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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2018 12:20:41 GMT
They definitely do, we've talked particularly about the Billy Elliot fandom on here before.
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Post by sophizoey on Jun 9, 2018 12:35:28 GMT
All this kind of behaviour makes me feel pretty normal even though I'm still the 'young, twitter, stage door' kind of person. How can people think stalking of any sorts is okay, you wouldn't do it to an 'ordinary' person, why do it to a performer. They're still just ordinary people with a job. (Saying that I've been known to change direction and go the long way to wherever I'm going if it looks like I'm following a performer)
Don't even get me started on children in shows, Matilda was just in my area recently and a person I know was set on stage dooring, but I couldn't bring myself to because the kids don't need that in their life. I imagine knowing a show that reliant on children is already difficult enough, nevermind strange adults wanting your attention before or after work.
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Post by crowblack on Jun 9, 2018 12:38:30 GMT
I think it just keys into the same part of the brain that religion gets its claws into - and for millennia people have murdered people over religion. Attacking an actor for the 'heresy' of having a moustache is a less lethal but still unpleasant version of that.
I wonder if actors cover this in drama schools, dealing with fandom/Comic Con/fanfic if they enter a major 'franchise' like Marvel comics or Star Wars? It must be a huge psychological pressure, though I daresay old Hollywood was no picnic either, judging by the Kenneth Anger books.
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Post by crowblack on Jun 9, 2018 12:43:34 GMT
Then again, thinking of the friends' kids who are going into showbiz, growing up they've been obsessively into musicals, dance or whatever, watching them over and over and oh dear god not 'Annie' again so maybe for some it's a case of 'born and bred in the briar patch'?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2018 12:44:22 GMT
i have met soooooo many crazy and obsessive fans, its unreal - and they even think they are just "normal" fans - one of the girls i met years ago made holiday on a small island just about the same time her fave actor made holiday there, and it was all just lucky timing, yeah of course  ) - some "fans" followed an actor after SD-ing back home to see where he lived (he has a small son living there) and then came back and told others still waiting at SD proudly "i know where he lives" - or some weeks back one girl met her fave actor in a shopping mal where he spent some time with his husband and she had nothing better to do than watch what they eat in the restaurant and then disturb them in their free time and tell me off because i said she should have left them there time alone that they don't normally have because they work miles apart and the worst is that they think this is all normal fan behaviour and all i get is a mouth full of insults when i tried to tell them its not  Seriously, what the what??? |
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Post by kathryn on Jun 9, 2018 13:06:53 GMT
the worst is that they think this is all normal fan behaviour and all i get is a mouth full of insults when i tried to tell them its not It's actually close to, or indeed is, criminally actionable behaviour, in fact. I’ve heard of crazier fan behaviour than that - there’s a Cumberbatch fan who got a copy of his son’s birth certificate, I believe in some attempt to ‘prove’ her conspiracy theory was correct, and a bunch of connected fans who have outright libelled his wife and tried to get hold of her university records. Someone told me recently that they know someone who worked at Canterbury hospital who had to remind her staff that they should not be looking up Orlando Bloom’s medical records to satisfy their curiosity. Then there’s the behaviour which is creepy as hell but not actually technically stalking - like the people who always pop into a certain actor’s well-known local cafe when they are in town, on the off-chance he’ll drop by for coffee. I used to chat to someone on tumblr about an actor we’re both fans of. She was adamant the actor had bought a flat while he was a student at RADA. I pressed her on how she could possibly know that - it turned out someone had run across his address while he was a student there because it was listed an an ancient webpage they’d found, and sent it to her. She had then checked out the address on Zoopla’s sales history page, compared the photos of the rooms with photos that had been taken from his Facebook page and distributed on tumblr by a fan who had a FB friend request accepted by a mutual friend of his and discovered his security settings were lax - which she had saved, despite the fan bragging about them being private photos and them being subsequently removed - and cross-checked the sales dates and the photo dates with some comments he’d made in an interview about selling his flat, to conclude that it was that flat he had sold and therefore had bought while he was a student. I mean, technically nothing she did was illegal - all the information was technically publicly available, even the Facebook photos. But still, eeek! |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2018 13:21:43 GMT
Let's get straight to the point (which some of us might remember before the first post in this thread disappeared) which was whether the actor who plays Enjolras in the stage version of Les Miserables should sport a tach or not.
And whether wearing a tach would upset real fans of the show.
