Old Man Rambling
Yanno, I kinda miss the days of Tumblr where you kids were identifying as inanimate objects. There were kids IDing as kiwis and biscuits. Biscuitkin, kiwikin, shit like that. It kept this place relatively quiet because, well. Inanimate objects don't make much noise. And it was amusing as shit because there was always a teeny tiny part of y'all who knew it was all goddamn bullshit, but you never let the razzing force your masks off. You wanted attention and ya got it. You still kept to yourselves, even though you were thoroughly obsessed with your otherkinship.
But now. Holy Hell.
The current "kids'" personal lives are so hollow and so horrible that they've resorted to policing the lives of people they don't even personally know (celebrities, particularly young Hollywood). The identification is so strong that what they love so obsessively* couldn't possibly be anything else but what and how the heavily biased observer wants to see them as.
It is for that reason why I do sympathize with Ortega, if only a little (she did choose this life, her parents could've stopped it at any time knowing how strange celebrityhood has changed throughout our decades alive). Social media is evil. We did not have this when I was young, when the young Winona Ryder who is being splashed all over my fyp was posing for those photos, we only got to see them on paper, in magazines, bro. We didn't have all of this creepy connectivity where there was a very good chance that a celebrity would see our comments. It just was not like that at all.
So I get it, I get that it's changed and it can be really hard just to be a regular person because everyone has a goddamn video camera in the palm of their hands with videos ready to go online within seconds. It's shitty, and probably one of the things that's killing pro paparazzi (though in some cases it's made them worse); anyone and everyone can get a scoop now.
And if that's the case, why are kids behaving like paparazzi, knowing what the paparazzi did to Princess Diana (and Britney, offering up those umbrella photos out of their context of her situation that hardly anyone really knew about). The Chappell Roan concert footage is the best current example of that (I've removed the one part that I briefly posted as promised), and I've seen the biggest Wenclair accounts pass that shit around here like it's normal to invade a girl's private moments. And in some instances, using Photoshop/AI to gaslight people into believing crap that never happened. It's RPF to the worst degree, and it isn't cool.
*ETA: I started writing this last night before I passed out from the heat, but now I want to go back to the obsessive fan thing (partially bc of my recent experience here). User name redacted because I don't want to give her any more attention:
This ain't cute and not to be normalized. Had a male done this, it would've been seen as creepy.
It's this level of obsession — and the false sense of closeness that social media connectivity brings — that gives the Ortega stans a sense of entitlement over her (personal and professional) life that they do not have a right to influence.
And as someone who has studied and observed adolescent psych for decades, it amazes me to see young ♀️ adolescents behave like stalkers and get a pass for the behavior just because of their gender. Some of the most dangerous stalkers can be female, since they're not always taken as seriously as the males (male stalkers aren't always taken seriously either, so think about how much less female ones are). Jodi Arias, Victoria Rickman, Shayna Hubers, Liz Golyar, Vegas Bray...the list goes on and on.
It's obviously not a direct comparison; I'm not saying that what the kids are doing is necessarily dangerous for the object of obsession (since there is no direct relationship and physical access) or that it even has the potential to get violent (doesn't seem so), but it's not always entirely harmless.
Now, I understand that obsession is a thing with adolescents. I've seen it first hand. One of my favorite films is about the very type of 🏳️🌈 obsession that forms between two girls sometimes**, and features Kate Winslet's first screen kiss with a ♀️.
Most of us old farts grew up in an era where acting was acting: Even with the lack of connectivity, we knew Kate Winslet and Lyndskey weren't gay, but we still adored and appreciated the performances. Same goes for Hillary Swank in her Oscar winning role as 'Brandon Teena'; we knew she wasn't a 🏳️⚧️man. It was acting. More than half the cast of the original L Word was straight, and there wasn't anything close to this kind of creepy stalker crap back then.
Sadly I think that the more connectivity there is, the less real connectivity happens, and that presents obsessively attached fans with a false sense of security that would crumble if the people they worship turn out to be something contrary to the image in their minds that they've cobbled together from their celebrity's public behavior and works.
I don't think this type of delusion was present with Biscuitkin and Kiwikin. The foodkin did nothin' to anyone but exist, and food is food. The Ortega stans are fucking scary and need to cut it out. It's made fandom a scarier place for celebrities, because the Internet is forever and you're out there showing just how twisted up/potentially obsessive towards people you can be. It may not be embarrassing to you now since you have this false sense of 'community', but out there where y'all actually have to talk to real people and get on with real life crap, this type of behavior wouldn't fly. In 15 years when you're not a pimply, awkward high schooler/early college-aged person, someone might ask you how you spent your teen/high school years when a good chunk of it was scrolling through social media for pics and y/n stories about your favorite actress (and sometimes her co-stars).
