops mattering, but because the community eats itself alive. The minute joy turns into hierarchy, we’ve already lost.
And I say this with love: fans need to take a step back and ask what they’re doing here. If your instinct is to tear someone down for being noticed, or to analyze every celebrity reply like it’s a breach of contract, you need to stop and ask why that’s your first response.
Because if all this energy, all this surveillance, all this suspicion, all this shaming, went toward interrogating the systems that taught us to hate each other for being visible... instead of weaponizing it against the girl who got a like from the celeb you admire, maybe we’d actually get somewhere.
Fandom doesn’t have to be this cruel. It could be a place of abundance. Of shared joy. Of mutual admiration. But not until we stop feeding women beware women. Not until we stop mistaking jealousy for moral clarity. Not until we remember that no one’s owed anything just because they’re watching.
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