The Social Media Explosion and Over Accessible Popstars

This post is a little scatty but bear with me. I was thinking about the subject after being wrongly accused of being a crazy myself !

Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms have opened up a whole world of promotion possibilities and chances to interact with one's fanbase.Some singers and groups use it to their full advantage but unfortunately the use of these platforms comes with a price.

Whereas before your average garden variety stalker/psychotic fan was easy to avoid, on the internet it is much more difficult to try and avoid these characters. They now have an additional way of interacting with the subject of their obsession. Twitter and Facebook are the main culprits because these people can be blocked but it is possible to open numerous new accounts and continue the questionable behaviour.

A recent example involved lovely Kylie Minogue: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9065613/Kylie-Minogue-calls-in-police-over-Twitter-stalker-threats.html (how anyone could threaten a person who comes across as so nice and genuine I do not know)


A person who is of this nature can feed their obsession and act out their fantasies in front of the actual subject, they can also discover where the person has been or currently is at any time which is worrying.

I have a  ban list on the Facebook page I created (not official,the subject isn't me and I am in no way connected with the subject apart from that they know what I look like, my name and have met me once or twice, would like to hand it over to someone official) and the majority of the list are people who are literally crazy. .

An extreme example:

I have no idea !

Here are a few examples of the type of "crazies" I've dealt with:

The person who, although claiming to be a fan constantly posts objectionable dialogue about the subject on social media platforms and forums.They will send out tweets to the person trying to gain their attention by being obnoxious because they are desperate for the attention of the subject. It gives them some kind of wierd pleasure when the person reacts.

Then there is the person who thinks because they have the opportunity to interact with the object of their obsession they believe that they are now friends with them, these are the people who build a fantasy world around the person, this world eventually becomes completely believable to them and they even recount stories involving the subject and themselves as if these scenarios actually happened. Remember Bjork's famous stalker who shot himself or the man who claimed to be married to Madonna ?

Also people who will purposely go after the subject's family and friends. A guy I banned started posting photos which I had my suspicions had come from a family member's personal profile. I was almost 100% sure this was the case but he was claiming the photos were his and that he had taken them. I had to do some digging of my own and eventually found that they had come from someone else's profile so I banned him because I thought it was a very strange thing to do.

Those are just a couple of examples, there are probably quite a few variations.

I came across a blog recently that has since been deleted which had been created by a Lady Ga Ga fan, it was called "Help Mother Monster" or something similiar. It was full of quite horrible posts about Madonna and Adele, it also included posts urging readers of the blog to go to articles and YouTube videos and post nasty comments to try and "bring Madonna and Adele down". Basically the person running the blog seemed to dislike other singers achievements over Lady Ga Ga and was trying to do anything to ruin things for them.

This is wierd behaviour, in fact it's more than wierd. It makes me wonder though if the social media explosion and the subsequent creation of the accessible pop star has fuelled this kind of behaviour and even made it worse ?

A bit of light relief....we always call this "The Stalker Song"