MarcMonster, soccer moms mentioned in an EW article

[gag 22,449]

Article: http://ew.com/music/2017/11/01/stans-pop-music-kesha-beyonce-beyhive-lady-gaga-monsters/

Pretty long read but I really enjoyed it, it goes into DEPTH about stan culture and has an interview with MarcMonster (which is a tad aggravating only because I'm so envious).

Also a mention of the soccer moms, how Beyonce fans became Little Detectives for Lemonade and how a Twitter stan started the entire #FreeKesha campaign.

Key points about Gaga:

When you talk to stans one-on-one, though, they come across as, well, even-keeled and normal. I first got to know Josh-Ryan Min Lee, a 21-year-old law student and Lady Gaga stan in Port of Spain, Trinidad, when he called me a “disgusting dipsh—” who needed to “get a grip” after I once referred to Gaga’s ARTPOP rollout as a “hot mess” in a 2014 article. But when we spoke on the phone a few years later, he was friendly, apologetic even. He says his vitriol stemmed from concern that the article would negatively shape the narrative around Gaga’s career — and maybe harm her emotional well-being. When Gaga released her single “Do What U Want” in 2013, Min Lee recalls, “she went on this whole Twitter tirade about what the media was saying about her: that she was fat, that she was not famous anymore, that she was falling off the charts. It seemed to really affect her.” Every fan group has members who are willing to get ad hominem, he explains: “It’s almost like people who are religious. They’re very invested in their religion, and they will defend it.”

Stans will go to great coordinated lengths to protect and support their favorite star. In September of 2016, a group of Lady Gaga stans, worried that radio programmers wouldn’t take their requests seriously, posed as soccer moms on Twitter and asked stations to play her single “Perfect Illusion.” In May of that year, an Ariana Grande stan launched a petition demanding that Metacritic, the online review aggregator, expunge a three-star Rolling Stone review of her Dangerous Woman album that he felt was “extremely unprofessional” and unfairly brought her overall score down. Almost 3,000 people signed it.

The interview and section about Marc:

Spoiler

Being embraced by an artist is the ultimate stan dream, and several superfans have leveraged their devotion and online presence into a spot in or around a star’s inner circles. Just ask Marc Jordan Cohen — better known as @MarcMonster online — who’s been on a texting basis with Lady Gaga for almost four years now. After catching her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards performancewhen he was in high school, Cohen felt a particular connection to Gaga the more he read about her: She attended NYU, which was his dream school as an aspiring actor; she also spoke of her late aunt Joanne as a guardian angel-like figure, which is similar to how he feels about his own late maternal grandmother. Family legend has it that as a toddler, he couldn’t say the word “grandma,” so he called her “gaga” instead. That seemed like more than just a coincidence to Cohen.

The Newport Beach native started attending every show in Southern California that he could, going to so many concerts and meet-and-greets that Gaga started to recognize him and keep in touch with him on Twitter. He wasn’t like those other people who just wanted a selfie and barely spoke a word. “I actually cared about how she was doing as a human,” says Cohen, now 23. He was around so often that he become close with members of her team, such as her hair stylist. Then, in 2013, he was looped in on a group text with Gaga after she told a mutual contact — Cohen can’t remember who — that she wanted feedback from Cohen about how her ARTPOP era was going. He was freaking out on the inside, but he describes his early texts with her as “nonchalant” about having a direct line to one of music’s biggest stars.

These days, when Gaga is in New York City, where Cohen now lives, she sometimes invites him to hang out at events she’s attending or after shows. Cohen says Gaga’s asked for feedback on everything from what to wear—that brown wig she wore on Ellen while promoting ARTPOP? His idea!—to new music and demos. Last fall, she tasked him with organizing the guest-list for a fans-only listening session for her most recent album, Joanne.

Cohen is the first to admit that their friendship does not resemble the friendships he has with non-famous people. It can sometimes feel one-sided: “There were times when we would talk every day for a week, and then I wouldn’t hear from her for a month,” he says. “It’s more on her terms. She’s such a busy person.” It’s also led to online harassment and abuse from other jealous fans. But like real friends, their conversations go beyond just their shared interests. After last year’s shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Cohen says he messaged Gaga telling her to delete a tweet about gun control that included a pro-Hillary Clinton hashtag, advising her not to politicize the tragedy. (She did delete the tweet, though he’s not sure if he was the catalyst for its removal.) “I’ve always seen her like a normal human being,” he says. “I’ve definitely called her out on a few things, and we’ve had a few tiffs [where] she’s been upset with me.”