I am a real (not, repeat NOT obsessive) fan of the show and I still can't decide...
Here's David Burt, the original (and best) Enjolras, alongside Michael Ball and Gary Huddlestone, in a 1985 photograph from the show:
And here he is again but this time wearing a tach:
Should we take a vote on it? A Theatreboard poll perhaps...?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2018 13:48:48 GMT
Some staff were sacked or disciplined for accessing Ed Sheeran's medical records when he had his bike crash last year.
The Government Dept I work for has dealt with some high profile individuals but a lot of the data we have is in the public domain and certain sensitive data is locked down and we can check who has accessed it.
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Post by crowblack on Jun 9, 2018 13:49:58 GMT
Btw, what's with the Adam Ant hussar jacket? I've never seen the stage musical, but in the novel and every screen version I've seen he's a civilian.
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Post by indis on Jun 9, 2018 14:37:18 GMT
It's actually close to, or indeed is, criminally actionable behaviour, in fact. I’ve heard of crazier fan behaviour than that - there’s a Cumberbatch fan who got a copy of his son’s birth certificate, I believe in some attempt to ‘prove’ her conspiracy theory was correct, and a bunch of connected fans who have outright libelled his wife and tried to get hold of her university records. Someone told me recently that they know someone who worked at Canterbury hospital who had to remind her staff that they should not be looking up Orlando Bloom’s medical records to satisfy their curiosity. Then there’s the behaviour which is creepy as hell but not actually technically stalking - like the people who always pop into a certain actor’s well-known local cafe when they are in town, on the off-chance he’ll drop by for coffee. I used to chat to someone on tumblr about an actor we’re both fans of. She was adamant the actor had bought a flat while he was a student at RADA. I pressed her on how she could possibly know that - it turned out someone had run across his address while he was a student there because it was listed an an ancient webpage they’d found, and sent it to her. She had then checked out the address on Zoopla’s sales history page, compared the photos of the rooms with photos that had been taken from his Facebook page and distributed on tumblr by a fan who had a FB friend request accepted by a mutual friend of his and discovered his security settings were lax - which she had saved, despite the fan bragging about them being private photos and them being subsequently removed - and cross-checked the sales dates and the photo dates with some comments he’d made in an interview about selling his flat, to conclude that it was that flat he had sold and therefore had bought while he was a student. I mean, technically nothing she did was illegal - all the information was technically publicly available, even the Facebook photos. But still, eeek! good lord 😱🙈 |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2018 14:59:24 GMT
Btw, what's with the Adam Ant hussar jacket? I've never seen the stage musical, but in the novel and every screen version I've seen he's a civilian. Interesting question... I've always assumed he's meant to look rather dashing, different and charismatic. I don't think it was in the original costume design, which I have as one of four limited edition prints.
Here is Andreane Neofitou's original design (complete with misspelt instructions!)
I think some costumes were changed once they were tried on stage, to make them stand out more.
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Post by crowblack on Jun 9, 2018 17:19:39 GMT
Yeah, interesting that he looks civilian there. Adam Ant's costume was a mix of 1790s revolutionary convention member, Howard Pyle pirate and (pop legend has it ) David Hemmings' hussar jacket from the Charge of the Light Brigade. It seems to have crept into the musical somewhere along the way. Well, it was the 80s... |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2018 17:34:34 GMT
Yeah, interesting that he looks civilian there. Adam Ant's costume was a mix of 1790s revolutionary convention member, Howard Pyle pirate and (pop legend has it ) David Hemmings' hussar jacket from the Charge of the Light Brigade. It seems to have crept into the musical somewhere along the way. Well, it was the 80s... I find it fascinating the way things creep in, as you say... Here’s the original design for the whores’ costumes:  In the original production, this is what they (and the scene) looked like:  And this is where we are now:  Anyway, back to obsessive fans...!  |
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Post by 49thand8th on Jun 9, 2018 18:54:00 GMT
Btw, what's with the Adam Ant hussar jacket? I've never seen the stage musical, but in the novel and every screen version I've seen he's a civilian. I think that was the Barbican costume. It never really happened again and now looks more like a red xylophone. |
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Post by basi1faw1ty on Jun 10, 2018 18:49:01 GMT
It's actually close to, or indeed is, criminally actionable behaviour, in fact. I’ve heard of crazier fan behaviour than that - there’s a Cumberbatch fan who got a copy of his son’s birth certificate, I believe in some attempt to ‘prove’ her conspiracy theory was correct, and a bunch of connected fans who have outright libelled his wife and tried to get hold of her university records.  Cumberbitches are among the very very very worst people on this planet. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2018 19:11:42 GMT
Someone I know goes to as many performances of whatever touring musical she's into at the moment as she can, and stage doors every time, getting a photo of her with whatever actor it is she's into. She posts on instagram with repeated almost identical photos of herself with the poor bloke, tagging him in every time. Recently she's been following a touring musical and has seen it say 4 times a week almost every week, and has posted at least 20 photos of her with the same poor bloke on at least 20 separate occasions. The other day she posted about taking him presents. The bloke is looking more and more desperate in every progressing photo, smiling in a *please rescue me now* kind of plea. I imagine that this is nothing on the scale of some of the obsessions mentioned in this thread, but I still find it utterly mind boggling.
