By Scottie Andrew, CNN
(CNN) — Chappell Roan’s rise to pop stardom happened slowly, then suddenly.
She started singing cover songs on YouTube under her real name over 10 years ago before getting a record deal after high school. Her debut single, “Pink Pony Club,” was released in 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her album came out almost a year ago to positive reviews and a small but loyal fan base.
Over the past six months, however, her star has risen into the stratosphere. An appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk and a performance at the Coachella festival where she rose to fame exposed Roan to new audiences, while her songs “Good Luck, Babe!” and “HOT TO GO!” appeared as soundtracks in hundreds of thousands of TikToks. Her amazing summer culminated in what may have been the biggest Lollapalooza performance in the Chicago festival’s history – as many as 110,000 people were in her audience.
Sudden fame weighed heavily on Roan, but her discomfort became unbearable earlier this week. She shared two videos on TikTok criticizing pushy fans who followed her everywhere, “stalked” her family and demanded photos or hugs in public despite Roan’s requests.
“I don’t care that name calling, harassment, stalking, etc. towards famous or somewhat famous people is normal,” she said in a video. “It’s weird how people think you know a person because you see them online and listen to their art… I’m allowed to say no to creepy behavior, OK?”
In a lengthy Instagram post on Friday, she backed up her comments, reiterating that she is “clocked out” when she isn’t performing and doesn’t owe anything to the people who approach her in her free time. And while she loves making music and the support she receives from respectful fans, she will “not accept harassment of any kind because I chose this path.”
“I feel more love than I have ever felt in my life,” she wrote. “I feel more insecure than I have ever felt in my life.”
One reason fans love Chappell Roan – and perhaps why some people have resorted to such disturbing means to violate their privacy – is the authenticity she exudes, says Sally Theran, a professor of psychology at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who has studied the parasocial relationships between celebrities and young fans.
“One thing I find really appealing about her is that she’s very open about saying, ‘This is me, and I don’t conform the way maybe previous celebrities have, and I do what I want,'” Theran said. “I think that’s very appealing in a time when everything feels so incredibly artificial.”
Roan’s openness and confidence, at least online, might lead some fans to believe they know her and she wants to get to know them. But there is a fundamental misconception among fans who believe Roan’s online persona is her real self.
“I think that’s what she’s really saying: ‘I’m just doing this as a show. That doesn’t mean you know me or I know you,'” Theran said. “But there’s this disconnect: People really think they understand her, and then she probably thinks she wants to understand them.”
In an age when social media creates stars and personal, candid moments go viral, the lines between fans and celebrities are less clearly defined. The alarming warnings Roan issued show that fans’ expectations of celebrities to reveal themselves are diverging – and that the price of openness online is often higher than what artists like Roan are willing to pay for their fame.
Fans’ expectations of celebrities are changing
Roan has used TikTok over the years, long before she was a fixture on the Billboard charts, to share candid and funny clips aimed at her haters or to show what it’s like to stay in a cheap motel on tour. Her social media presence is similar to what she exudes onstage — cheeky openness and confidence — which endears her to fans.
But sharing parts of her life online, even small, humorous snippets from before she became famous, has set a precedent for some fans who expect the same access to Roan offline.
“The advent of social media has complicated our access to celebrities, our sense of ownership, our entitlement, our sense that they really owe us something,” Theran said. “There is something implicit in the social agreement with social media that they may Do owe us something – they make money from us.”
Roan is one of the few major pop stars who resists owing her fans more than she has already given them, and many of her fans support her and remind each other to respect the person behind the persona they love.
But that kind of openness doesn’t always meet with widespread approval, as other digital-age stars have found when they tried to set boundaries for their fans, says Lucy Bennett, a lecturer at Cardiff University in Wales who studies music fandom.
“The balance of power between artists and fans is sometimes a complicated negotiation between both parties – especially when the artist does something disappointing or embarrassing that can provoke a negative reaction from fans and vice versa,” Bennett said.
