Stan

[shipperx]

Okay, I had to look this up because I've seen this beginning to pop up (repeatedly) and (because I am too old for this shit to be 'in the know') I wanted to understand what this meant beyond squinting and guessing from context:

From Urban Dictionary:

Stan

Based on the central character in the Eminem song of the same name, a "stan" is an overzealous maniacal fan for any celebrity or athlete.

I guess I can see the Stan -> Eminem connection but...erm... is this enough of a deviation from 'fan' (whose origin is "fanatic") to merit its on term based on a celebrity who is already aging out of fashion?

Comments

[quinara]

The song connection is very interesting; I'm not sure where I thought it came from, but it seemed like just a piece of vocab that appeared along the way. Similarly fen - I always just understood that as a collective noun for people in a particular fandom (eg. Buffy[verse] fen). You learn something new every day...

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

Well, we learn from the nooks and crannies of the fandoms we run in. I always understood fen was a collective noun for the crazies, whereas the normals were still just fans. I've always thought 'stan' was a negative othering word ('cause of the song). Fen, same thing but I could be wrong about that.

[rahirah]

'Fen' originated in the 1940s or 1950s in science fiction fandom, and was simply a collective noun for fans, a humorous play on other irregular English plurals. It might have originally been a typo made in a fanzine that got picked up as slang, but I don't recall for sure. It was used by the convention-going, zine-writing fans for themselves, and was not considered negative.