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Post by profquatermass on Jun 10, 2018 19:17:22 GMT
I think it wins over the obsessive trolls. She's spending money and presumably taking time off work rather than just trolling on Twitter
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Post by No. on Jun 10, 2018 20:49:57 GMT
Someone I know goes to as many performances of whatever touring musical she's into at the moment as she can, and stage doors every time, getting a photo of her with whatever actor it is she's into. She posts on instagram with repeated almost identical photos of herself with the poor bloke, tagging him in every time. Recently she's been following a touring musical and has seen it say 4 times a week almost every week, and has posted at least 20 photos of her with the same poor bloke on at least 20 separate occasions. The other day she posted about taking him presents. The bloke is looking more and more desperate in every progressing photo, smiling in a *please rescue me now* kind of plea. I imagine that this is nothing on the scale of some of the obsessions mentioned in this thread, but I still find it utterly mind boggling. I feel that I may know who this is, I won’t say her name just to be safe but did she happen to make accounts for multiple Wicked tour cast members? |
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Post by duncan on Jun 10, 2018 20:55:06 GMT
I’ve heard of crazier fan behaviour than that - there’s a Cumberbatch fan who got a copy of his son’s birth certificate, I believe in some attempt to ‘prove’ her conspiracy theory was correct, and a bunch of connected fans who have outright libelled his wife and tried to get hold of her university records. Cumberbitches are among the very very very worst people on this planet. Popbitch ran a story a couple of years back about the Cumberbitches and their attempts to prove Mrs C was cheating on him - the problem being that they were following round a totally different woman. Someone who just happens to be the spit of Mrs C but who has no link at all to either of them - and somewhere the Bitches were noting all of this. For example - Wednesday, dinner and snogging in restaurant. Friday, spent the night at Mr X house. Utter madness. |
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Post by david on Jun 10, 2018 20:58:56 GMT
Cumberbitches are among the very very very worst people on this planet. Popbitch ran a story a couple of years back about the Cumberbitches and their attempts to prove Mrs C was cheating on him - the problem being that they were following round a totally different woman. Someone who just happens to be the spit of Mrs C but who has no link at all to either of them - and somewhere the Bitches were noting all of this. For example - Wednesday, dinner and snogging in restaurant. Friday, spent the night at Mr X house. Utter madness. It’s these sorts of people who need to be rounded up, put in straight jackets and carted off to the local asylum never to be released. They are a danger to themelves as well as normal society. |
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Post by kathryn on Jun 10, 2018 21:11:04 GMT
I’ve heard of crazier fan behaviour than that - there’s a Cumberbatch fan who got a copy of his son’s birth certificate, I believe in some attempt to ‘prove’ her conspiracy theory was correct, and a bunch of connected fans who have outright libelled his wife and tried to get hold of her university records. Cumberbitches are among the very very very worst people on this planet. Yes, and then again, no. At least with this kind of stuff it’s easy enough for most people to spot the crazy and disregard anything from that source. It has a potentially bigger impact on the target when it seems less extreme because it gets picked up and legitimised by the mainstream media, not to mention how easy obsessive fan tracking and reporting of their movements makes the jobs of paparazzi and gossip columnists. It’s easy to laugh at the case of mistaken identity above, but if she had actually been having an affair a tabloid would have very happily run that story and no-one here would have given 2 seconds thought about how it was sourced. |
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Post by jadnoop on Jun 10, 2018 21:46:53 GMT
Reading about some of this stuff is just so creepy. And it makes you a little sad about the mental welfare of some of these 'fans' that they can't see what they're doing.
