who are you a stan of?

Music and violence have never gone together.

trying v hard to think of artists i like with a substantial coterie of genuinely deranged fans on social media

mitski? idk tho, most of the social media buzz around her lately has been calling her a cop coz her dad was in the cia. probably led by taylor stans. whose parents...well. i mean.

CRJ's stans must be p grounded, can someone confirm/deny

yall are tasteless asf pic.twitter.com/SPAknMNI8b

— Beny / 𝒇𝒐𝒍𝒌𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒆 like limit (@Benyoutsold) July 27, 2020

alternate headline: washed-up former tastemaker too scared to make any bold assertions about female pop artist doubles down on oddly specific score range to appease the lowest common denominator pic.twitter.com/7M3xXzA6vR

— eugene (@eug1998) July 27, 2020

WTF @pitchfork #pitchforkisoverparty pic.twitter.com/37RRtKGkeN

— Harshit IS CRYINGGGGG.(atleast he is trying) (@taylanastan) July 27, 2020

^^ these are my fave tweets tbf (well apart from witch house taytay obv), because they do touch on the ridiculous grading up to a decimal.

CRJ's stans must be p grounded, can someone confirm/deny

I don't think she even has stans in the sense being discussed itt

The K-pop industrial complex and the various businesses that feed off of it has put a lot on money into creating and weaponizing deranged fans. (By various businesses, I'm thinking in particular of the taxis that cater to fans who want to follow their idols around.)

K-pop IC did a lot to troll Trump/be pro BLM. Don't think it's the same tbh

oh i thought of a good example of an artist i once liked with a noticeable and weirdly obsessive and unhinged fanbase: marina diamandis. and not uncoincidentally (?) her music has fallen through the floor recently. come at me marina stan army

As well as a lot of horrendously destructive behavior.

i do find it extremely hard to engage with k-pop given how...militaristic it is, and i'm sure i'm not alone

It's the absurd Pitchfork Industrial Complex grading that triggers this response. It invites stans to go "b-but chumbawamba had a 8.1 18 years ago you bastards!"

if I were mr or mrs twitter I would improve my website by 20% by banning hashtags with "...isoverparty"

xp I refuse to listen to it, myself, because of it.

the fan armies are awful but surely only a very small fraction of k-pop is “militaristic”

this thread sucks

then again k-pop stans were politically radicalized recently so

audiences/readers are primarily to blame re supporting the grading system. I don't have hard math handy but it always seems to be that arts sites that use grades of one kind or another tend to have a viral appeal that ungraded outlets don't

and of course letterboxd/RYM type places are unthinkable without ratings and are surely stan breeding grounds

idk i've read up on how k-pop groups operate, it seems p militaristic. if the stans are adopting the same causes the rest of us are then that is nice but

RYM unthinkable without ratings yes but at least their overall ratings are a democratic conglomeration rather than a pronouncement from on high

not that i want to exclude the possibility of critics making graded pronouncements, the trouble is the 'on high' bit, and because only a very few (PIC, FIC) outlets give grades that go viral these days, this only serves to concentrate the stan energy

i’m glad we are once again discussing lj’s favorite subjects

audiences/readers are primarily to blame re supporting the grading system. I don't have hard math handy but it always seems to be that arts sites that use grades of one kind or another tend to have a viral appeal that ungraded outlets don't

― the quar on drugs (Simon H.), Monday, July 27, 2020 3:48 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't believe even 10% of the taytay stans actually read the review. It's completely on p4k. What do they prefer? To go viral, or for people to actually read the reviews they publish? Wait wait don't tell me! etc. It's the first. Otherwise they'd ditch the lame grading, ditch grading all together, and let people actually read reviews.

xp i bumped this thread tbf, with some favourite subjects v much in mind, and what exactly is wrong about what i just said?

also these subjects are all ilxors' favourite subjects don't front lol

One day we *will* get to the bottom of the global conspiracy to force people to like pop music

i do find it extremely hard to engage with k-pop given how...militaristic it is, and i'm sure i'm not alone

― imago, Monday, 27 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Having a problem with militancy again is it

One day we *will* get to the bottom of the global conspiracy to force people to like pop music

― À la recherche du scamps perdu (Noodle Vague), Monday, 27 July 2020 13:57 (twelve seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is a p bad-faith reading of everything i've (or anyone has) been saying itt, and obviously i like pop music too

not really, and not really? but it would be self-defeating to argue against stanning for not pop so

Stanning for pop with a huge list of caveats instead

my argument itt has been that it is bad that some high-profile pop artists have fans, encouraged either tacitly by the artist or inadvertently by the critical discourse, who harass and abuse critics, and i have asked what should be done about it

I used to be part of a community where people would do this with all the shit Scaruffi was big into, it was really amusing but also deeply fuckin weird. like they'd berate people into listening to Irrlicht a hundred times

I'm coming to the opinion that everyone who willingly and approvingly calls themselves a stan and/or introduces the term into fandom discussions should be incarcerated

oh yeah there's all that /mu/core shit like fishmans

fishmans are rubbish imo lol

God it must be 10 years since I've read Scaruffi.

they should also remove the scores from rateyourmusic imo

I agree that there's a level of behaviour online which is bad to the point where it shouldn't be acceptable, that line being somewhere around threats and bigotry but nowhere near taking the piss out of writers or baring your shameless devotion. I agree that people with fans should publicly denounce threats and bigotry from their fans.

It's notable that some ilxors including but not limited to you imago seem to get especially exercised by this when very popular artists with big fan bases including professional writers have got a new record out.

i just don't like the distortions born out of mass worship, v aspie of me i know

......

they should also remove the scores from rateyourmusic imo

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Monday, July 27, 2020 4:06 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hateyourmusic.com

(i am on the spectrum if 14 years yesterday of my posts hadn't alerted u to this)

Stan 4 critical support only.

https://i.imgur.com/kWExY2b.jpg

Not that I disagree, mind you. I've mostly given up, however.

Every fandom is made up of larger or smaller numbers of individual fans tho, so it's either false consciousness en masse or maybe just maybe an individual's dislike is just their own private anti-fandom, no distortion necessary or possible

the distortions in this case are not dislikes, they are slavish, aggressive defences of the stan object

It seems to me that analysing why I don't like something is way more likely to lead to insight than theorising why a bunch of strangers do like something

like they'd berate people into listening to Irrlicht a hundred times

LOL. I have listened to it a fair bit myself mind you.

but i do quite like the new taylor swift album despite not liking her as a person (see triggercut post upthread)

I initially misread that as 'liberate people into listening to Irrlicht' and was like 'yeah, that's exactly it'.

xp

I think 99% of the Taylor fandom on Twitter is performative, though maybe people making threatening comments about the p4k review or whatever are going too far (if they're actually serious). Maybe Taylor Swift could say something to stop that, but idk if she really needs to or if it would be helpful, b/c there are obsessive weirdos to be found in every pop niche cult.

"I agree that people with fans should publicly denounce threats and bigotry from their fans."

They should, but tbh I doubt it would stop them -- taking this from the way I've seen political crankery operate on twitter -- so it should be the publication taking steps to protect the writer's welfare.