Insider relationships like the one Cohen has with Gaga have sometimes become professional. Other stans and former stans have parlayed similar bonds into positions or paying jobs that give them access to and, in some cases, influence over their favorite stars. (Cohen says he and Gaga once briefly talked about whether he’d want to join her operation in a some capacity, but an offer or opportunity never materialized.) Iggy Azalea offered Brad Prescott, whom she had met when he was an extra in one of her videos, a job after he tweeted about the dirty looks coworkers gave him when he played her music at his retail job. Jackie Augustus was running a Justin Bieber fan account when she got to know Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, who would send her exclusives and event invites and, later, hired her at his company, SB Projects; she’s now the head of digital marketing.

“These people know the artist better than anyone else,” says New Torch Entertainment cofounder Ethan Schiff, who manages pop artists such as Betty Who and VÉRITÉ. Of hiring a stan, he says, “it absolutely could happen, especially in something related to social media or anything online. It’s so critical that people working with the artist understand their voice and interests inside and out.”

But once a stan enters a star’s orbit, the stan life can start to feel incompatible with that proximity. As Cohen got to know Gaga better, he continued to get invites from other Little Monsters who were planning to show up at events as usual, but he started declining them. “I’d be like, ‘I texted her two hours ago, I can’t be outside that venue, that’s weird,’“ he says. “I was like, ‘It’s time to step back.’”

His decision to dial it down has to do with more than just not wanting to look like a stalker or appear unprofessional, however. When Cohen first started texting with Gaga, he showered her with compliments until he realized that kind of relationship was unfulfilling. “I didn’t want to be praising her because she has a million other people that do that,” he says. As a teenager, he didn’t mind feeling consumed Gagamania. But now that he’s in his twenties, he’s realized that it can be hard to find yourself when your identity is so defined by another person’s. “I feel like I’m growing up,” he says. “I need to focus more on me and what I’m doing. I’ve definitely felt that more recently. In the past [I’ve thought], how many more shows can I go to? What states can I go to? Whose house can I stay at in Philly? Now I’m like, do I have to go to the second New York show?” He’ll always be a fan, he says, and he still tweets about her often. But when it comes to (literally) going the extra mile? “It just feels like I don’t have that necessity anymore.”

 

[MaryJaneHolland 77,348]

Not the best things to mention at all 

[Teal Ambition 47,805]

"who’s been on a texting basis with Lady Gaga for almost four years now."

[Gohan 16,396]

EW, literally 

[KleinGa 18,177]

My attitude to this whole article: 

[Mister Gaga 22,889]

Our impact tbh. The most impactful fanbase of all time 

[Lextyr97 19,879]

13 minutes ago, gag said:

In May of that year, an Ariana Grande stan launched a petition demanding that Metacritic, the online review aggregator, expunge a three-star Rolling Stone review of her Dangerous Woman album that he felt was “extremely unprofessional” and unfairly brought her overall score down. Almost 3,000 people signed it.

CAN WE DO THIS FOR BORN THIS WAY WITH THE 0 AND THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE WITH JOANNE PLEASE

[Doot 2]

Literally all I was waiting for that entire article was what Marc and Gaga disagreed on. And then nada. 

[and i oop 1,360]

1 hour ago, Doot said:

Literally all I was waiting for that entire article was what Marc and Gaga disagreed on. And then nada. 

Same

[moonsago 7,285]

Idk how to feel about this, I think if I was Gaga I would be upset that he did this interview to let everybody know so much about their relationship. We know she's very private about those things but yeah it sounded very cool and almost unreal, literally having text conversations with her? That's amazing. 

[Bat 6,162]

tl;dr anyone?

[TimisaMonster 31,073]

Why is he being interviewed? And no...im not a hater or jealous, but the content of the interview makes him look more stalkerish and a groupie who had a come up in her circle but to say he "influences" her major career decisions like music is a reach...