Feature Story | Twitter
What is Stan Twitter? — how it started and how it’s going?
Aka a (un)helpful guide to Stan Twitter 101
What are the odds of you being bored to death refreshing for new postings since you’ve done scrolling through your Instagram and Facebook feeds? And then you remember Twitter, the blue birdy app you claimed was dead just because no one around you is using it (or they just didn’t tell you, oops). You hop on the app, and you happen to see “#Stream(blank)Now” or “#(blank)IsOutNOW” on the trending tab. Intrigued, you click to view, and now you find yourself doubting your English proficiency as you fail to comprehend most tweets. You feel like entering an alternate universe or being misplaced in a different dimension where you understand almost nothing. Well, congratulations! You just discovered this other side of Twitter called “Stan Twitter”.
What is Stan Twitter?
Questions may be piling up on your mind right now. What exactly is Stan Twitter? What does “stan” even mean? Well, the word “stan” comes from Eminem’s eponymous song where he rapped about an obsessed fan who killed his pregnant girlfriend and later himself just because he didn’t receive answers for his letters two decades ago (guess it’s a win for the fan after all). “Stan” is also referred to as a portmanteau of “stalker” or “super” and “fan”. Though the word may sound super pervy now that you know the origin of it, “stan” has evolved from the connotation of a creeper and now simply stands for “fan” or idolizing. It can be used as a noun or a verb; so yes, you can go with “I stan Taylor Swift” or “I’m a Taylor Swift stan”, as both work the same way.
Now that we’ve got the definition clear, it’s not so hard to guess the meaning of “Stan Twitter” as it means a section or a community of Twitter that is comprised of cult-like-fandoms that worship popular artists or artist groups where they constantly tweet about their favourite idols, celebrities, music, movies, TV shows, and other popular culture.
TL;DR: Stan Twitter is a group of restless fanboys and fangirls on Twitter.
Why does Stan Twitter exist?
The history of Stan Twitter dates back to the 2010s. It goes beyond that, thanks to One Direction and K-pop. Stan Twitter was truly born when Directioners (the fandom name of One Direction) came together on Twitter, utilizing the platform to stay updated with the boys’ activities and schedule (even directly interacting with them!), as well as expressing their adoration for them collectively. After the shift of the band’s career, K-pop fans all around the world came in and filled that void of Stan Twitter (don’t get me wrong, Directioners are still going strong in the community to date). Of course, it doesn’t just stop with One Direction and K-pop. Every active fandom of any other celebrities like Little Mix and Shawn Mendes is naturally part of Stan Twitter; it’s just that K-pop Stan Twitter is the predominant population, especially when there’s BTS (the biggest boy group in the world) with their inarguably huge ARMY fanbase.
Stan Twitter is not the only special one here with a designated name. Before Stan Twitter, there were Film Twitter, Books Twitter, Games Twitter, Gay Twitter and even Weird Twitter. And then there’s Local Twitter, the regular Twitter for locals. If the other Twitter communities are the deluxe versions or bizarre flavours on a McDonald’s menu, then Local Twitter is your basic McChicken (for Malaysians) or BigMac (for the USA) that ordinary mainstream people would go for. Local Twitter revolves around life in your hometown and essential personal topics like relationships, pets, the country, etc. People on Local Twitter could be tweeting about something as “basic” as receiving flowers from their boyfriend and racks up hundreds or not thousands of retweets and likes. To make it easy, Local Twitter is just Facebook from the olden days but was transferred to Twitter instead. While it’s great to stay alert with what is happening around us in real life, the catch is fans don’t care about these kinds of stuff, at least not as much as how are their favourite idols doing. The difference in content preferences is what spark the birth of Stan Twitter, as fans tend to curate their Twitter timeline with the content they want to see by being on Stan Twitter.
A 4-year-old Stan Twitter user, Ami, said, “(Local Twitter) has more political issues, more real-life issues that I don’t really enjoy getting to know about”.
Additionally, the feeling or spirit of community is also one of the main reasons fans turn to Stan Twitter and continue to flourish this particular online organization. There is only so much you can share in common with your best friends and soulmate — it is human instinct to yearn for a sense of belonging and resonance from the same “breed”.
“The people around me do not have the same interests as me — I like K-pop, but most of them don’t really like it…So that’s why I decided to create a stan account,” Ami added.
Ann who recently joined Stan Twitter just a few months ago, said, “…seeing everybody getting excited about the same thing makes me feel like you’re not alone and there are people who like the same thing as you…I like how we’re able to bond as fans all across the world…”
She added, “(Stan Twitter) is a place where you can fangirl and scream about the groups that you like and people there won’t really judge you for it, because we all like the same thing.”
