Death Threats Are Not the Norm

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | January 31, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | January 31, 2024 |

In my line of work, you quickly become familiar with which topics are likely to start trouble. There are certain people or properties that, regardless of how careful or nuanced you are in your discussion of them, will inevitably incite a tedious yet frightening backlash from their most dedicated fans. It doesn’t matter how mean you are or if you’re even truly discussing them; you know you’ll end up in the firing line and might start taking precautions. You lock your social media accounts. You double-check your passwords. You see how easily searched your personal details are on Google. You ask friends who have been doxed what to do. One of the most terrifying things one can experience on- and offline is a disheartening inevitability if you toe that line. And for what? For saying a singer is behaving badly or that a movie wasn’t very good?

I hate that there are so many examples of this phenomenon of fandoms organizing to systematically harass and abuse anyone who has been deemed an enemy to their cause. It seems as though we expect this crap to happen now. If a fandom gets big enough, stories of doxing, stalking, and threats suddenly become commonplace. There are certain celebrities who we collectively agree to just not discuss in any vaguely negative way online because to do so is tantamount to an invitation for this toxicity. I could name too many examples of this happening to me, both personally and professionally, whether it was with accused abusers, notorious bullies, or just perfectly normal people with good reputations who inexplicably attract total madness through their work.

There’s often no rhyme or reason as to why certain celebrities attract this level of devotion. The issue is more with the concept of fame and how it has become commodified by corporate interests and a never-ending race to the top of the profit pile. Having people love your music or books or films is exciting, offering a communal space for discussions and enthusiasm that can foster creativity. That’s why we make art, to bring it to the world and hope it inspires someone to continue the journey. It doesn’t take much to poison this earnest plight, with or without the involvement of label executives, studio producers, or underpaid publicists just trying to do their jobs.

We’ve long had examples of obsessive fandoms and the oft-dangerous lengths they’ve gone to for their beloveds, from Lisztomania to Beatles fans to essentially all major sporting events. The stereotype is of overhyped teenage girls pushing the trend but it transcends age, gender, race, and social standing. Football hooligans trash stadiums and threaten referees. Ghostbusters fans fuel an entire online hate movement. Royalists wish death upon infants or claim they’re part of a trafficking ring. Each fandom abuse cycle or conspiracy shares DNA with its neighbour, regardless of genre or focus. The intentions are ultimately the same: to define yourself so wholly by this product or person that any slight against it becomes a personal attack you must fight against. You can never show weakness, never let doubt seep in, and never question why your idol’s cruelty or abuses should be treated differently from the perceived failings of your enemies.

Corporate powers, of course, love this. You sell more tickets, more merchandise, when you attach your property’s grosses to its fandom’s wellbeing. It’s how we end up with insulting #girlboss ads for superhero movies or record companies quietly (or not) encouraging listeners to commit streaming fraud. Plenty of talentless losers with bad politics and a startling lack of curiosity have been all too happy to hijack fandom spaces to pander to loudmouth bigots and claim that their bullsh*t about Black Jedi or female Ghostbusters is valid. Often, the consent or understanding of the actual subject is inconsequential and soon it’s too late to ask fans to back down. I’m not sure many of them would if, say, Harry Styles or Benedict Cumberbatch asked them to. By the time you’re committed to doxing and tinhats, you’ve long abandoned caring about the real person and are more enamoured with the delusion.

There are, of course, those celebrities who fuel the fires and encourage their fans’ most hurtful tendencies. You all know the ones I’m talking about. These keyboard warriors are proudly doing the dirty work of the millionaires who apparently have nothing more dignified to do with their lives. Falling into the deep end as a celebrity is certainly ill-advised, to say the least. There’s no way to emerge unstained from a firestorm where you like all the tweets calling your latest enemy a whore or claiming they lied about being attacked.

I have to wonder what kind of satisfaction these so-called fans get from doxing, threatening, and stalking total strangers. Do they see it as necessary vigilantism for a very rich person surrounded by security and yes men? Is it just intrinsically thrilling to leave someone terrified to leave their house? Is this something they brag about to their friends offline, sipping their coffee and laughing about how they repeatedly sent violent messages to someone who had a dissenting opinion about the singer they love? I imagine them finally getting to meet that musician or actor or director and telling them everything they did ‘for them.’ Do they imagine? What response do they hope to get? Do they seriously believe that Prince Harry or the Supernatural guys or Timothee Chalamet will congratulate them? Neither option is especially comforting.

Being a fan can be a thrilling experience. Through online fandoms for various things, I made some of my best friends and found the drive to start writing. Fandoms often come together to oppose hatred, such as the many strains of Harry Potter fandom who raised money for queen and trans causes in the wake of J.K. Rowling’s descent into violent bigotry towards LGBTQ+ people. Game of Thrones fans channelled their distaste for the final season into a fundraising effort for brain injury charities following Emilia Clarke’s candour about her own recovery from aneurysms. There’s the Games Done Quick initiative the Romancing the Runoff auctions. There’s the BTS Army raising $1 million for Black Lives Matter. But not every fandom needs to be like this. It’s cool to just be a chill space to celebrate, critique, and build upon the things you love. Why is that not enough for so many?

There is not a single person on the planet, famous or otherwise, who you have to commit online crimes to protect or impress. No millionaire is worth illegality for, no singer or actor needs their honour defended from a critic who gave their album a 6.5 or a TikToker with 200 followers wasting time on their phone. It is not your duty as a fan to do this.

Alas, I’m not sure this reasonable message will resonate for those who have found bliss in the darkest depths of the rabbit hole. Plenty of these fans seem to enjoy being online bullies, so feared that everyone else avoids them like the plague. They see no hypocrisy in lambasting the ethical failings of one celebrity while defending those of their favourite. That’s just part of the job description in this warped version of fandom. They don’t even seem to enjoy the music or books or films anymore. There’s no room for true joy in this system. How do you even combat something like this when you have certain celebrities encouraging it? I fear it’ll take something drastic for things to change, and as many past instances can attest to, often that shift is predicated on tragedy. One can only hope that they wake up from this extended stupor before doing something truly stupid. At some point, you have to hope that they realize being the baddie is no fun in real life.

Yes, this post is about who you think it’s about.