Cultural Relevancy: Miley Cyrus and the Power of Super Fandom

As Run the Jewel was singing their last song at Bottlerock, people began moving. The crowd started to come alive and to shift. Miley Cyrus was performing next on the main stage.

The crowd near the stage suddenly surged inward. More and more people began to pack in tighter and tighter until I was squeezed between young millennial girls and a mixed bag of other seemingly random fan types. These rando fans definitely include this old man who doesn’t even know more than 1 Miley Cyrus song.

My favorite concert personally was G-Eazy (since I’m cool like that), but amongst literally all of the other acts including Finneas, Warren G, Guns & Roses, Young the Giant, and others, no performer commanded her audience as Miley Cyrus did.

As the concert continued it got emotional. Some girls trying to crowd in late got slapped in the face, the two girls in front of me had tears streaming down their eyes, women and even a few guys “flashed their tits” at Miley, and 3 people needed to be taken out of the crowd by their friends as the crush of the mob likely made it hard to breathe. As the music blared and hands shot up wildly into the air, the fans around me sang the lyrics to the music by heart.

Getting to the point, there’s a nuance when it comes to fandom that many people especially the older generation (which I’m a part of) don’t really get.

The fact is, fandom isn’t the same. And I would submit to you that a Miley fan is worth 10x — 100x the value of many other musical performers. I’m sure there are others with similar audiences like Billie Eilish or BTS, but the point especially from the context of building an entertainment product speaks to the following key question:

How can entertainment products turn fans into super fans? And what can we learn from Miley Cyrus as a performer about fandom?

By the way, Miley is an incredible performer…

The point I want to make though is that it’s really not her performance or her singing that makes her special.

If not her singing or her performance, what makes Miley Cyrus so important to her audience and turn them into super fans?

In a break from her singing, Miley spoke to the audience. She talked about how important it was to be a part of people’s lives. She talked about how people with Hannah Montana t-shirts must have bought those from years ago. And finally, she talked about being current.

And then it hit me. The secret to super fandom isn’t about a performance or a song, it’s about being representative of an ideal or a specific concept. Miley Cyrus represents an answer to deep emotional user needs of her audience.

The secret to super fandom, therefore, is cultural relevancy. There is a societal fabric and consciousness based on current events. For her fans, Miley Cyrus doesn’t just sing songs, she’s an icon representing deep human desires.

Miley represents girl power and being a rebel, she represents being current and fashionable, and she represents a connection to people’s youth, growth, and change.

All of these human desires are a core part of human consciousness. And while these desires may exist at a subconscious level are important and can be dramatically impactful.

In an interview with Elon Musk, he spoke about the human brain as comprised of 2 layers. The inner or limbic brain is the prime or primitive brain layer that holds a person’s base desires. It is the “monkey brain” that holds people’s impulses and oddly enough controls the more sophisticated “computer layer” to the brain which is the cortex. He describes our brains as a monkey brain with a computer attached, but the cortex tries to make the monkey brain happy.

Miley is appealing to something basic and fundamental to her audience. She represents something to the limbic brain that may not be easy to articulate but is important to her audience.

So what can entertainment products like games learn from Miley Cyrus?

Games can be thought of as the manifestation of human desires and emotions. I believe that creating super fans for your game means building a game that is culturally relevant and that represents the base desires and needs of your players. Design that into your game and you’ll have super fans just like Miley Cyrus!

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