Decoding Stan Culture: Fifth Harmony
My life changed on February 21, 2014, and I don’t know if it was for better or for worse. I explained my six-year long deep infatuation with Demi Lovato, and she paved the way for me to pass the baton to Fifth Harmony in 2014.
Let’s take it all the way back to the beginning. Fifth Harmony got started on a television show called “The X-Factor” in 2012. They were all initially solo artists, then they got called back and formed a group originally called LYLAS (Love You Like A Sister). Normally, I wouldn’t have been watching The X-Factor at all. However, Demi Lovato landed a gig as a judge on the show, so naturally, I had to support. I was only watching the X-Factor solely because of Demi. That was the beginning of the end.
I have been supporting Fifth Harmony since 2012. I remember watching the episode they were formed. It was on 7/27/2012 (I’m not that crazed, I only know this because their second studio album was called 7/27). At that time, I was a fourteen year old freshman in high school. I still had dreams of becoming a singer/songwriter, and I probably would have gravitated towards a show like The X-Factor anyway. Nonetheless, I had more incentive to watch it because it meant I got to see Demi once a week every Wednesday night. Now, I claim to be a Harmonizer (5H fan) since 2012 just because I did watch their formation and actually voted for them every week, but that isn’t entirely the truth. I didn’t become a Harmonizer until they toured with Demi Lovato on the Neon Lights Tour in 2014. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I remember watching their individual auditions and being immediately attracted to Lauren Jauregui. I thought she was the most gorgeous girl, and I loved her voice. While everyone was busy ogling over Camila Cabello, I had always preferred Lauren. Camila didn’t even have her audition aired. I remember Dinah fondly too, because her audition was a powerhouse. She sang if “I Were A Boy” and killed it. I remember imitating her performance in my own covers because I liked her so much. I remember being annoyed by Ally Brooke because of how they cut her audition and manipulated some clips to paint her adversely. I remember not being impressed by Normani very much because she was a fleeting audition clip. At the time, I had no idea of how important those five girls would become to me.
The monumental moment everyone in the fandom always talks about is their rendition of Impossible by Shontelle at the Judges’ House. This was the moment LYLAS really came onto my radar. I loved this performance so much that I downloaded it onto my iPod from YouTube. They were such pretty girls, and they were all so talented and unique that I was really inspired by them. I tried to imitate their dynamic with my own group of friends at the time. I loved them very innocently from the start.
Well, after three name changes (LYLAS, 1432, and finally Fifth Harmony), consistently being in the bottom tier of voting, and repeating two performances, The X-Factor ended and they came in third place. I was only moderately pressed by this information as I liked the runner-up, Carly Rose Sonenclar — and Tate Stevens amounted to nothing. Meanwhile, Fifth Harmony went on to become a household name. Honestly, that was the end of my interest with them because Demi Lovato still had my whole heart. Those girls were cute, but they were nothing compared to Demi. They faded from my radar with ease.
Fast forward to 2014, I’m sixteen years old and still very much in love with Demi. This was the first year Demi had gone on tour since 2011 and I could finally go. Well, it just so happened that her openers were Fifth Harmony and Little Mix. I loved all three of them, and I had honestly forgotten about Fifth Harmony until I realized they were opening for Demi. I begged my parents to go, they got me tickets, and the rest is history. I was a fan of Little Mix, but I hadn't really heard of anything from Fifth Harmony since Miss Movin’ On. I liked the song, but it was nothing special to me. In 2013, they released their EP, “Better Together” and they performed songs from it as Demi’s openers. I didn’t know anything about them and was pleasantly surprised by their performance. I wrote down the name of Leave My Heart Out of This and looked them up after the show the next morning because they’d left an impression on me. Actually, that was the beginning of the end.
Every fandom has their respective pillars that start their infatuation with the person they’re stanning, and it almost always begins with watching interviews and compilations of funny moments on YouTube. So there I was, down my Fifth Harmony Funny Moments rabbit hole. Those videos are full of fandom inside jokes, the relationship dynamics between the girls, and overall goofy entertainment for a teenager. I was sixteen at the time, and the youngest members of Fifth Harmony, Dinah and Camila, are only one year older than me. Normani and Lauren are two years older, and Ally is five years older. Because of the age similarities, I felt so connected to them — although it was through a screen. In watching those videos, I formed an attachment to those girls that I still haven’t abandoned.
However, it started off gradually. I watched a couple of interviews just to learn their names and to get a better feel for them. I knew Fifth Harmony as a manufactured celebrity unit, not as individual girls. They had piqued my interest, and I wanted to learn more. So I did. I watched all of the interviews from their time on the X Factor. Then I watched all of their interviews in the time I had missed. I listened to their EP, Better Together, and caught up with the current music at the time. I followed their respective social media accounts. I followed some fan accounts on Twitter, and the rest is history.
