Heard some new celebrity news recently? Like JB or Miley misbehaving over and over again? Well, if so, then I can assume that you hate them. And, guess what will annoy you the most when reading that: days after, you see how unaffected they are of bad things and the fans fawn over them, maybe even more than before. Sounds unjust to you and therefore a reason to hate somebody? Well, you aren't alone there. I have the same feelings, too...well, partially have, partially had - but let's get into the big influence of fan bases/fandoms to outsiders and how they can be blamed for a star's reputation or not.
Hive Mind - Everywhere Queen Bees Trying To Kill You
The first thing which comes to mind when thinking about famous people are mostly singer talents...or "talents"; but that can be a topic for another post. JB, Miley Cyrus, One Direction, Selena Gomez (wait, I saw nobody recently giving a damn about her) and so on. They are young, good-looking and rich. That could make a good joke about how female fans are gold diggers but hey, I wanna be realistic. Of course there are points like attraction, idol character, talent and so on which play into it, not only money.
I cannot deny one fact: there's no song of all four of them I could stand (of which I've heard and could remember); some songs I even hate. And even if I hate songs, most fans fawn (sometimes blindly) over them, whether justified or not. And I stand by the point that music can even be objectively seen badly produced. Well, another post could do my stance justice but back to the topic.
So, let's take for example Friday by Rebecca Black. When people on Youtube have heard it and it became a huge hit concerning clicks, most people have found the song bad because her voice was so goddamn bad in the song. And I have to admit that it was pretty bad, in my opinion at least. However, some began to go a step further and began to hate Rebecca Black herself. Well, most didn't feel bad about it because they see it as her fault to bring out such a bad song. I was once on that side, too, for a while.
But seeing her now - a friend linked me to one of her songs or collaborations with somebody - I was surprised. I was amazed! She actually CAN sing. The voice in Friday was bad or the production à la Autotune and computer manipulation have failed miserably.
And it made me think about stuff...
Dive Deeper And You May Grasp The True Form
The idea to make a post about annoying fan bases and hating the idol was not a product of just a day but many more things while today triggered to actually let me write.
So, I get to the point where I think that hate can be blind - very, very blind.
I take again an example and choose One Direction. Well, since I am a guy you can expect me to hate or at least dislike their songs because of high pitches and damn girl-winning lyrics. I can hate a song, there's nothing wrong with it. Till the internet hive mind behavior led me to hate on them pretty much. And even the internet hive mind is pretty blind - again, you do not hate them because they are famous or because they are bad (well, a few do, however) but because of their fans.
And this is where to draw a line between fans (and their behavior) and the idols themself (and their behavior). While I find the fans damn annoying and totally blind (love makes people blind, too), I find nothing on One Direction which deserves to hate or dislike them...at least nothing I've heard of. But the reputation of 1D by the guys has greatly suffered by their fans, especially teenie female ones. I was young when the Backstreet Boys were big but I cannot imagine that boys during that time hated on them so much as they hate 1D or whichever famous boy group.
The opposite of 1D is pretty much Justin Bieber: he has become pretty spoiled, does party and stuff and regularly has prostitutes - if a girl would find all that out on a normal guy, she would be totally pissed off by that guy but not if it's JB because he's young and famous - not all of them think that way but most do. There I can say at least that I dislike/hate[/whatever synonym feels right] him because of his personality, not because of his fans alone.
Concluding this paragraph, I can confirm that it's not easy to take off the anti-teenie swarm goggles. If you hate somebody, it's really hard to reason it with some research on what they do and so on. Like love and like, hate and dislike should be profound and based on things which happened or the person him-/herself, not the fan base around it.
Give Yourself A Try
Singers have the biggest fandoms - at least it's my impression. But of course they aren't the only ones who have big fan bases: books, movies, games, celebreties, animals (OMG, don't get me started on cat lovers!): they all have fan bases - some have a bigger one, some have a smaller one. But all have one thing in common: they can spoil the impression of the worshipped person/object in a bad way.
This article isn't only criticism to fan base haters to overthink their dislikes and hates on certain things and people but it's especially one directed at the blind fans of the worshipped ones ("one directed" is not(!) an intended wordplay, I just discovered that after reading through it again).
I could tell stories of how shocked people reacted and how bad people talked about JB when #cut4bieber happened; that fans really came to that point where they would scar themselves because their idol isn't what they thought he is to be; that's just plain stupidity and insanity. But it became public and people have an even worse impression of JB and their fans, the Beliebers.
What is missing is common sense: instead of #cut4bieber, fans normally should have only considered three choices:
A) accept it and still adore/love/like him
B) stop supporting him since you think it's bad or because he's changed in a bad way
C) IF you already find it bad and you want him to change, do it in a reasonable way!
And just because you take choice B or choice C doesn't mean that you have to hate his music after all. And just because you take choice A doesn't mean that you have to love all he does or all of his songs.
Common sense also means that you use your brain and take an impression without looking through JB, Miley Cyrus or Twilight goggles (yes, I've confirmed the existence of Twilight...unfortunately). Behave like you would behave yourself to a friend: if you find that he does stupid stuff and he doesn't regret it, move on and forget about your former friend. Why is it so hard for fans to do?
In the end, my stance is that fans but also haters have to use common sense: hate stuff with reason or love stuff with reason - good and logical reasons only. And once you do that, you may become a much more balanced and relaxed person. ^__^
P.S.: Four topics where I said I will talk about it in other posts...at least a plan of what I can write about but it becomes a pretty big feat in the end.
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