Decoding Stan Culture: Demi Lovato
When asked about who my role model might be, I reply with no hesitation: Demi Lovato. If I do hesitate, it’s because I’m wondering whether to include Fifth Harmony as an entity that still counts.
I can’t confidently say I would’ve gotten through my first two years of high school without having Demi Lovato. When I was an underclassman, it was 2012-2014, and I was known as the Demi Lovato girl. With good reason, too.
People used to call me Kara Lovato in high school to bully me for liking what was outside the norm, but I embraced it because I was unashamed of who I’d picked as my role model. Demi Lovato genuinely got me through my toughest era of life. While I was dealing with my teenage angst and insecurities, Demi was there for me in a way I wouldn’t let my friends and my family be. In watching interviews of her discussing her struggles with the same things I was going through, I felt connected to her on an entirely different level. Her speeches resonated with me, deeply in my core. I saw her heart through her interviews and other videos. Her character is the reason she’s risen to the level of importance she has today.
I have always liked Demi, even since her Camp Rock days. Camp Rock was a really close second to High School Musical for me, and I was always immersed in the Disney Channel culture. Demi was the face of Disney Channel for a few years, circa 2008-2010, so naturally, I was always aware of her. I loved her movies (Princess Protection Program is the best) and her shows (insert Sonny With a Chance), and i loved her music in and outside of Camp Rock. I think the pivotal moment for me was in 2009 when she released the music video for Don’t Forget . She looked so beautiful, and the song was beautiful as well. It is still, to this day, one of my favorite songs. It has no expiration for me; it’s timeless. My mom got me her second album, Here We Go Again ,for Christmas in 2009, and that’s what really started the mania. I listened to that album constantly. Every day, I had a new favorite song. I listened to that album for months on repeat, which is saying a lot because 2009 was a fantastic year for music.
My love for Demi was pretty much at bay until 2011, when I realized she’d been in treatment. I watched her 20/20 interview with Robyn Roberts, where she told her story for the first time. I remember my mom coming to fetch me from my room, because “my girl” was on TV; she always told me when she had appearance. My mom assumed this was another lighthearted interview, or another performance I got to watch, but when we sat down to watch it, it was anything but. This was the first time she’d aired her story, and I admired her bravery.
From that point forward, things changed for me. I empathized with her so heavily. I was only 13 at the time, but I understood the things she was saying - the struggles she’d described. I wanted to show my support to her in any way I could. Shortly after that, Skyscraper came out, and the music video made me cry. One thing led to another, and I ended up downloading her entire discography up until that point. I was really a fan of her. Her transparency with her struggles made her so authentic to me in a way other stars weren’t.
One thing led to another from there, and I began watching more interviews about her. YouTube is a dangerous wormhole that sucked me in. It seemed that I’d watched every related video under the tabs. I was consuming everything Demi Lovato, just because it was entertaining at first. It wasn’t really marked by an obsession, just an indulgence at the time. I watched lots of videos by lots of people; there was nothing problematic about it at that point. But then it continued to manifest into something that took over me; I would look forward to coming home and watching new Demi Lovato interviews that I hadn’t seen. Then I started watching compilations of her on Disney Channel, excerpts from Sonny With A Chance and Camp Rock and her other appearances. Then I broadened the scope to “Demi Lovato funny moments” compilations and it all went downhill from there. I‘d fallen into the Demi Lovato rabbit hole.
I now had the vast (albeit useless) knowledge of Demi Lovato. I now had the ability to pinpoint just about any quote she’d said, any performance she’d done, and the timeline to match it all. It happened organically. Fangirls are usually portrayed as the obsessive, screaming girls that long for a toenail clipping or a piece of chewed gum to marvel at, but it wasn’t like that for me. It was much more nuanced and natural; it was never a meticulous, obsessive hinge that I studied and processed over and over to ingrain it into my memory. I never had a Demi shrine I prayed to every night. I never performed any Demi Lovato rituals. I just loved her and indulged on everything that was available to me. It just so happened that it was a lot of content.
I followed Demi heavily from 2011 on. I watched her judge on the X Factor (where I was introduced to Fifth Harmony… But that’s another story), I watched her awards show performances, I watched her guest star on various shows - I was there for it all. Everything she did, I knew about it.
In 2013, I discovered what a fandom was. I had no idea that there were other people like me - people who adored Demi Lovato as much as I did. I found out that Lovatics were all over Twitter. I made my stan account just as soon, but back then, they were called fan accounts. The term “stan” didn’t come to fruition until around 2015. It literally means “stalker-fan” - which, I guess… Isn’t that far off. But it wasn’t as creepy as it was made to sound; it was nothing like the tropes.
