Fanning the Flames: How Far Will Stans Go to Declare Their Love?

In the middle of a depressive episode and writer’s block, Bitch Magazine commissioned me to write a piece on stan culture for their “Legacy” issue, marking the 25th anniversary of their first publication. The last thing I wanted to do was write about my experience getting harassed by Ariana Grande and her abusively obtuse and obsessed stanbase but I knew it was a story that needed to be told.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

Ariana Grande evoked the longstanding Angry Brown Woman stereotype against me so she could absolve herself of the harm her ignorance had caused—and her stans ate it up. Her fanbase weaponized my race against me, telling me to “eat [my] dog” and calling me “Ling-Ling.” For days, Arianators spammed me across multiple internet platforms, expressing surprise that “someone even wanted to rape [my] stupid ass” and promising to “harass [me] until…[I cry for forgiveness or kill myself.]” As a visibly ethnic woman on the internet, I’m used to shouldering vitriolic replies from anonymous cowards on Twitter, but receiving hundreds of bigoted comments from people using Grande’s likeness to gleefully weaponize systemic inequality against me was horrifying.