ever find a good blog or fan creator you think is really good and then scroll back and find they were a bitch and a troll to sierra and kaykay and probably crystal back in like 2018 and pushing a narrative that was obviously false and made no effort to redeem themselves or take down any of it? like i don't hold grudges, not usually, but some extremes are unacceptable and do cause harm to the people in question and like. the people you're in the fandom for too
and so in my classic style i am mad when i see that but some weird glitch in my brain turns that energy into compassion so here's my attempt at a reasonable understanding take. on my quest to be actually neurodivergent affirming, and my take of musicians being healthcare workers: pretty universally, we take music in when we're feeling unseen, lonely, struggling, we find songs we relate to, we get invested in the people who make them who we relate to through their songs and other content they share, the nature of the parasocial relationship means the love we give is never reciprocated personally only collectively. and there's a bit more creative license to fill in the gaps of things they don't share in the pictures of them in our heads than when with real people: real people will call you out on your bullshit or disappoint you by not being that fantasy and so someone will leave. anyway
in an ideal world we all find our tribe who understand us and we all grow in our understanding of ourselves and other people and we facilitate them finding that social capital too, we share it around. but in the meantime and in real life more generally music and parasocial relationships help get us through the times we don't have that. they can also inspire us to find it for ourselves and other people (why do you think i'm here seriously guys) and i can't overstate how much this saves lives. lives and relationships and careers and life goals and it sounds triumphant when i say it like that, and it is.
but the truth is it's messy, sometimes it is quite literally surviving til the next show. living for the next bit of content. and sometimes brains don't get it right and it's easy for youuuuuuuuuuu to say if it's not something you struggle with JUST BE RESPECTFUL and i want to. i really want to because if someone is so convinced their take is true and they NEED to express that, but it's hurting people, really defaming, invalidating, bringing down their confidence, causing lasting hurt. it does need to stop.
but it's not necessarily helpful to the struggling fan to just say 'stop that', you need some way to meet that need. and most of the time we don't have that. we don't have comprehensive mental health services, they're still pretty basic, monocultural, as good as they are, access is still shit, supply and demand do not equalise. and then all you have is music. and so i don't know where everyone is coming from. but i can guess and i can have compassion. like i get it. i feel responsible for making the world a little better and helping help get where it needs. because it's gonna help protect the people who are being hurt by this because it's really happening. for celebs it's a massive problem. for their partners who may or may not be famous in their own right (it doesn't matter either way brings its own struggles) too.
they're giving us music to get us through shit and how do we repay them? sure with a good decent (if insecure) amount of money if they're popular enough. but also with this behaviour that no matter what the complex suffering and neurobiology going on behind it is, they (celebs) have no obligation to be understanding about it. they should not have to go through any of it to begin with. it's like. being traumatised for offering some help? i know there are good stories that outweigh this but i do truly think we especially have to be kind to their partners who might get less of that direct benefit and more of the hate. we need to believe what our artists say and if they're lying to us for some reason or another, that's their business.
and while i'm on the topic of that and neurodivergent affirming takes I did just want to say: open your mind to different ways of expressing different kind of affection, platonic, romantic, sexual, and know all of these can come incompletely and have blurry boundaries and there are a million reasons if there was potential for a relationship (whether or not in any case there is/was is none of our business) someone might not choose to pursue it, which are also none of our business. and each of these kinds of love might look different with everyone's brain too: if there are labels for why they're not our business unless we're told, and yes, sometimes it will look like one thing to us but not to everyone because everyone is different and experiences these things differently. like of course you can ship them! but you can do so while maintaining an open mind to what they're actually experiencing and learning from and discovering how they explain it in their own words not trying to gaslight them on the internet or worse to actually sabotage any relationships that don't suit your agenda. just stick to your fanfics and put them on registered users only (and also don't tell a celeb to read fanfics about them or another member of their item. there is so much sensitive stuff at play here).
all this stuff isn't 'oh you're not a proper fan if you don't do this perfectly'. it's about reducing harm to us as fans and to our beloved artists and their loved ones and just keeping trying to grow and be better people in this vein every day. admitting we're struggling and we fucked up sometimes and actually making an effort to do better and to fix things. I think all of this is one of the most authentic things we can do as a fandom: never give up on that. be motivated to do what these artists are doing you know? it's dynamic, it's fun, we've all been through some shit together and we're all coming out of it and we're going to be kind.
