I was just wondering to myself earlier...were there fans like this years ago? or is it only in the last 10 years that tin foil hatted fans emerged? I can't remember...

And another thing...How come Cumberbatch hasn't gotten cease and desist order against any of those mad ones with the tumblr blogs and those who are stalking his wife online? I mean one of them even tried to create a party for him and was miffed when he didn't turn up!.

Urgh gross!

When I was a teenager and madly in love with certain boyband members, I wanted them to be my boyfriend, not each other's.

Tinhatting, I'm pretty sure, is the result of social media, where the fans are able to interact with their idols (or probably their PR team) and thus feel a sense of entitlement and there's also the feeling of belonging to a big online community. I wonder if a lot of the Tumblr blogs, which are so detailed and so intense and so fanatical and so bizarrely mental, are run by people without very much else going on in their lives?

Most of us don't have enough free time, juggling work, social commitments, family, children etc, to have such an intensive, almost 24/7 online presence.

Iirc the one who showed up at his house was spoken to by the police.
I believe legal and security advice is not to engage with stalkers in any way, unless absolutely necessary. Writing hateful things online is horrible, but taking legal action would just give them a ton of publicity and probably encourage them. I'm sure they're on watch lists and their names and photos circulated at events he does eg cons.

The girl who threw the party for him was when he did Frankenstein, before he met his wife. I wonder if she's still in the fandom and what 'side' she's on now!

They weren't when I was a boyband fangirl, back in the glory days of 911 and a1. I fantasised about Lee, Ben or Paul being my boyfriend but that was it, I think I wrote a couple of poor a1 romance fanfics which never left my computer (I wrote a couple of comedy ones I was more proud of that were online somewhere ). But you didn't have the easily accessible social networks back then. There were fansites but all they contained were biographies, pictures, lyrics etc...

I was in a fandom in the late 90s and I remember a few fans being quietly not fond of the main actor's wife, and 'squeeing' over photos of the main actor and main actress together, talking about how cute they looked. Anything more overt would have been shut down right away. But the Internet and online fandom was so self-policing then, with its own strict rules about netiquette. It was smaller.

I don't know why it's exploded in just the past year or two. Something about this post-truth era we're supposedly living in?

I was a Take That fan in the 90s. Fans used to camp outside their homes and follow them around the country. But the internet and social media has made it easier for nutters to connect (previously they would've been more "lone" types) and egg each other on. I certainly don't recall 90s TT fans behaving the way 1D fans behave nowadays - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr have a lot to answer for.

Different fandom but I threw away my B*Witched CDs when I learnt Lindsay was dating Lee from 911, my first love

Social media made it possible for fans to egg each other on . And when 100 people in your timeline tell you a pregnancy looks sketchy than you'll end up believing that too .



I remember when Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys had a girlfriend and nobody knew who she was , the letters written to teen magazines weren't nice . Today the letter writers would post nasty comments on Nick's instagram .

The Chims are going to love Kim calling her newborn Cole...

I won't lie, I found myself on the larry tag on tumblr over the last few days out of boredom and morbid curiosity. If this was a movie or tv show it'd be funny, but because it's affecting real people it's pathetic (although still a bit morbidly funny). Some of these people need help.

They were all posting about how much Harry was grieving this week, even though pictures taken on the day Jay died showed him in London, loading a dozen carrier bags from Gucci into his Mercedes.

Some of them are engaging in the deranged stalker favourite, Photoshopping faces onto other bodies and posting them as pictures of the fake couple together. There was a particularly one of Margot Robbie (again) superimposed on the body of a naked pregnant woman and Jared Leto on the body of a man cradling the bump and other Christmas themed ones of various fantasy couples kissing under the mistletoe with babies and Christmas trees etc. I don't know why that's apparently now not distasteful!

Being in love with a celebrity and imagining yourself in a relationship with them was a safe and innocent way young people and particularly young girls learnt about dealing with new sexual feelings and love. But imagining your idols are secretly gay, or in a relationship with someone else to the point of obsession doesn't help people deal with anything. It's just trying to force other people to live in your imaginary world, and not being able to deal with it when the reality is different. It would be really interesting to have a proper conversation with some of these people, but I suspect their reasoning would be completely irrational.

I think im going to throw up.

Well, obviously Harry was shopping for funeral wear for himself, his husband, his husband's family, and the rest of 1D including Zayn.

The Larries have been briefly respectful but are now back to full-on batshit crazy mode, and there was me, hoping that the death of Jay, and the mention of her grandson Freddie in the announcement, would have given them a reality check. I am assuming the death was announced afterwards so that the funeral could be kept private and not gatecrashed by hideous fans pleading for selfies.

I remember a friend of mine cried when Madonna married Sean Penn and some fan girls hated Yasmin Le Bon, but we didn't have the internet to create hate groups and swap fantasies.
My first taste of internet crazies was in the The X Files fandom, between shippers and no-shippers etc....those who throw tantrums and hated David Duchovny but also fancied him.
Then taking every word that he or Gillian said to heart, whether they hated each other or not...when Gillian was mostly trying to raise a child in between takes.
The West Wing was the next one, full of meltdowns and Josh and Donna fantasies and republicans who found it too liberal. A sight called TV Without Pity was a vicious forum for all kinds of TV shows.

To be honest it doesn’t matter if Larry never come out I’ll always ship them and say: “Larry is real”

Hmmm, I don't think Larry was ever real except as a friendship. Louis likes being in long term relationships and Harry, going on what journos have said, likes to bat as far out of his league as he can. He tried chatting up Rosie Huntingdon W when her bf Jason Stratham was in the room. He was with Taylor Swift for a few months aged 18 and got a best selling album written about him. He's had flings with Kendall J and models Sara Sampaio, Georgia Fowler and Nadine Leopold. The Larrie idea that he's been faithful to Louis since he was 16 is honestly laughable.

then this:

I've read about Harry Styles and his inevitable winter girlfriends, and it makes sense that he must have had significant time off touring and recording and promotion, during the winter to be able to date the same girl for a few weeks at a time, every year for the past 5 - 6 years - but how does that make Larry real? If Larry was real, surely the winter months would be for Harry and Louis to spend time together, away from the prying eyes of the press?


If any Larries are reading I would lobe to hear your logic.

This time last year they called Danielle Campbell a winter girlfriend too...

http://haslarrystylinsoncomeoutyet.tumblr.com/ the delusion is strong in this one

Day 1559: Larry Stylinson has not come out yet.

WHAM! fans were a bit like this and I refused to listen to those rumours about George despite coming from reliable sources (manager of an infamous gay club). I just though he and Pepsi (or was it Shirley!) looked so good together...