With social media making more and more people into celebrities, the problematics of a fan base become well-known to many. While this post primarily deals with traditional celebrity problems, the advice is more than applicable to social media stars. The way you deal with troublesome fans depends on the type of a fan they are.

Your fans can be divided to 3 groups, just like celebrities can be divided to 3 groups:

1. Abuser and an abusee (sick)
2. Devoted follower and a devotee (kinda sick)
3. Idle Gossiper (relatively harmless but troublesome at times)
4. An admirer and the admired person (healthy)

What most celebrities and influencers want is group 4. They want 1’s only if they’re sick themselves. Let’s break this down.

Abuser and Abusee

There are people who see dynamics between people as a power struggle over the right to use and abuse another person FREELY. This means, that there are people who believe that celebrity status is an automatic right to a person to abuse other people. This goes both ways, there are people who believe celebrities (or powerful white men) GET TO abuse others as their RIGHT, and there are celebrities who believe themselves to have this right. (Think Amber Turd¹.)

The logic of these people is that there are never equal people in this world, SOMEBODY has to be at the top, and that order must be established. Celebrity status, to them, is one way to ensure a top dog position. The danger thus comes from other celebrities who take interest in them. (Such as Johnny Depp –  a huge start took interest in Turd, who saw it as a threatening situation that she needed to get on top of.)

The tales about abused personal assistants come from this group of celebrities.

Fans, however

The abusee -type fans expect to function as the celeb’s drones, lying on their behalf if need be. You can count on the fact every celebrity has some. When Johnny Depp was accused of domestic violence by Turd, the abusee-type fans would loudly publically defend him, whether they TRULY believed him or not. To an abusee, it doesn’t matter whether their idol is right or wrong, it matters they’re superior and that the abusee somehow believes their loyalty and self-sacrifice to pay off one day. “See I believed you. I defended you.”

It is also a given, that any fans A.H. has left, belong to this category… But she may have lost some to Johnny by this stage. You may want a recap on what’s this is about, by my words – won’t be mincing much of my words.

The fan may also try and abuse the idol. They may demand the celebrity to prove their worth and right to be a celebrity, for instance, questioning their morality (“you wouldn’t reject me sexually, I know how many people you sleep with – am I too ugly for you?”) “you in the ivory tower know nothing about how much we struggle…”. They may also resort to blackmailing and threats and still consider themselves “a fan”. They may also pose as a fan to get closer to a celebrity – if possible.

Devotee

The devotee idea comes from the feeling that each person is DESPERATE to make real friends out of EVERYBODY. This also means celebrities. This fan type believes celebrities are “always lonely” and they seem to be offering their own love and friendship to the celebrity “to support them” as if they were some type of a charity case in desperate need for random people’s love.

Charles Manson’s crew was largely of this type. Their idea is that they need to KNOW and UNDERSTAND their idol, so they can better serve him or her. They believe friendship is about serving the ones who you love, and they also believe that if they love someone, that person will also, somewhat automatically, love them back. They show their devotion, their time spent on the idol, the fan merch they’ve bought, the years they’ve served, hoping that will be enough to make them a personal friend if the opportunity opens.

These are the people who invade celebritys’ privacy because they believe it is their DUTY as a fan to be as informed as possible about the ins and outs of the idol.

A Devotee may turn into an obsessed stalker, if they feel they’ve “done enough” to earn the idol’s love on a personal level.

Idle gossiper

Gossipers use celebrities as social discussion material. They have a superficial interest in what the person does, as long as they provide good gossip, or good gossip is written about them. They honestly do not mean anything bad by their gossiping, it’s just that the reason why they spread rubbish is different to Devotee’s reasons for reading it. The Idle Gossiper will invent stories in order to protect the idol’s privacy (we wouldn’t want to talk about your ACTUAL LIFE, after all, that would be rude) and they truly believe NOBODY believes gossip. To them, gossip only means “we are truly fascinated by this person, they are interesting, we want to use his or her name in a sentence, so we simply make up a sentence to go with the name.

The idle gossippers also like to know the truth, but they seem to feel that they’re in the inner circle, and only the inner circle gets to know the truth from the lie. “Real fans” would know what the actual story is, and they muddle the waters by spreading crazy stories that hide the real person behind a mask made of utter bs.

These people are surprisingly benevolent. The problem is just that the Devotees and Admirers have a risk of believing their stories as they really want to hear ONLY THE TRUTH about their idol and they don’t understand why anyone would say something untruthful about another person. As the gossipers come up with crazy lies, they start spreading as facts, and that can feel awkward to the idol themselves.

(Master gossipers tell lies that even the topic of these gossips would find amusing.)