At this time in my life, I was 15 years old and I was a sophomore in high school. I had one consistent friend throughout the entirety of the two years I spent at my first high school. The rest of my friends typically abandoned me for their various groups, but I had that one friend keeping me sane. I was never downright bullied, per se, but I was definitely an outcast. People made snide comments on my tastes and interests. I had no circles or cliques. I never had plans after school. I didn’t go to the mall with anyone. It was a dark time for me, because as I started to grow up, I felt like I was growing without anyone to witness it. I had alienated myself from my family and shut off everyone except for my one friend, then called myself lonely. It was self-inflicted isolation, but I blamed everyone around me for it because I didn’t feel accepted or liked. (I was extremely unlikable, but that’s another story, too.)
In making this relapse into an insecure recluse, I kept harping on the fact that nobody liked me, that I was single and didn’t have many friends, and was hellbent on the notion that nobody understood me. It’s laughable, now, but back then, that was my torture. Popularity and being cool is all that matters to high school kids, no matter how superficial it is. No one is immune to teenage angst, and I wasn’t either. Even so, the things that made it bearable were centered around Demi.
I would listen to her music every morning on the bus ride to school, likely to drown out the ignorance around me. When I wasn’t understanding subjects in class, I would write out her encouraging lyrics to smother the voices in my head, telling me that I was stupid; whispers of “stay strong” to myself when I felt myself succumbing to my anxieties again. I would listen to the Don’t Forget album on repeat until I got in trouble for having headphones in class. When I had down time and had no one to talk to, I would distract myself by doodling her tattoos and annotating her lyrics because it made me feel safe and less alone. Every day, all of my margins would be littered with Demi’s tattoos and the sight of it was placating to me. That was my thing, if I wasn’t drawing them on myself - imagining myself, older and smarter, beyond high school with a life of my own that was unfazed by trivial high-school drama. It sounds silly to anyone who cannot relate, but Demi was the entity that was there for me when I felt like no one else could be.
A page from my journal, 2014. This is what all of my margins in my notebooks (and my forearm, more often than not) looked like during those years.
I never found my crowd at that school, but I did find the Lovatic side of Twitter. It may have saved my life.
When I discovered the fandoms within Twitter, I immersed myself in the culture because these were the people that were like me. These were my people. I couldn’t believe my luck, having found an abundance of people with the same central interest, after being ridiculed for it in real life. The internalized censorship was the biggest problem for me. Twitter was the catharsis; being uncensored. I was free to talk about what I wanted to talk about, with people who genuinely cared what I had to say. With people who knew what I was talking about. Utter rehabiliation. The reinforcement that I was not weird, I wasn’t creepy, and I wasn’t a freak, obsessed with a celebrity really sated me. It was as natural to me as guys clamoring over fantasy football and video games. Girls talking about makeup and the Kardashians. Moms and Steve Harvey and Dr. Phil. It was the same sensation I’d heard others describe, and I had finally found my niche. Soon enough, I had hundreds of followers and a friend group that I loved dearly. I met some of my best friends to this day on Twitter, and I have Demi Lovato to thank for it. As I gained followers and artificial popularity and relevance, I outgrew the shell of the girl I was before.
On Twitter, I was talking with people who followed Demi just as much as I did. And now it wasn’t weird, it was normal. Thousands of people who were talking about Demi - what she was doing, who was in the pictures she posted, speculating about her relationships, what the nature of her last tweet was, when her album is coming out, how she was performing on tour - etc. We discussed her all day, every day, and we had a group of people that were doing it similarly for other celebrities. It was heaven for me.
Stan Twitter, back then, was a safe haven for the rejects in real life. In the fandom, we found acceptance, friendship, and a sense of community we were afforded nowhere else. From then on, I lived much of my life on Twitter. I woke up every day, eager to see what the timeline was discussing. I turned on my notifications for everything Demi posted on every social media platform. I now had a circle of people who knew exactly what I was talking about and could engage with me. It rehabilitated me. It was something to take the edge off, and it was a much better alternative than indulging on drugs and partying. Stanning Demi Lovato was my method of choice to forgetting everything around me. That was what got me through high school.
The peak of my stanning for Demi happened upon the release of the tour dates for The Neon Lights Tour. I begged my parents to buy me tickets. I suppose I should update you on the state my room was in. I miiight have gotten a little carried away with the posters. My room started off with a Demi corner, right above the headboard of my bed. I’d started making it after I decided I was going to support her endlessly. I took all of the J-14, Tigerbeat, and Quizfest magazines I’d used to collect when I was younger and sifted through all of them for pictures of Demi. I’d then proceed to rip them out and put them on my wall. It was a practice that lasted throughout the years. That Demi corner had evolved into a Demi wall that admittedly took up 80% of my wall space. I kid you not, it was an entire wall from ceiling to floor, corner to corner with posters and cut-outs of Demi Lovato. May have gone a little overboard. Maybe. You be the judge.
Yikes. Okay, yeah. That’s overkill. But I’ve changed, I promise.