However, in my opinion part of the problem is that celebrity culture as a whole is actively shifting towards breaking down the barriers between stars and their fans. This isn't necessarily the case for many of the people being discussed here of course. However, when you have tv shows where stars show the audience their homes & belongings, where magazines cover weddings & births, and tweets are fired off about every aspect of their lives, it shifts away from the idea that these people have private lives distinct from their public personas (or indeed the craft that they became famous for in the first place).
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that they are at fault. Just that modern 'celeb' culture, combined with the increasing ease with which information can be discovered and shared online, it strikes me as sort of inevitable that the extreme ends of fan culture will take things way too far.
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Post by kathryn on Jun 10, 2018 22:32:48 GMT
Do you know what gossip blogs call it when a celeb has pap pics taken of them? A ‘pap walk’ - regardless of who it is or what they were doing, if they’re out in public it was ‘a pap walk’ - the implication being that they must have set it up deliberately.
They literally train their audience to believe that *all* celebs are complicit - which of course means that their readers don’t have to feel guilty about infringing on their privacy and also flatters their egos. Because of course their interest is so important to these incredibly rich, talented and famous people that they have deliberately sought your attention by setting up these pictures of them getting coffee. They’re so concerned what you think of them that they want you to know about their morning coffee/ their trip to the gym, etc.
When pictures of Tom Hiddleston with his new puppy were first published the headlines said things like, ‘As Taylor Swift release her new album, Tom Hiddleston wants you to know that he’s doing just fine’, ‘Tom Hiddleston spotted with a gorgeous brunette in his arms as Taylor Swift releases new album’, and the people commenting on them really were convinced that he had timed the outing and set up the pictures deliberately to coincide with her album release date. He was taking the puppy to the vet! The likelihood is that the photographers were on the lookout for him because they knew the gossip blogs would be love to write a story about him that they could link to the release date of his ex’s album.
The Kardashians have built an empire out of ‘reality’ TV which is actually scripted to within an inch of its life. There’s nothing real about it and we all know it. That doesn’t mean that every celeb is staging their life for the cameras, but some people seem convinced that it is the case.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2018 8:32:41 GMT
Re: Kardashians as well, there was a fascinating article (I'll edit to link if I can find it I can't right now) about how they DO have the Paparazzi essentially 'trained' and only those under 'contract' essentially get their 'pap shots' (a lot of this has to do with American laws etc) and so when the one was pregnant they decided to keep secret (cough cough for ratings) they were able to 'avoid' being 'papped' because they never are truly 'papped' anyway. They are obviously a whole fascinating world unto themselves of course.
I used to be very into Sherlock, and by default came across a number of the more 'special' Cucumberpatch fans. The whole 'fake baby fake wife' debacle was a very special cherry on top of an already weird cake.
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Post by kathryn on Jun 11, 2018 9:17:42 GMT
The whole ecosystem is fascinating, especially if you have any interest in journalism/press regulation and the magazine industry - which has been practically *eaten* by the reality-gossip industry, because they became reliant on the celeb-interview cover lead in the '90s instead of selling their own distinct brand of writing, and now simply can't compete with all the "free" online sources of it. Magazines are closing or going online-only all over the place as they simply can't sustain the readership.
I'm so glad I decided to go into academic publishing instead of the seemingly more exciting and glamorous world of magazine publishing. My work is not exciting but I can be pretty sure my job will still exist in 5 years' time.
Almost certainly the reason why the Kardashians are able to have their 'trained' paparazzi is that there's no independent media left who can out-bid them for the photos - what the paps do is entirely driven by who is going to pay them. That's why being interesting to the tabloids will suddenly get you harassed by hoards of photographers when you can normally carry on entirely normally - the tabloids are the ones with the deep pockets to pay for picture because they are propped up by their parent corporations.
I'd say we're getting off the topic of obsessive fans here - except I know full well that this stuff is interlinked. Obsessive fans feed off what is written about the thing/person they are 'fans' of. Many of the angry Star Wars fans whose harassment inspired this thread are angry because of the way the films themselves are contradicting the ancillary Star Wars writing and media - the Star Wars 'Extended Universe' - that Disney swept aside when it decided to create more films. Many of the Cumberbatch fans who have lost their mind over his marriage seem to have reacted to a bunch of articles on the theme of 'Reasons why Sophie Hunter is better/more accomplished than you' when the engagement was first announced - that's why they are obsessed with proving that she's not.
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