In my Demi piece, I mentioned how much of a recluse I was in high school. Through watching these videos of their interviews, their vines, and other excerpts of their interactions, it felt like I was part of their little sisterhood. Fifth Harmony represented the bonds that I lacked in real life. I cannot explain it to anyone who hasn’t experienced it, but when you don’t have any friends to laugh and joke around with, a secondhand method of indulging on that is the next best thing.
It simultaneously poses as a distraction from your dismal reality and as an investment into another facet of life. Digital life has endless possibilities, and when I joined stan Twitter in 2012, I organically built my own community. Stan Twitter functioned as the one place that I could orient all of my interests with people who shared them, and we could indulge on it to our hearts’ desire. That is exactly what we did, day in and day out. And now, I wasn’t the only person who was talking about Fifth Harmony (whom we affectionately called the girls). I wasn’t the only person who was interested in their day to day lives. I wasn’t the only person freaking out over the selfie Lauren just posted, or laughing at the retweet Normani just made, or speculating about the Tumblr post Camila just reblogged. I had an entire community of like-minded people to reside amongst and to discuss everything with, because they cared about it too.
Beyond that, I became somebody on Twitter. The girl that was silenced in the classroom and invisible in the hallways became somebody on Twitter. Stan Twitter had a space for me. I was funny there. I was witty and interesting. I was relatable. I had curated a following based solely on the things I said about Fifth Harmony. I wasn’t letting go of that just to blend into my high school setting, and in lieu of it, I resisted my real life even more. I had a space where I could be myself without fearing name-calling from people who didn’t understand me. And of course, with every community comes its ups and downs. Stan Twitter was never all sunshine and rainbows. We had our mean girls there too, but at least there I felt that I was equipped to combat them. I had a friend group that could stand behind me and stand up to the bullies and trolls in my fandom and beyond. I said it once, and I’ll say it again: stan Twitter gave me the sense of belonging I had missed out on in high school.
From there, Fifth Harmony slowly began to take over Demi’s influence. Demi is six years older than me, so there was a little bit of a gap between how involved I felt with her. I looked to her like a mentor and an inspiration, whereas Fifth Harmony struck me as the friend group I’d never had but had desperately been craving. In the rise of social media, it’s really easy to follow someone’s every move. It became that much easier when Twitter and Instagram enabled notification settings. I got real-time updates about what they were doing, where they were, what they were talking about, who they were talking to — everything. Just like I would have, had they been my friends in real life.
There’s no way to explain it that doesn’t sound creepy as hell, so I’m just going to roll with it. It only took me about two months to catch up on two years worth of Fifth Harmony completely. I’d grown as a fan account and had approximately five thousand followers comprised solely of other fan accounts. Now, I had friends. Genuine friends. People across the country, across the world, that I talked to regularly because we shared the same central interests. I was afforded everything that I had missed out on in real life, online. I’d found my haven. And I had Demi Lovato and Fifth Harmony to thank for it.
When I say that Fifth Harmony changed my life, I don’t say it lightly. They transformed me into the politically conscious woman that I am today because they introduced me to several of the movements I am passionate about now. One of the things I love most about these five girls is that they embody the much-needed representation in media. They are all from different ethnic backgrounds, they have different body types, skin colors, accents, sexualities — everything that makes people diverse. There are no carbon copies in this group, and I love them all for that. They fight for these things organically because it affects them directly. They aren’t just advocating with empty words. They introduced me to various movements regarding feminism, POC rights, LGBT rights, immigration, voting, amongst other things because it impacts their lives directly. They are not disingenuous celebrities; they don’t have the air of a celebrity at all. Obviously I don’t know them personally. However, they do practice what they preach. There’s an authenticity to Fifth Harmony that made me fall in love with them from the start.
Additionally, these girls are so much more than their music. They are more than the pop music and the skimpy outfits and the countless shows they’ve put on. These girls have heart and integrity on top of raw talent. I have always supported them in everything they’ve done - streamed every song, bought all the merchandise, watched every performance - and it’s not because I needed a new pop star to obsess over. I feel as though they’ve earned my dedication because of their individual characters. They are model women who fight for what they believe in and use their platform to send positive messages. They’ve always been the same. There are no gimmicks with them; when you stan for as long as I have, you can see through the bullshit. Fifth Harmony didn’t come with any in the beginning. Toward the end, they fell victim to the trope of the shady girl group, but that’s another story…
