When Kim Niehaus first became a Taylor Swift fan in school, classmates made fun of her.<\/p>\n
“If you showed up in a Taylor Swift T-shirt, it was ultra embarrassing,” she recalls. Still, she remained loyal \u2013 even once skipping two hours of class to catch a concert.<\/p>\n
Years later, Niehaus is an influencer who talks about how fan culture can create a powerful sense of belonging.<\/p>\n
From Swift to K-pop idols to local bands in different countries, super-fans are increasingly visible and prompting a rethink of what it means to be a fan today.<\/p>\n
Where the word <\/strong>“Stan”<\/strong> comes from<\/strong><\/p>\n Extreme dedication in fan culture is often described with the term “Stan.”<\/p>\n The word is said to originate from US rapper Eminem’s 2000 song of the same name about an obsessive fan whose devotion ends tragically.<\/p>\n Eminem later said the story was inspired by real experiences. Today, Stan (plural: Stans) has entered everyday pop-culture language and can describe both unhealthy obsession and harmless enthusiasm.<\/p>\n Psychologists call these one-way bonds “parasocial relationships,” which are emotional connections a fan feels toward a public figure who does not know them personally.<\/p>\n Parasocial was even recently named Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year.<\/p>\n “Fan culture is parasociality,” social psychologist Johanna Degen tells dpa.<\/p>\n As in other areas of life, these relationships can vary in intensity and emotional tone. Media scientist Holger Schramm says there are friendly or romantic relationships, but can also be hostile.<\/p>\n Being a fan is more than liking music<\/strong><\/p>\n Swiftie Kim Niehaus wants to challenge the stigma around being a fan \u2013 partly because the experience has shaped her in positive ways.<\/p>\n She remembers seeing Taylor Swift live as a teenager: “I was 16 or 17, young and really insecure.” During the show, Swift told fans to be themselves and not let strangers’ opinions define them. “That really touched me,” Niehaus recalls.<\/p>\n From that moment, fandom became more than just music. She saw other fans enjoying themselves openly, without judgement, and realized she had found a place where she belonged.<\/p>\n Online and offline, she now experiences fan culture as a powerful source of connection and community. Wanting to find others who shared her enthusiasm, she started fan accounts on social media.<\/p>\n Today she reaches more than 30,000 followers on Instagram and 16,000 on TikTok. “I never expected that,” she says. “I just wanted to meet people who liked what I liked, because I didn\u2019t have that in my everyday life.”<\/p>\n What draws fans to stars<\/strong><\/p>\n Why people develop deep admiration for celebrities varies widely. “Some fans try to compensate for insecurities or areas where they feel lacking,\u201d says media researcher Schramm.<\/p>\n Others see stars as role models who inspire them, or as figures who provide guidance during uncertain stages of life. For some, the emotional investment is deep; for others, it remains admiration from afar.<\/p>\n However, Schramm notes that most fans are not seeking to fill a personal gap. Instead, they are drawn to the powerful feeling of emotional closeness that develops around someone who has achieved “star” status.<\/p>\n That sense of intimacy between fans and public figures is not new.<\/p>\n For decades, teen magazines have created an illusion of personal access through posters, interviews and special features.<\/p>\n Today, however, digital platforms have dramatically expanded those possibilities. “Social media multiplies these effects and gives users an even stronger impression of direct contact with celebrities,” says Schramm.<\/p>\n When <\/strong>fandom<\/strong> goes too far<\/strong><\/p>\n But this digital closeness has a darker side too. Social psychologist Johanna Degen explains that online interactions blend emotional needs with commercial interests.<\/p>\n “The design of these platforms is meant to create familiarity and exclusivity,” she says. “This leads to attachment, loyalty and a sense of obligation, which can then be translated into clicks, engagement and purchases.”<\/p>\n Influencer Marie Joan recently highlighted how this can spill over into real life. In a YouTube video, she described strangers kissing her in the street because they felt connected to her from online interactions.<\/p>\n “But I don’t know you – please don’t just kiss me,” she told viewers.<\/p>\n Intense fan devotion can carry risks – both for the stars and the people who admire them. “It can become uncomfortable for influencers when followers blur boundaries,” says social psychologist Johanna Degen.<\/p>\n “For the fans, however, the closeness feels completely natural, because they spend so much time consuming the influencer’s content that they feel they truly know them.”<\/p>\n In extreme cases, that emotional investment can escalate. German journalist Jens Balzer recently reported that several writers who offered negative reviews of Taylor Swift’s new album were flooded with online threats.<\/p>\n The episode illustrates how, for some fans, loyalty becomes less about the music and more about identity. “When your idol is attacked, it can feel like a personal attack,” says media researcher Holger Schramm.<\/p>\n Kim Niehaus has witnessed these dynamics first hand. “In every fan community, there are people who go too far – who believe they have personal relationships with artists, or take on debt to buy merchandise,” she says.<\/p>\n She also sees a double standard in how society views obsessive fandom.<\/p>\n “A football supporter who travels to every match is seen as loyal and passionate,” she notes. “But a woman who goes to multiple concerts for her favourite female artist is often judged as excessive, emotional or irresponsible.”<\/p>\n Spectators film with their smartphones during singer Taylor Swift’s concert in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Marius Becker\/dpa<\/p>\n A woman poses in front of a van with a tour poster for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour outside the National Stadium in Poland. Volha Shukaila\/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire\/dpa<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Kim Niehaus first became a Taylor Swift fan in school, classmates made fun of her. “If you showed up in a Taylor Swift T-shirt, it was ultra embarrassing,” she recalls. Still, she remained loyal \u2013 even once skipping two hours of class to catch a concert. Years later, Niehaus is an influencer who talks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2168212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[352327,416392,416393,416391,352325,23084],"class_list":["post-2168211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-fan-culture","tag-holger-schramm","tag-johanna-degen","tag-kim-niehaus","tag-parasocial-relationships","tag-taylor-swift"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Why-fans-form-deep-emotional-attachments-to-stars.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2168211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2168213,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168211\/revisions\/2168213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2168212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2168211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2168211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2168211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n
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