I Kissed a Girl and Somehow Everyone Is Involved

In high school, I had some great real-life friends. We giggled through class and hung out together during breaks, but as a little introvert in emo attire, I couldn’t wait to get home and open my laptop to watch my favorite YouTubers. I knew more about their lives than I did about my own friends’, and they updated me — and hundreds or thousands of others — every week on their feelings and activities.

My favorite YouTubers were two men, friends, who were romantically “shipped” by their fans. Occasionally, one of the two would tell the fans to tone it down like when extremely sexual fanfiction about them appeared and fans started sending it to them. I found it odd behavior but quickly accepted it as part of online fan culture, seeing it as the price the two had to pay for being internet celebrities. In fact, I understood why people were writing gay fanfiction about their idols. There was so little representation of queer couples that we had to create our own.

In 2024, the show I Kissed a Girl sought to fill in the gaps of queer representation in the reality dating landscape. First came the popular BBC version. Then producers started scouting for a version of the series in The Netherlands.

When I was shaking my ass at a queer dance festival in Amsterdam, I was scouted by a producer who asked if I’d be interested in a romantic adventure with other queer women. Tipsy and enthusiastic, I said yes, but when the producer called me a week later with an audition date, doubts crept in: Will people still take me seriously as a writer if I participate in reality TV? How many people will watch this, and how will I handle it if my dating life is suddenly discussed publicly?

I decided to take the leap, and in January 2025, I flew to South Africa for filming. During the show, I met Siem: a cheerful, energetic fellow Gemini who made a move in the very first episode by asking me on a date to the far end of the villa. Under the watchful eye of high-resolution webcams that recorded us all day, we made bracelets together, and sparks flew. Spoiler alert: We made it to the finals and agreed that once we got home, we would calmly figure out if we were actually a match.

Once home, however, peace and quiet was hard to come by. Whenever the other contestants and I went out for drinks together, passersby took pictures of us, and under every TikTok post we made, we were asked if we were still with our partners from the villa. During Pride, a young woman appeared in front of me and proudly showed off her “I Kissed A Girl” tattoo in the font of the show logo.

When Siem and I decided we weren’t a good fit after all, and I plopped down on the couch at home to recover from the whole emotional rollercoaster, I opened my TikTok app to distract myself with a few hours of mindless scrolling.

I came across something that gave me a pause, wondering if I was seeing it right. Under a rousing pop song, my head and Siem’s kiss in slow motion, part of a supercharged slideshow of our on-screen moments together. A fan edit of me and the person that I just split up with. The comments read: “I love them together!”

This was my first experience being on the other side of a parasocial relationship.Sometimes, parasocial relationships go a bit further than someone just feeling like they know you. Sometimes fans or followers feel they have the right to know if you’re in a relationship and who you’re dating.

And sometimes it goes even further than that. In June 2023, singer PINK performed at a festival in London. In the middle of her performance, a fan standing at the front threw a bag of gray powder at her. It turned out to be the ashes of the fan’s deceased mother. “This is your mom?” PINK asked, bewildered. The fan nodded. While one person was so invested in the relationship that they considered it normal to give their mother’s ashes to her, the other was unaware of their existence.

In 2000, rapper Eminem released the song “Stan,” a now-popularized portmanteau of”stalker” and “fan.” These days, fans of pop idols call themselves “stans,” or use the verb “stanning” in a positive way. They organize themselves in stan communities on the internet. The “stalker” aspect of this identity doesn’t seem to be something the people feel ashamed of.

Stans are an integral part of modern pop culture and a force to be reckoned with online. Everyone knows not to pick fights with Barbs (Nicki Minaj stans) or Swifties (Taylor Swift stans), and some stans are immortalized in popular memes, like Dorothy, an Ariana Grande fan known by the username @thankunext327. Dorothy’s mother was likely concerned about her presumed teenage daughter’s screentime and confiscated her phone, because Dorothy tweeted a photo of Ariana Grande crying with the caption: “im leaving forever. my mom took my phone. ill miss u all sm. im crying. goodbye.” Below the tweet’s content, the time and date the post was published are listed, as well as the device from which the tweet was sent. In this case, it read: “Nintendo 3DS Image Share.” Dorothy had tweeted from a gaming console. A few minutes later, another tweet appeared from the same account, presumably from Dorothy’s mother: “I seen that Dorothy has been using Twitter on her Nintendo. This account will be shut down now.” This tweet went viral, and all of stan Twitter used the hashtag #FreeDorothy.

This cry for freedom didn’t impress her mother, and Dorothy continued to search for new ways to satisfy her hunger for stan Twitter. Until, on August 8, the tweet that elevated Dorothy to icon status appeared: “I do not know if this is going to tweet I am talking to my fridge what the heck my Mon confiscated all of my electronics again,” tweeted from the LG Smart Refrigerator.

Psychologist Lynn E. McCutcheon has been researching fan culture for 20 years and argues in a research paper that celebrity worship has increased dramatically since the beginning of her studies, largely due to the internet. Her research also shows that extreme forms of celebrity worship are linked to loneliness, obsessive thoughts, and depression.

Other research shows that parasocial relationships can be beneficial, as they provide a sense of connection without the risk of social rejection. Analyzing the media you’re a fan of, for example, the image of your favorite pop artist and their relationships with others, or the characters in your favorite TV series, can also help you understand yourself better. It shapes your identity, and by extension, your political opinions.