Anyway, Demi had released the tour dates for The Neon Lights Tour, and I needed tickets. I begged my parents for them, and they said no. What? How could they, right? Apparently, they didn’t think it was “healthy” for me to see her, because I was “too obsessed” with her. They thought I worshiped her, and they’d never been receptive to my stance on why it wasn’t that. They wouldn’t budge on it, but I couldn’t live without seeing her by this point. I mean - This was my chance. Why were they getting in the way of my destiny?
My dad eventually gave me an ultimatum: he would buy me the tickets only if I took down every single poster that I’d put up. It seemed outrageous to me; we’re talking two years worth of aesthetics and effort. I refused at first, then I pulled my head out of my ass because I wasn’t giving up the chance to see her in person just to look at her on paper for a little while longer. After a couple breakdowns, I took down my posters and got tickets to The Neon Lights Tour in exchange.
I saw Demi Lovato for the first time in concert on February 21, 2014. I knew she was phenomenal from watching videos all those years, but holy shit. Her live vocals were unmatched. She is one of the top contenders for the best performers of this generation; that is a non-biased opinion, because her live performances are better than the studio versions of her songs. Seriously. Since then, I have seen her in concert 3 times and met her once.
At The Neon Lights Tour, Demi had all-female openers, with Little Mix and Fifth Harmony. I had watched Fifth Harmony on The X Factor (and I was only watching the show in the first place because Demi was a judge, go figure). Ever since that day, Fifth Harmony had pretty much stolen Demi’s thunder, and it happened through the same means. One “Fifth Harmony Funny Moments” after another, until my life was ruined. They’ve been the light of my life and unfortunately overshadowed Demi for a couple of years, but I was still very much in-tune with her.
On July 24, 2018, the most unfortunate event brought her back to the forefront of my life. The world has been continuously cruel to Demi over the years, ridiculing her for her cutting, drug abuse, and her eating disorder, amongst other things. People were always making jokes about her dying because she was admittedly suicidal in the past. In addition to her past drug abuse and mental health concerns, I had grown a thick skin to those callous “jokes.”
On the day of her overdose, I didn’t even believe it. I assumed it was a band of assholes engaging in another awful joke. Trolling, you know. People threw around the word “crackhead” like it was her middle name. I was used to people being insensitive about her past. I was also used to vehemently defending her. Demi had overcome all of her struggles and was dealing with her demons in a much healthier way, or at least that was what Lovatics were led to believe.
She had always been more open with us than required, evidenced by her surprise release of Sober. It shocked us all, but we respected her tremendously for her strength in being able to admit to relapsing. The shock of Sober was nothing compared to the news of her overdose.
I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news; I was in the midst of moving out of my apartment. I hadn’t been on my phone all day, and wasn’t really on Twitter as much in general. My best friend had frantically texted me about Demi, but her messages were lost in the plethora of people who had also informed me about her state. I felt a crushing heaviness in the pit of my stomach. I was short of breath, fearing the worst; Demi was no superhero, she was only human. She wouldn’t evade death , just because she was famous. It was a crippling anxiety that had gripped me so suddenly. I was locked on my phone, stationary, for hours on end, refreshing every few seconds for an update on her condition. Terror. I tried to stay positive, to stay strong, but I couldn’t help thinking of how I would fare if Demi had died. I was in tears, an absolute wreck. I revisited all my years as a Lovatic and remembered all of Demi’s counterparts I could check for updates. It was an awful day for all of us, I’m sure. But I had an extra layer of misguided guilt for deviating from her. Fifth Harmony had distracted me for 4 years, and I was feeling awful that hadn’t paid enough attention to Demi. I felt like it was my fault that I’d missed a sign - although it’s impossible for a fan to know such intimate details. I remember feeling like as a fan, I’d somehow let her down by drifting away. It was an asinine thought process, but it consumed me until I knew that she was okay.
Upon the news of her recovery, I was something like a reformed Lovatic. I played her discography all day, every day, for a week afterward. Something had shifted in me again, just like in 2011, and I had a period of re-devotion to Demi. I followed more Lovatic accounts, I tweeted about her more often, and I was once again comforted by the thought that other people were just as deeply affected as I was. I was 19, then. I was old enough to have a tattoo (I’d already gotten 3), and I had the fleeting thought that used to consume me in high school: I want Demi’s tattoos. Instead of mimicking her tattoos, as I’d always fantasized about, I decided to get one in dedication to her. It was my little way of saying that being a Lovatic is forever, and that I would always be in her corner. I got a symbol of everything Demi Lovato means to me, captured in the tattoo of the Lovatic heart that I now have on my ankle. I love it.
My Lovatic heart tattoo! Tangible permanence. Photographed by Kay Mercer.
Stanning Demi Lovato since 2008 has meant so many different things for me at various times. But one thing I know for sure is that I will always support her and always defend her. Demi Lovato will always have a special place in my heart and I’ll love her eternally. Lovatic forever and always.
