Is stanning bad for your mental health?

[princessmimi]

I don't think so cause honestly being a Britney stan has kept me from harming myself

and gives me something/someone to focus on and to forget my problems.

I DONT regret being a Britney stan at all!  

However there are some batsh!t crazy stans who do worship celebs (which I dont)

[RadicalOptimism]

If I didn’t stan Britney I wouldn’t be on here feuding with clowns 

[RadicalOptimism]

5 hours ago, Midnight said:

Yeah I agree, for me there was a point when I said to myself, I am only here for the music and nothing else. I don't care about people's private life's I am not interested in how much success they have or how much money they make, who there married to or nothing about them.  I only care about the work they put out.

So you’re an Ava stan now? Welcome 

[Midnight]

11 minutes ago, CrazyButItFeelsAllright said:

So you’re an Ava stan now? Welcome 

[WorkBishStan94]

I’ll say stanning Britney for the past 20 years has not been good for my mental health. It’s been a bumpy ride. 

[alluvion]

6 hours ago, NotLouTaylor said:

I swear people pick celebs to stan as if they are picking a character in an RPG (role playing game). They see their choice of which celebs to stan as an extension of themselves because they have this image of themselves that they want to project to others. They become identities, and we all know how vigorously people will defend their own identities. 

Without trying to get too big here, I think the 2010s will be defined by identity politics and the increased number of ways we can define ourselves which is of course good and bad. Stan culture is just one of the many new ways people are choosing to define themselves. 

Stan culture is so unhealthy for a number of reasons but namely that we forget our faves are humans, too.

We treat them like untouchable gods or objects belonging to everyone, but when they show themselves for being flawed humans like the rest of us we discard them. Then it won't be long till we place someone new on that pedestal. It's kinda vicious. 

I wonder if we, as a society, will ever move away from worshipping celebrities ? 

I follow a bunch of fan accounts for TV shows that I like and these people have slowly morphed from just standard fans of the show to people who treat the actors like they're their friends. You know how some people see Taylor Swift as their friend / sister? That, except worse... 

There's this one girl and she goes to like ten of those Comic Con type things a year and does a cosplay each time. There's this group of actors that she always meets, and then one in particular, to the point where they all know her name, her job, family issues, etc and it's so damn weird to me.

I think all this identitarianism is a symptom of a lack of self-reflection and a lack of real world experiences. No one is a box to check off. We are all a combination of our lived experiences, our self-discovered values and the way we choose to engage with others. Also, self is not static. We're in constant dissolution and reformation, as long as we're actually engaging with the physical world and the world of ideas. The lived reality for many people has become segmented and sanitized to the degree that there isn't much real exploration going on and, instead, people define themselves by the boundaries of their comfort zones. I find it stifling and dull. Some identitarians definitely replace developing a personality with stanning for x, y, z, but if they hadn't latched onto a fandom, they would've just picked something else like religion or politics as a gateway to a false and rigid self-definition. I don't think most even hardcore fans fall into this category, though. 

[TheySayImCrazy18]

As Someone Who Struggles With Mental Illness, I Think Your Right.   I Struggle With OCD Since I Was 7 Years Old.  And As We All Know OCD (In Some Cases, Not All) Is A Very Complex Adaptation Of Obsession.  That’s Not Exactly What Stanning Is.  But If You Obsessed With A Person To The Point Where They’re God Like To You, Then There Is Most Definitely A Problem.  That’s Why It’s Always Good To Hate Something About That Artist, Like I Dislike A Few Britney Albums, But I Still Love Her.  

[Brat]

This is deep

[Jamie Lynn Forever]

6 hours ago, TheySayImCrazy18 said:

But If You Obsessed With A Person To The Point Where They’re God Like To You, Then There Is Most Definitely A Problem.  That’s Why It’s Always Good To Hate Something About That Artist, Like I Dislike A Few Britney Albums, But I Still Love Her.  

This is very true. 

I think if you have to force yourself into liking something just because youre a "fan" it's not what i would call, an healthy obsession. Because...It's not like your idol will know/care  that you don't like that album or whatever decision she made that turned you off. It's like those people are embracing their delusion. 

There's too much music out there to be stressing on an album that didn't click.

[hot mess]

"Is stanning bad for your mental health?"

I mean, yeah. But when you're already mentally unstable you just see it as a hobby.