In the book Feminist Fandom, sociologist Briony Hannell shows that many young people become feminists through fandom, encountering conversations in fan communities about power, sexism, consent, and inequality. These conversations gradually change how they view media and themselves. For example, fans report that after their feminist awakening, they began to view films, TV shows, music, and celebrities differently. No longer just: “Do I like this?” but also: “What does this say about power, relationships, and gender?” One of the respondents in Hannell’s study says fandom taught her about abuse and unequal power dynamics, and that this influences the content she still wants to and does not want to consume.

It’s striking that this feminist awareness often begins with very specific and popular fandoms. Fandoms function as a kind of shared language. Because fans already know the characters, storylines, and emotions, feminist criticism becomes easier to understand and discuss. In Hannell’s study, a 17-year-old fan writes that feminist discussions resonate much more when they’re about something she already has an emotional connection to. That’s precisely Hannell’s point: Fandom lowers the barrier to feminism. You don’t have to start from scratch. You start with something that already resonates with you. In these stories, not only does the series or artist itself plays a role, but everything surrounding it: TikTok analyses, Tumblr posts, Twitter/X-threads, fanfiction, and comment sections. These extra layers interrupt the simple act of watching and make you ask questions. Why is this character treated this way? Why is this behavior romanticized? Who actually has power here?

The stories, characters, and public figures that fans attach themselves to become part of their own identities. This can be empowering, but it also requires critical boundaries. Because while fandom can be a place where feminism grows, it’s important to keep an eye on where your story ends and someone else’s begins.

Because when does online stanning go too far? How does consent work in a parasocial relationship? How much of a celebrity or piece of media are we entitled to have an opinion on?

Chappell Roan was open about the transgressive behavior of her fans she experienced when she suddenly became a superstar.

“I don’t care that abuse, harassment, stalking, or whatever, is normal for famous or somewhat famous people,” Roan said. “I don’t care that it’s normal; I don’t care that this kind of bizarre behavior is part of my job, my career. That doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t make it normal. It doesn’t mean I want it; It doesn’t mean I like it.”

Her statements have sparked a global discussion about consent and fans. Famous stars like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga to Elton John spoke in support of Roan’s words. According to Roan, and many others with her, stans feel too entitled. They feel as if they have the right to stalk their idols, film them nonstop, know everything about them, and sometimes even dictate who they date and what their sexuality is.

“Gaylor” is the belief among some Swifties that Taylor Swift is actually a lesbian. They decipher queer subtext in her, in my view, painfully heterosexual lyrics and share supposed evidence online that Swift has dated actress Diana Agron or model Karlie Kloss. When Swift announced she would be making an announcement on April 26, which also happens to be Lesbian Visibility Day, in 2019, the Gaylors became angry when the announcement turned out to be a new single, instead of Swift coming out of the closet. The day Swift got engaged to Travis Kelce in 2025, panic broke out in the Gaylor community. Some were furious, others believed it’s a sham engagement to maintain Swift’s heterosexual facade.

A similar sapphic stan craze arose when Fletcher, a singer who rose to fame with lyrics about loving women, released the song “Boy.” The song is about her infatuation with a man and her fear of negative reactions to it. It could play as an ignorant piece of media in a world where dozens of countries prohibit marrying or kissing another woman and precisely zero countries criminalize heterosexuality. But, in Fletcher’s situation, it was quite fitting: The WLW internet went rogue over this song.

Fans felt betrayed: Fletcher had built her entire image as an artist on being attracted to women and had embraced the role of representation for feminine lesbians for years. Her WLW fans felt Fletcher had made money off the WLW community and therefore shouldn’t suddenly drop such a conservative-sounding song, during Pride Month, of all days. “Why release a pro-straight (as a white femme female) song during PRIDE and then make it seem like you were on a healing journey and then found men? Ugh pls…,” one fan wondered on TikTok, according to Melodic Magazine. In the music video for “Boy,” Fletcher runs through a field in a flowing dress, much more girlish than her previous edgy looks. Someone online commented under the video: “This looks like a conversion camp success story.” Fans feared that this turn in Fletcher’s dating life would be used against them as an argument that being queer or lesbian is a phase and that they should try dating men once more. Others argued that sexuality is fluid and that there should be room for bisexual or pansexual women with boyfriends during Pride.

Fletcher was accused of queerbaiting, a term previously applied only to fictional series and characters. Queerbaiting is a marketing technique in fiction and entertainment where creators hint at LGBTQ+ relationships or characters to attract a progressive audience, without actually showing these relationships. The goal is to retain queer fans without alienating conservative viewers. This practice is often criticized as exploitative, as it plays on the need for representation without offering true inclusion. But can you also apply that term to real people? Do we, as viewers, followers, or stans, have a say in the sexuality of our idols if they have used that sexuality to sell us music or other media? And is it fair to let the validation of your own queer identity depend on the representation of celebrities?

Rafaela, a beautiful masculine lesbian whom I befriended in the I Kissed a Girl villa, and I couldn’t go anywhere together during the months the series aired without photos being taken of us, and people online starting to speculate about whether we were a couple. That speculation always came with an opinion: “I liked you better with Siem” or “I think you should go for Joy.”

After the finale aired and we were allowed to reveal whether the show had resulted in a relationship, the invasive behavior slowly died down. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the sweet, encouraging messages I received from viewers and was impressed by how much this piece of positive representation had meant for my beloved WLW community. But never before have I felt so strongly: “Wow, I’m so glad I’m not Taylor Swift.”

I opened up my dating life to public speculation when I agreed to participate in a queer reality dating show. But I still have the right to choose for myself who I date and what I share about it online. I will lovingly ignore your suggestions about who I should date and what gender that person should be.

In the words of the iconic Chappell Roan: “I’m allowed to say no to creepy behavior, okay?”