Admirers

Admirers keep a step back from the idol and are rarely TOO concerned about that person’s private lives. (This may change when something like Amber Heard happens.) Their focus is on their idol’s work, their message, the official capacity they do their work in. Admirers are more interested in becoming more like the celebrity themselves (not to make friends with them but simply because their value system is matching) OR they simply want to enhance their own lives with the music, movies, or other content their idol puts out.

Admirers consider themselves somewhat equal to the idol, simply less talented or less successful, but their respect comes from UNDERSTANDING what the idol does for a living exactly. Giving it worth in their lives.

This group could provide friend and lover -material, as long as not confused with Devotees.

How to deal with each fan type as a celebrity?

Abusers

Best left ignored for as long as possible. Do not react to threats, and resolve to believe that the truth is the truth, live by the truth, die by the truth. If you don’t want to get caught doing something, don’t do it. EVER. Do not leave anything hanging over your head – if something is hanging over your head, come clean about it yourself. Your secrets are your abuser’s toolkit. Don’t have any. At least make them lie about you if they want to try something (hence Amber H. had nothing on Johnny that she could use, so she had to come up with a big fat lie.)

Do not try to “high horse” or “high ground” an abuser. Do not keep silence. Speak. Write blogs, take interviews, get the truth out efficiently and swiftly. If they have something on you, come clean quickly and trust that people who love the real you will also have a similar skeleton in their closet.

Don’t try to be the bigger person. The abuser counts on it. Stoop to their level quickly and efficiently. Play the media like a fiddle, call in favors, and DO NOT GET OFFENDED when people momentarily doubt you if you’ve been lied about. It’s not so much they doubt you, they doubt their own ability to read people correctly.

The more open you are about your life, and “secrets”, the less fun an Abuser can have at your expense, digging through your rubbish looking for clues for a secret. (You might occasionally send them on a wild goose chase if you’re that way inclined, but make sure they’ll be chasing for NOTHING at all. Waste their time by trashing plane tickets to innocent destinations for example. Drown them in clues that lead nowhere until they give up and find someone juicier to torment.)

Devotee

By default, I’d say don’t do the Justin Bieber: Don’t give your fans instructions on how to treat you. They will confuse it for instructions on how to get close to you. Once they’ve done those things, they assume they’ll get clearance to be in your inner circle. Also, if you’re single when you get famous, many of these people believe your celebrity is like a massive dating campaign. They will feel confused if you don’t stop being a celebrity once you marry.

However, if you do want to do Justin Bieber: Make sure your rules and instructions are REAL CLEAR and leave nothing to question. You might want to put up a web page where you give clear instructions on how to become a member of your inner circle and make sure you would actually gladly accept those people. Don’t be shy, coy, or dishonest in trying to save face. Don’t mince your words. Live by the truth, die by the truth. You don’t want to look for fake friends. You don’t want friends to whom YOU have to be fake toward in order to keep them. Remember to mention good looks if they’re important to you.

You may also consider Devotee Tiers -discussion forums and blogs can be a great way to include some fans into groups you actually trust to tell your more intimate news to, and to, for instance, keep some people around who can dispel Idle Gossiper-generated rumors you DON’T want circulating.

I do recommend the latter approach but it takes a pair of serious balls. :p You’ll put yourself out on the line like that. But if you do, make sure that whoever clears your screening, you’re DYING to meet for real.

Idle Gossipers

Join in on the fun! Start some rumors of your own, stuff you’d love to be circulating about you, but aren’t true. The kind of “well it ain’t true but I wish it was!” stuff. Ask your celebrity friends to join in and make stuff up about each other. Thus, the outsider gossipers will find it a lot harder to feel like an insider when they have no way of confirming anything that comes out – such as by the original publisher of the piece of gossip they hear. Make it as difficult as possible for an outsider to know the truth, and always make sure your true insiders (this may include select fans from as described above under Devotee) know exactly what is the truth about whatever concerns them.

Admirers

Very little handling is needed but for these people, hearing it from the horse’s mouth is EXTREMELY important. They don’t want gossip, nor private photos someone snapped of you without you knowing. They’ll trust your word and they want to hear it FROM YOU. Therefore, keep a blog updated for these people. Keep them in the loop, and perhaps keep them in an inner circle – not the innermost circle, obviously, but keep them closest to you out of people who you don’t have a personal relationship with. These are your soldiers, albeit not as devoted ones as the Devotees – unless you TRULY need someone in your corner… like Johnny Depp did, and that’s when they’ll rise to the barricades for you.

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1. Yes, I know it’s unprofessional to name names but heck. I can’t help it. She’s the perfect example and she made herself into one by her own actions and choices, thank you, Turd. Maybe I shouldn’t call her “turd” either, but she kinda brought that onto herself, too… Plus I don’t want to make her name trend as it is. ↩

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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.

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