what the fandom?

Being a fan of celebrities these days is easy as. Because of social networks like twitter and tumblr, news, pictures, videos (and rumours) are shared and spread instantaneously, making it easy to follow the doings and happenings of your favourite stars. These platforms also make way for communication between fans of particular people, which leads to the creation of a fandom: a community of people who are all involved in appreciating and loving their actor, musician, tv show, book or movie of choice. Now, I’m not going to talk about the depths of fandoms today, it’s a bit heavy, but I am going to talk about the names these fandoms make for themselves.

I am not sure why anyone thought it necessary to name a fanbase, but it seems to have started with Lady Gaga and her Little Monsters. Soon enough, there were Beliebers cropping up left right and centre, and Directioners running rampant all over the internet. Some names are fairly okay, while others are really, really not.

But why do we have be called something? I identify myself as a One Direction fan. I don’t want to be called a Directioner. One, because the name is pretty dumb and two, because most people who call themselves “directioners” are pretty crazy, awful people who either believe that they will end up married to Harry Styles and send death threats to everybody even remotely linked to him, or who force their belief that Louis and Harry are secretly gay onto them and the people associated with them, and that’s a pretty shit thing to do. We’ve already had an outburst from Louis himself about it; why would you want your idols to think you’re awful people? Sending hate is NOT okay.

The media lump all of us together, and public perception of fans is pretty negative. If you’re a 1D fan, you must be crazy, if you’re a JB fan, you must be 14 years old. I like both, and I am neither. There’s no escaping outside perspectives of fandom stereotypes, and it sucks. Can’t I just like One Direction in peace?

I got a bit off topic there. But I’ve made a list of what I think are the best, most creative and nicest-sounding fandom names, and the worst ones as well. These definitely aren’t all of them, they’re just standouts in each category.

the good                                                                          the bad

Justin Bieber’s Beliebers                              Cher Lloyd's Brats
Conor Maynard's Mayniacs                        Rita Ora's Ritabots

Little Mix's Mixers                                  Taylor Swift's Swifties

Demi Lovato's Lovatics             One Direction's Directioners

the ugly

The Janoskians' Janoskianators (i think any that end in –ator are just bad)
Justice Crew's Jceazers (what the fuck)
Beyoncé's Beyhive (she’s too good for a fandom name, come on)
The Wanted's The Wanted Fanmily (did you even try at all)