Fandoms are communities of people that bond over shared interest, support, and love of someone or something. 21st-century technology has engineered a new type of fandom culture heavily reliant on social media interaction.
Technology and social media easily connect millions of people in these fandoms to each other allowing for the sharing of content. Hashtags, videos, and other social media posts allow fans to show support by trending and mass spreading the content of the person to whom they're a fan. For all the support that technology allows fandoms to show it equally allows demonstration of displeasure and criticism through intense scrutiny.
This connectivity that technology provides through social media also means that those in the spotlight get very little privacy. Reports of celebrity sightings can travel to millions in seconds leading to dangerous situations of mobbing and frenzy. This absolute fascination and obsession with public figures that social media sustain leads to toxic feelings of entitlement to the real lives of these celebrities.
Social media fuels those deluded in believing that they know who a celebrity really is. It removes a barrier that allows for contact and connection with a celebrity that can seem intimate and personal. It takes away the reality that fans are interacting with a persona presented by a stranger.
We see these delusions clearly in fan fiction and incidents of stalking. The official and original definition of fan fiction refer to the creation of fictional tales about characters created through works of fiction. It establishes a clear line between fiction and reality.
Fan fiction becomes especially problematic when used to create stories about the lives and relationships of real-life people. The culture of "shipping" was also initially romantic pairings of fictional characters, but this too has bled into the reality of fandoms of real-life celebrities.
This culture of fan fiction and shipping is dangerous when fans believe these stories to be fact, and become so attached to their ideal of a person and what they're life should be.
Technology has allowed for connections between fans and the people they support very easy by eliminating any and all anonymity for those in the spotlight.
