Slightly later on a Saturday than usual, but here's this week's exploration of words and phrases I've noticed entering the language over recent weeks and months.
Those of you with a taste for old school hip-hop may well remember an Eminem song from way back in 2000 called ‘Stan’. It features vocals sampled from British singer Dido and was the third single taken from ‘The Marshall Mathers’ LP. The song tells the story of a person named Stanley "Stan" Mitchell (voiced by Eminem) who claims to be Eminem's biggest fan. He writes the rapper several fan letters, and over three verses, he becomes more and more obsessive. When he doesn’t get a reply, he gets even angrier until finally, he creates a voice recording of himself while driving his car on the highway, totally out of his head on drink and drugs. He reveals that his pregnant girlfriend is tied up in the trunk as he approaches a bridge, and realizes just before driving off it that he has no way to send the tape to Eminem. The fourth verse features Eminem as himself, writing back to Stan and attempting to reason with him. He urges Stan to seek professional help, telling him about a story he heard on the news about a man who had driven his car off a bridge in a drunken stupor, killing himself and his pregnant girlfriend. Eminem then comes to the realization that this man was actually Stan. Scary, sobering stuff.
What you might not have realized, though, is that over the last 20 years, the word STAN has taken on a life of its own. It’s most common use is as a noun to describe obsessive fans. For example:
Dylan O’Brien is the only actor ever I’m a stan of.
He has millions of stans who obsess about him and call him a rock god.
Half my students these days seem to be obsessive BTS stans.
Beyonce has a powerful stan following.
There’s a fine line between being a fan and being a bit of a stan.
Being a stan of a driver / team and not recognizing any of their mistakes is the most annoying behavior by an F1 fan!
You also see certain stars and celebrities described as STAN ATTRACTORS. In other words, they’re the kind of people who attract obsessive, possibly even unhinged, fans. There will be countless STAN ACCOUNTS on social media – accounts that are devoted to sharing info and pictures and videos and memes about a particular star. These are a huge thing on what’s known as STAN TWITTER, where extreme fanatics obsessed with particular stars can get together with like-minded souls, unified by a desire to see their chosen celebrity flourish.
Interestingly, while these uses could obviously refer to the Eminem character, there have also been suggestions that STAN is a portmanteau word, made by putting together STALKER and FAN. Also noteworthy is the fact that STAN has already verbed. If you STAN someone in the public eye, you shower love on them, often for something specific, unexpected, or commendable that they’ve done, so you get examples like this.
I stan Harry Styles for being brave enough to wear dresses.
Who doesn’t stan an atist who credits other artists?
In this house, we stan Daniel Craig.
Just when I didn’t think I could stan her any more, she comes out with this!
I’ve been stanning them ever since they first hit the scene.
