Our national pastime isn’t baseball. It’s building up female stars then tearing them down. Decades later, if there’s anything left after the trips to rehab, after the cancelled shows due to exhaustion, after the head shaving, the video where they finally lost their shit and said no more, we might allow them a comeback. We’ll post the clips of what we’ve done, the stalking, the harassing, the mockery and derision. We’ll say that we know better now. We’ve learned our lesson. And then we do it again.
We’re doing it now, another young pop star, another breakout. Another young woman is near the breaking point. But the game is different now. We have access to stars and information about them like we’ve never had before. It used to be the paparazzi, the tabloids, and later, the blogs. Unless you were crazy enough to leave your house, to find a star’s address, to follow them, your access to information was limited to what tips the tabloids could buy and what photos the paparazzi could get, what carefully curated interviews and profiles appeared in magazines. Now fans have access like never before. Everyone’s a paparazzi. Stalking requires nothing more than opening an app.
A large part of the problem is it’s nearly impossible to understand what it feels like, to be at the other end of it. Fame seems like something you’d want as an artist. Fame, recognition, success, these are the goals, aren’t they? For every success story there are thousands toiling in obscurity, thousands more who don’t want to produce anything at all, but still envy the success of those who do.
You hear or see or read an artist’s work and it speaks to you. You connect with it. You follow the artist on social media and they’re right there in your screen, speaking to you, sharing themselves. It’s easy to start thinking you know them. You find other fans to talk to, to share the latest, to gossip. It’s fun. You’re part of a group. You found the star early, before all those fake fans got in the game. You reposted their shit so others could find them. They kind of owe you honestly.
You talk to them online and holy shit they actually replied. You post it for your friends to see. You see your fav in public and take a picture to prove it. You approach, ask for an autograph, ask for a selfie, ask for a hug. Why not. It’s just you. You’re cool. You weren’t even weird about it.
What’s impossible to explain is the sheer volume of you. But let me try. I can’t tell you what it’s like to be Chappell Roan. But I can tell you what it’s like to be me. And maybe if I do, you’ll understand, just a little, if you care to.
On second to last day of 2018, I was working at a bar here in Austin and taking classes at a community college. I’d published two essays that no one read. I’d tried to sell a book that no one wanted. I had two thousand followers on Twitter and a dog named Teddy. I was forty two years old.
On the first day of 2019, I had fifty thousand followers on Twitter, and 8.4 million people had read an essay I wrote about the years I worked as a cable tech. Within a month, I’d be in the ER.
What happened in between is why.
Eight point four million people isn’t an easy number to understand. I don’t understand it. It’s the goddamn population of New York. But we’re not talking about eight point four million. Eight point four million people weren’t the problem. Most of them read a thing they enjoyed or hated. It was hard to avoid that first weekend. It was all over social media for a few days. Most people probably scrolled by a few times before wondering what all the fuss was about. Maybe they didn’t open it until someone texted it to them. Who knows. They read it. Maybe they sent it to a friend or two, maybe they posted it on social media. Then they went about their lives and forgot my name, if they read that part at all.
But let’s say that somewhere between 1.5 and 3 percent of the population is psychotic, that’s what science tells us anyway. Let’s split the difference at 2 percent—168,000 people, which seems about right when you’re talking about the population of New York, not when you’re talking about the reading public. If five percent of those who are psychotic read the thing, connected to it, or hated me for it, that’s still over eight thousand people. Which sounds about right. Because that’s about number of people I heard from who scared the ever loving shit out of me.
They found my facebook, my insta. They didn’t just contact me. They contacted my friends and my family. Most of the emails or messages I got were fine. Hi. Loved your story. Some of them, a lot of them, they’d tell me stories of their jobs, of abuse, of assault. Thousands of them. It’s too much for one person. I’m still learning how to deal with my own shit. I don’t have a place for yours. When I didn’t answer, because answering even a small percentage of the messages would take the rest of my life, and the next, because it’s too much, they’d message again. They’d be hurt I didn’t answer. Then again to tell me I was ungrateful. Then again to tell me I was a bitch.
They showed up at the bar where I worked. They cried and told me their stories and asked for hugs and selfies. They’d film me, while I was sitting out in front of a bar, checking IDs, at my goddamn job. I couldn’t leave. I was at work. It felt like a hostage situation. Them, standing too close, touching me, crying. They waited for me outside the community college. One came to one of my classes, art appreciation of all things, to tell me she loved me. They accosted me when I was walking my dog, shouting his name or mine from their cars. They followed me home.
More than once.
I’d come home from work exhausted. I was still going to school. I was trying, had been trying, for years, to be anything but a cable tech. So I was writing, hoping something would come of it, and taking classes in case it didn’t. I was working as a bouncer at a bear bar in Austin, every night until one or three am. And now, because suddenly every editor wanted my book, in the few hours I was able to keep my eyes open, I was working on a book proposal, buying underpants off amazon because I didn’t have time to do even a load of laundry, taking calls from editors and producers and actors with their own experience at it all being too much. They’d call trying to convince me to sell the story to them. The call would end with my breaking down while they tried to teach me how to handle what had become of my life.
