holding space for the Paul Mescal stans ⚔️
it's all Glicked
Kaley on why she was dumbstruck by Paul Mescal’s joint interview with his stan account
I promise if you’ll allow me this one last indulgence, I’ll mute myself from mentioning Paul Mescal for at least a month. 🤞🏻
As part of the (endless, exhausting) Gladiator II press tour, Paul Mescal posted some delightful content with Larissa, the Brazilian woman who runs the stan account @paulmescalpics. (For those uninitiated, stan accounts are social media accounts dedicated to one public figure, who post fawning and frequent updates about the object of their fandom).
In the deluge of content from the Gladiator campaign, this interview didn’t go particularly viral, but it’s lowkey one of the most interesting pieces of pop culture content I’ve watched this year. It’s not without precedent for public figures to interact - and create content - with their top fans, but this feels like one half step further. I’ve never seen a star fly the host of their stan account out to join their press tour, play (and lose!) a game of “who knows who best” to them, and then push it out as content for a campaign.
The clips are endearing and amusing, but underlying Paul and his number one fans’ interactions are fascinating questions about privacy, fame, and hyperfixation. Fan accounts are by definition products of hyperfixation and often veer into unhealthy parasocial behavior *paging ClubChalamet*. But Paul’s earnest gratitude towards Larissa implicitly acknowledges something else: the important role of fandoms in modern pop culture. Fan accounts stoke fandom and fandoms drive cultural relevance, which in turn drives success. Paul’s work has brought him fame and fortune, while Larissa’s (unpaid and typically unacknowledged) work helps bolster that success. It’s lovely to see Paul literally embrace his fandom in this way, especially when it happens right in the midst of him going from breakout to A-list.
And that’s not all this clip represents! It also speaks to the professionalization of fandom (with a significant number of fans sustainably monetizing their fandom through content like podcasts and short form video), and the escalating expectations of fan service. Paul hugging his stan account owner, Timmy crashing his lookalike contest, what’s next, Clairo dressing like an actual lampshade??
Read more on the Brazilian backbone of stan Twitter, a subject of recent fixation for me.
This week in Cool Shiny Culture:
🎸 Megan’s Cool: I recently binged the podcast series Lost Notes: Groupies. Women of the Sunset Strip from the Pill to Punk. Over 9 episodes, host Dylan Tupper Rupert chronicles the iconic (if problematic) history of the teenage girls who ran the sunset strip rock n’ roll scene during the early 1970s. While history knows them simply as “groupies,” this podcast is a more nuanced picture of their influential role as muses, fandom pioneers, and business women. Through interviews with the women (who at the time were girls as young as 13), Dylan paints an empathetic portrait of how these ladies were really driven by a desire to be as close in proximity to the music industry (not the rockstars) as they could get.
🐳 Kaley’s Cool: Here’s a fun fact: I’m afraid of whales (too big, too smart, possibly alien?). Despite this, I’m already hooked on The Good Whale, a new podcast from Serial. It’s about Keiko, the orca in Free Willy, and his journey from captivity to rehabilitation to (hopefully, but no spoilers) release back to the wild. What struck me most was the catalyst behind Keiko’s rescue: kids. Young moviegoers who wrote to WB by the thousands, worried about “Willy” and campaigning for his release. It reminds me of my nephew, who recently rallied a few other 8 year old boys in his class to commandeer a podium and shout “Donald Trump is racist and hates women.” I love the clear-eyed morality of kids: Trump isn’t a good person and whales don’t belong in tanks.
💖 Megan’s Shiny: As an extremely online girlie who saw Wicked last week, I’m of course holding space for the lyrics of defying gravity. The meme is, in my opinion, a direct result of Ariana and Cynthia seeing Blake Lively’s public dragging for her junket behavior and deciding to take the opposite approach: saccharine to a fault. *presses play on America Ferrera’s Barbie monologue*
💚 Kaley’s Shiny: IDK, here’s 3 TikToks I found between content about Wicked that genuinely made me cackle: Chili’s engagement, 6’2” vs 6’4”, I’m Canadian.
The opposite of cynical: an Autumn loving lab named Stella 🍁🍂🐾
This supercut of an adorable dog named Stella’s annual dives into crisp autumn leaves cured my seasonal depression.
Now that Stella has alerted you to the puppy shaped hole in your heart, check out Kaley's new foster pup, Crackerjack who’s very cute and up for adoption!
Must See TT: Denzel’s micdrop advice 📝
Speaking to journalist Zainab Jiwa to promote Gladiator II, Denzel Washington dropped sage advice that’s going viral for the resonance of a particular soundbite: “First part of your life you learn, second part of your life you earn, third part of your life you return.”
Marketing we just want to talk about 🤨: Speaking of Gladiator…
Last week, Paramount did their best to keep up their end of the Glicked promotion circus with an interesting approach to penetrating the monoculture. As we covered previously, Wicked opted for a pop music-like strategy: the stars method dressed across the globe at themed red carpet premieres and hawked merch. Meanwhile, Gladiator II took a more forceful approach to being popular (...lar) with a marketing stunt known as a “roadblock.” To drive buzz and draw attention, Gladiator II aired its final trailer simultaneously across 4,000 (!!) TV, radio, and digital channels. That said, only one of us was aware that this was even a thing… so jury’s out on how successful it was.
If you care to find us… well you know where to look, 😉
Megan & Kaley
P.S. Don’t forget to forward this to your favorite Paul Mescal stan to show you care about their hobbies & interests!