The word stan derives from the song by Eminem, “Stan,” which tells the story of an obsessive fan named Stan who murders his pregnant girlfriend and himself after Eminem refuses to respond to his letters. This name has turned into a name about fans who go above-average loyalty.

These fans are typically fans who also refuse to acknowledge the artists’ flaws and defend the artist when they face any type of negativity. The people who stan artists can go to a level of evasion of privacy.

There is a line between a casual fan and a fan who claims to stan the particular celebrity, a line that has become more noticeable every month with different people getting ‘canceled’ — when someone does something to offend or oppose the ideas of the person they stan.

This culture can typically be pinned to certain types of fans. The beauty community and the music community are the biggest groups.

Within the beauty community, it isn’t other people outside of the community, but the fans of different makeup artists going against each other.

It’s different for the music community, though. With singers from everywhere, it becomes a messy place. Every celebrity has a different following — some calm, some rowdy.

Communities are becoming more and more toxic with the ability to constantly spout their thoughts. While casual fans are only there to listen to music, other fans are there to follow the artist’s life thoroughly and stop anybody from saying anything bad.

That’s when things can become dangerous — people who stan a celebrity are inclined to stop anybody from saying anything bad, blocking people on Twitter and going as far as to harm the person.

This type of fan wants to be a part of the celebrity’s life, attempting to gain their attention. Some will strive to break into the celebrity’s house. Several of these victims are Sandra Bullock, Queen Elizabeth II, Emma Watson, Paris Hilton, Kate Moss, P Diddy, Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus. These are all prominent celebrities in the west, but the culture in the east is extremely different.

In the east, one prominent group of celebrities is K-Pop groups. Fans from everywhere flock to them. Every day they are surrounded by their stans, being watched at all times. These fans can sometimes be even worse than western stans. Even gaining their own name, Sasaengs.

They constantly invade the privacy of the stars. They tap and record their phone calls, breaking into their houses like western stans, taking pictures from spy cameras and poison stars they don’t like. They even drop out of their entire lives to invest themselves in their celebrities’ lives.

Of course, these are extremists when it comes to these fans. The other stans typically just use Twitter to promote their celebrity. That is where the internet part steps in. They’ve taken over Twitter and are able to single-handedly create trending hashtags.

Fans are able to do a lot when it comes to the celebrity they stan. They can help or they can hurt.

Stan culture is dangerous — they force unrealistic standards onto the stars. It is important that we save our society from this dangerous behavior and start to correct the way we interact with celebrities.