I’d look out my window, and there would be a person, a fan, someone who claimed they loved me, a fucking psychopath standing in the parking lot, trying to see into my windows.
There was no place to hide. No place to just be. If I walked my dog without a bra, would the neighbor across the courtyard take a photo? Would they post it online? If people kept coming into the bar, kept trapping me on my stool, would my boss have enough? Tell me he’s really sorry but he has to let me go. What if I missed an underage kid sneaking in because someone had me trapped on my stool at the door. I hadn’t even made any money.
I was having to make decisions I was entirely unqualified to make. Form a company, sign contracts and choose a deal. Choose wrong and it’d be over before it started. I was suddenly on NPR, having no media training, no idea how to give an interview, or even the vet the interviews I’d been asked to do.
Lots of people had advice, but other than my lit agents, I didn’t know who to listen to. Everyone had an angle it seemed. Everything would become transactional. I’d think someone was reaching out to be a friend, and learn they only wanted something from me. I’d think someone was interested in me, hitting on me. Felt good. Someone liked me. Then they’d make an ask.
It was better when they made an ask. Worse when I realized, and I learned it fast but not fast enough, that no one was really interested in me anymore. I was a symbol, an object, something to brag about to friends I guess. I wasn’t real. Not to them. I was a character in a play they’d written in their minds. They’d written all my lines. Filled in my personality with what they’d pieced together. Step out of character, be a real human being, it was jarring for them. And they processed that by being shitty to me. But all I’d done was exist.
The week before my heart started fluttering, I talked to my psychiatrist. I told him I was exhausted. I wasn’t sleeping. It felt like I’d lost myself, who I was, who I wanted to be, it was being rewritten for me, demanded of me. My hand wouldn’t stop shaking. It’s a tell that people who know me know to look for. It happens sometimes, when I’m stressed or angry or close to panic. But it hadn’t stopped in weeks. I told him I’d been having panic attacks again. Hadn’t had them in years. Years of therapy or maybe enough mushrooms, I don’t know. But I hadn’t broken in years. Now I was breaking regularly. At home. In the back room at work. In the bathroom at school. On a walk with my dog. Hyperventilating and vomiting and skipping time. Finding myself on the ground. My dog’s head on my chest.
The shrink told me that sounds like a lot of pressure. But how exciting. You need to strike while the iron is hot.
I never went back.
But I didn’t complain. I knew better already.
This is what I wanted. That’s what they told me. Complain about the intrusions, draw a line—this but not that, me but not my family, me but not my friends. They’d always want more. I’d feed them pictures of my dog. That’s how I started thinking of it—feeding. They’d feed off me and I’d feed them a little. Enough to keep them sated, I hoped. But they’d want more. Post a selfie. Show us the rest of your apartment, like they couldn’t fathom a reason a woman on the internet might not want you to know where she lives. Tell us your dad’s name. Show him to us. Tell us your niece’s name. Show us. Show us everything. Let us feed. Let us drain you. This is what you wanted. You’re ungrateful. Stuck up. What a bitch.
They’d show me details they found. My address. My dad’s house. My brother’s. I was a liability to the people I loved. Because I wanted to be a writer. But I wasn’t feed. I was a person and I was alone and hurting and losing my mind. But it didn’t matter. They wanted more. If I held something back I was a bitch. If I complained I was ungrateful. I owed them. They’d read a thing and clicked a follow link on a website and that entitled them to my entire being. They were fans. I was inspiring. A hero. A legend. A bitch. They owned me.
They’d see me in public, walking my dog, at work, at an event. I know because they’d tag me later on Twitter, when they told their friends I was a bitch. I was stuck up. I didn’t let them hug me. Didn’t stop to take a selfie. Didn’t listen to their story.
They must’ve thought I was joking when I said I was late for work.
I’d ask a person to leave the bar. Someone who’d given up on hitting on me. After giving up on crying on me. They’d moved on to the patio where they were cornering customers to tell them what a bitch I am. How ungrateful. How fucking stuck up. Who the fuck did I think I was. And I’d remember I was the bouncer. So I’d ask them to leave. They’d ask to see the manager.
Fuck.
The night my heart started fluttering, an old roommate had reached out to try to extort me for money he’d assumed I made. He had a video he was going to send to TMZ. That TMZ has no fucking idea who I am hadn’t occurred to him. It also hadn’t occurred to him that I didn’t care if he “released a video” of me dropped a chip, checking it for dog fur, then eating it. The scandal of the three second rule would’ve broken the internet I’m sure. But it scared me all the same. Not the video. I immediately posted it to Twitter. I mean that someone would want to extort me.
You’re not supposed to be aware of your heart. Maybe hiking uphill or running a while. Not lying in bed and it feels like a fish caught in your chest, trying to break out. I thought it was a heart attack. What else could it be.
The ER said it was palpitations. Had I been experiencing stress? They put me on a heart monitor and told me to follow up with primary care.