Stan Twitter seems to be speaking hieroglyphs…
Another thing that sets Stan Twitter apart from other Twitter communities is the distinct way how things work within the community. For starters, the online organization seems to have developed its own language system which they call “Stan Twitter lingo”. Some common Stan Twitter vocabulary: “irl” (acronym for “in real life”; in reference to a user’s social acquaintances or friends in real life), “oomf” (acronym for “one of my followers”), and “wbk” (acronym for “we been knew”. It’s grammatically wrong but Stan Twitter says we ain’t here to write TOEIC papers. Excessive usage of all caps and keyboard smash (e.g: SKJSDFJLKSDF) can be found in almost every single tweet on Stan Twitter as a way to convey laughter, bafflement, speechlessness, and other indescribable emotions. Heck, even emojis work differently on Stan Twitter, as some of them could have totally opposite meanings outside of the community. Stan Twitter is THAT expressive that they take emojis to a whole new level by making various combinations.
“…we just use (Stan Twitter lingo) in Stan Twitter, so basically outside of (Stan Twitter), we don’t really use it (in other occasions) because they (those that are not on Stan Twitter) would not understand,” said Ami.
Free education from Stan Twitter
Stan Twitter tends to be way ahead of its time when it comes to being educated and staying “woke” (gosh do people even use that anymore). Stan Twitter always highlights important social issues in the world by creating threads and attaching links to spread useful information. The best example would be the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in July, where multiple Carrd links (Carrd is a platform for building simple and fully responsive one-page sites) — comprising of detailed and extensive information like fundraisers, petitions, educational knowledge as a quick gateway regarding the movement — were widely shared on Stan Twitter and even reached outside of Stan Twitter. Stan Twitter showed their support with their wide-spreading power and even managed to demobilize the USA police departments by spamming their fancams (videos focusing on specific band members and celebrities which originated from K-pop stan culture).
Lately, Stan Twitter is encouraging the usage of trigger warnings or content warnings, tone indicators, and pronouns. Every day you will stumble across tweets explaining and stressing the importance of these concepts: trigger warnings or content warnings should be added in tweets with potentially sensitive content like eating disorders so that the people who muted these content could avoid a panic attack, traumatizing flashback, regression, or dissociation; tone indicators (e.g: “/j” = joking, “/g” = genuine) are there at the end of each tweet to assist people especially the neurodivergent individuals to better understand the context; including your pronouns in your introduction shows that you’re an ally for the transgender individuals as they help to reduce harassment against these people. However, all of these need to be written in a certain format in order for them to actually work; usage guides are often included in these educating tweets. It’s fascinating to see how Stan Twitter contributes to these major cultural developments since these concepts are rarely enforced or known on other social media platforms.
“I never used trigger warning signs in any of my tweets or any social media posts that might have been sensitive to people before. But after joining I do it now,” said an anonymous interviewee under the alias Nat.
Ami was also thankful for the enlightenment from Stan Twitter. “I actually learnt more (on Stan Twitter) than Local Twitter…we actually learn a lot from other people because (on) Stan Twitter, it doesn’t mean that we only follow Malaysians, it can be from other countries as well right. So from there, I start to learn”.
Stan Twitter isn’t all sunshine and unicorns
As wonderful as it may seem to be on Stan Twitter, this collective online community has its ugly side as well. Stan Twitter is infamous for being extremely toxic: petty fanwars, calling out, exposed threads, cancel culture, doxxing; and the list goes on.
Ann shared her take on Stan Twitter’s toxicity. “Everybody is just trying to be a social justice warrior, trying to show that they’re being very ‘woke’…everybody’s just jumping on each other very quickly”.
People tend to take advantage of the anonymity and forgetful nature of Stan Twitter. They go around policing and condemning those that they deem wrong under the disguise of “educating” — when in fact, sometimes it’s merely a mindless tweet from a mid-teen out of impulse. They even go so far as to doxxing (digging up personal information and exposing them under the sun). Ironically, they would often do all these off-limits shenanigans while cowardly hiding behind profile pictures of celebrities.
Nat also talked about the doxxing culture within Stan Twitter, “It’s one thing educating someone, but it’s another thing to just go and, you know, destroy their entire lives, find out their address and it gets very toxic like that”.
“Because of that one tweet and because of cancel culture, people start sending them death threats, and people have actually deactivated their account,” Ann added.
Stan Twitter is supposed to be a safe place where fans seek comfort, yet it could often become a nerve-wracking nightmare that takes a toll on one’s mental health (or even personal safety). Everyone is always welcomed on Stan Twitter with open arms and sweet support until you get on the opposing side (be it rightfully insensitive or pathetically stupid), then all hell breaks loose (yikes). Stan Twitter (or just the Internet in general) is definitely not a playground where you can fool around without thinking straight. Ultimately, one should always know how to protect themselves by safeguarding their personal information, or else you could easily end up becoming Stan Twitter’s next helpless prey.