Doja Cat, another artist who rose to fame on TikTok when her song “Say So” went viral, has clashed online with fans who criticize her when she changes her look or sound. When asked by an account on Threads in July 2023 if she loved her fans, she replied, “I don’t though, because I don’t even know y’all.” She lost over 180,000 Instagram followers in one month.
“My theory is that subconsciously, I’m not real to someone who’s never met me in real life,” Doja said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar in 2023. “So when people get involved with someone they don’t even know online, they kind of take over that person. They think that person is theirs in some way.”
TikTok makes it easier to build parasocial relationships with celebrities
Roan’s TikTok messages have reignited the debate about “parasocial relationships” between fans and celebrities. (This topic was frequently raised when fans of comedian John Mulaney expressed shock and disapproval when they learned of his divorce from his first wife, as he had frequently mentioned her in his act. But the news revealed how little they really knew about him offstage.)
However, parasocial relationships with celebrities are usually harmless, Theran said – they are one-sided relationships in which a fan looks up to a celebrity or perhaps even thinks about what the celebrity would do in a difficult situation. Ultimately, however, most fans understand that their relationship is imaginary and not reciprocal.
The proliferation of social media has likely made it “easier to build parasocial relationships between fans and their idols,” Theran said.
The emotional connection between a fan and their idol is only “strengthened” on TikTok and similar platforms, where “fans get further tantalizing insights” not only into the songs they love, but also into the attitudes and personalities of the musicians, Bennett said.
Fans can also communicate directly with musicians through apps like TikTok, Bennett said. Artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj often go “live” on Instagram and TikTok, responding to fan comments and sharing their unfiltered thoughts in a livestream.
“TikToks can give us important visual insights into the musician’s personality and also build deeper connections that lead to active and strong fan bases,” said Bennett.
Chappell Roan’s videos show that we don’t know celebrities as well as we think
The behavior Roan describes in her videos – “stalking” her family and following them in public – is “very out of character” for fans, Theran said.
But one of the annoyances she described – that her fans feel like they know her because they listen to her music and keep in touch with her online – is more common and not inherently wrong, Theran said. It’s not a feature of a parasocial relationship, but rather the result of listening to and loving an artist, she said.
“There will always be people, no matter who you are – they’re really a large minority – but there will always be people who take it to that extent,” Theran said. “I’m so sad for (Roan) and her fan base. What she’s describing is not representative.”
Roan is one of the few major contemporary pop stars who still feels somewhat accessible—Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, two of the biggest stars in the world, rarely interact directly with their fans anymore, communicating primarily through public statements or curated social media posts. Even TikTok-native artists like Olivia Rodrigo, whose music also became wildly popular on the app, have created distance between themselves and their fans by revealing little about their personal lives.
“If you step back or have a very curated social media presence, it protects you a little bit from the potential of a toxic fan base,” Theran said. “You just don’t feel like they have access to you in the same way. They don’t perceive you as being as authentic as someone like Chappell Roan.”
Still, “Chappel Roan” is a personality first—Roan has previously described her performance as a “drag project.” And she has repeatedly made it clear that she is playing a role, and she keeps her career separate from her personal life to protect her mental health.
“At the end of the day, it’s just a job,” she said during an appearance on the podcast “Q with Tom Power” in 2023. “And I don’t plan on doing this forever. So I just need to have an identity outside of it and secure myself for, you know, 20 years from now, when I’m not just burned out on life.”
Roan’s recent TikToks show once again how tense and delicate the relationship between fans and celebrities on both sides really is.
“We think we know celebrities, but we don’t really know them,” Theran said. “What we do know is the image they project. We project so much onto people. We assume and don’t realize that what they project isn’t really their true selves.”
Roan ended one of the TikToks denouncing pushy fans with a candid reminder that she is a stranger to almost every one of her fans: “I’m a random bitch. YOU ARE a random bitch. Just think about that for a minute, okay?”
The-CNN-Wire
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