This is what I wanted. How the fuck could I complain. Thousands of writers, struggling in obscurity would give anything for what I had. It should’ve been them. I didn’t pay my dues. I didn’t go to school. Didn’t struggle in the trenches. Didn’t happen. They didn’t see it. Wouldn’t matter anyway. It should’ve been them. They made sure to tell me.
But it wasn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted to be a writer. For people to read my shit. I wanted to publish a book. See it on a shelf in a bookshop. Hold it in my hands and say, I wrote that. That’s a thing that will survive. A mark I left while I was here. I wanted to not be a goddamn cable tech, sweating in attics in the summer, my frozen knuckles cracking open in the winter. My body failing me. I wanted to be a writer because I’d always wanted to be. It was the thing I could always do, write. I was forty years old when I walked away from my life, cut expenses to nothing, so that maybe I could have time to write, maybe get a degree if the writing didn’t work out. I got on Twitter because I was told I needed a platform. I didn’t know I’d have to feed it or it would destroy me. I didn’t know it would destroy me anyway.
It’s the strangest thing, to finally find something like success, and never get to enjoy it. You’re told these stories, cautionary tales, those who burned out, faded away, but you never think it’ll be you. There’s no way to prepare for it. Nevermind the assholes. They’re easy enough to spot. There’s no way to comprehend the weight of thousands telling you their darkest secrets, how you saved their life, how you should consider doing a podcast. Have you written a book. You need to write a book. You should be a writer. You should feed us. Let us feed.
Bitch.
I’d say it’s all too much. Please just give me a goddamn minute. They’d tell me to ignore the trolls. But it wasn’t the trolls. It was them. There were just too goddamn many of them.
That’s the part I can never convey. You see yourself as just one. A fan. Making a simple request. A little ask for a little more. You’re speaking a normal volume, but there are thousands of you and all we can hear is the blood pooling in our ears. It’s too much. I’m not equipped to hear the deeply personal traumas of thousands. I don’t have anywhere to put it. It’s too many of you. Every person, taking just one little handful, until there’s nothing left.
It’s never let up, the pressure and the noise. Only compounded. Every violation. Every demand. It’s nearly killed me, more than once. And I don’t say that lightly. You are destroying what you claim to love. And you’ll do it again and again and again.
But she’s just a kid. She wanted to make music. She didn’t ask for this. No one would.
I was forty two years old. I’d lived a couple lifetimes when it happened to me. I knew who I was and what I wanted to be. And what happened to me was nothing in comparison. I cannot fathom the volume that comes at Chappell Roan. But I know this. It has to fucking stop. We’ve seen this play out too many goddamn times. Too many shattered lives. The women we built up, then broke, then we mocked them as they fell.
Stars who push back, who set boundaries, who beg for just a little privacy are called bitches and ungrateful. As though the act of streaming music you don’t even buy entitles you to every intimate detail of their life, to their family, to their very body.
You’re not entitled to a goddamn thing but the art you purchased. It’s a simple transaction, nothing more. You buy a thing and enjoy it or not. That’s the end of your relationship to that star, no matter how much you think you love them. They don’t owe you more. They don’t need to be nice to their fans. They don’t need to be nice. To smile more. All you are entitled to from an artist is the art you purchased.
I know. What a bitch. How unhinged.
We’ve turned the act of stalking and harassment into a social event. We call it stan culture. It’s a nicer word I guess, for stalking and harassment. There was a time when that creep who clipped interviews and pictures, carefully placed them in a scrapbook, covered their wall with images and memorabilia then drove to a star’s house and waited outside to catch a glimpse was rightfully reviled as a fucking lunatic. But you save all those pictures in your phone, repost them on social media, spin wild theories about someone’s private life, dissect their every move and believe that this is your friend, this is a person you know at all, and it’s somehow seen as normal.
It’s not. It’s fucking weird. No is a complete sentence that you need to start hearing.
I have never seen the concept of parasocial relationships explained so perfectly—because everything else focuses on the theory of it, on the feeders, never on what happens to the person being fed off of, being dismantled and dragged into an arena they never asked for, simply for the humanity of having a creative voice and using it.
It’s the access. It doesn’t matter what you do, if you write, sing, teach yoga…if you do it online or out in the world and you’re a woman, you’re supposed to be grateful. Accommodating. Nice. Boundaries are for bitches. I wrote an essay a few years ago, it doesn’t even matter what it was about. Some guy read it. He showed up at my yoga studio. My schedule was online because it had to be. He waited outside. My sitter showed up with my kids when my class was over. I came out to find a strange fucking man talking to my son. He handed me a letter. He left. The letter said we were soulmates, he knew after he read the essay. The guy showed up for weeks after class. I said leave me the fuck alone, do not come here. Then I saw him once when I was at the playground with my kids. The police wouldn’t do anything because he hadn’t acted yet. You have to wait to be attacked to get help. It’s fucking ridiculous any of us do anything. But I’m so glad you do and I’m listening to Chappell Roan right now. Her post was phenomenal and this essay of yours is phenomenal as usual and I hope people get it. I don’t know if they will but I hope they do. Love you.