About Monia Ali
Investigating the (d)evolution of fandom.
I was a fan, then I was a stan. I couldn’t tell the difference between the two until I was “exiled” from my primary fandom at the time. I didn’t even come close to understanding the forces at work in both fandom and standom until much, much later, when broader context and perspectives became part of the bigger-picture I was looking at.
When fandom becomes cultic: the One Direction experience
The forces in question are the involvement of industry at large. Corporate interference was an anomaly in my early fandom days, now it is the norm.