The Unfortunate Life Of Band Stalkers
Recently, I’ve been contacted by someone on Facebook, asking for this and that band’s whereabouts. The person saw one of my old blog posts about attending an impromptu performance, and thought I might know which hotel would they would be staying at this time.
I told her I was sorry, I have no idea, and I would never ever share such information anyway, even if I had it, because of privacy reasons.
This encounter made me think there must be many more people like them out there.
There are.
You don’t even have to be an expert in research, it’s enough to go through specific topics on Twitter or watch attention seeker videos of them crying about the matter on YouTube to find them.
They are the ones camping outside of hotels, tv/radio/rehearsal studios for hours, and would do anything to get a selfie with their favourites, or be the first to get offended and talk shit when said people won’t even come out to meet because it might not be safe – i.e. band being mobbed by their own fans because other “fans” have leaked confidential information about flights/hotels!
This whole thing pisses me off a lot, and is the very reason why musicians (or any famous person, really) hardly meets fans once they’ve made it. When did it become acceptable to invade privacy for a freaking selfie?! You wouldn’t be happy either if a crazy person followed you around and even straight to your own house. And why do these stalkers get praised by others to a level they are actually able to make a full-blown career out of it? It’s seriously sickening.
You can say “they choose to be a part of all this fame, they have to learn to deal with it” as many times as you want, but it’s not entirely true. Musicians do what they do because they love it and were lucky enough to be backed financially, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to invade their personal space, and treat them like objects. Just like no ever asked you to be present everywhere they go and spend all your money on travelling to possibly meet them, no one ever chose to be physically/emotionally hurt and have screaming people around everywhere, when they entered the industry. It’s overwhelming in every possible way.
Apart from daydreaming in my room all day, I’d prefer to work my ass off to get into a position where my favourites actually recognize my existence, than self-humiliatingly hunt them down to have a blurry photo as proof for the internet but no actual stories to tell about what went down. However, if I ever got to meet anyone, I would die to make a better impression than most of these people do. I’m awkward and shy as hell, but having an actual conversation with someone whose work I love is an opportunity not to be wasted. Since even most of the interviews are shallow these days, I’m sure artists would hugely appreciate to talk about the actual work they do, or other things they’re interested in.
In conclusion: Damage control shouldn’t be needed if you, the so-called fans, weren’t making damage. Think about your actions and stop creating unnecessary drama! You aren’t the only ones that like to creep on others – thanks to social media, bands do know about all the bull-shit you talk just because you’re upset with them about things they cannot control. It probably affects them worse than it does to you.
Header image by freeimageslive.co.uk – fmanto
