In August, pop artist Chappell Roan used TikTok to address her concerns with recent fan behavior. After blowing up seemingly overnight in April, the “Good Luck, Babe!” and “HOT TO GO!” singer has dealt with whiplash into the popstar scene, expressing how she feels uncomfortable with strangers approaching her on the street, receiving strange messages on social media, and even dealing with stalkers finding out where her parents live and her sister works. 

Roan’s TikToks calling out the “crazy type of behavior” received over 14 million views each, with many fans echoing her desire to be left alone in public. However, some criticized Roan saying that fans of her music deserve the right to speak with her or ask for a picture when passing by.

For Roan, who had been working in a donut shop as recently as 2022, the catapult into stardom gave her very little time to secure her and her loved ones’ personal information, allowing “fans” to locate and post incredibly sensitive information online. In contrast, pop superstar Taylor Swift began her career at age 14, giving her 20 years to amass a team of publicists and agents to help control her privacy. 

Celebrities with long careers like Swift have it down—their teams know how to ensure they’re seen only when and how they want to be. However, not even the hardest-to-find celebrities are immune to unwanted exposure, with celebrity gossip and rumor pages like Instagram account DeuxMoi or tabloid site Page Six using anonymous tips and pictures sent by users to expose various aspects of a celebrity’s private life. 

From where a celebrity was seen eating lunch in Los Angeles to pictures of another pushing their toddler in a stroller in New York, exposé publications are becoming an invasion of privacy. These statements and images can reveal private information, including a celebrity’s exact location. They can even push celebrities’ children into the limelight, when many celebrity parents may try to prevent their children from overexposure.

Sometimes, the information spread by these publications is just blatantly wrong. In Nov 2023, DeuxMoi alleged that Swift and her then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn had gotten secretly married and had a miscarriage in attempting to have a child together—something that is very serious and potentially private to any couple trying to have a child—and later rescinded the rumor and issued an apology to Swift and the public for spreading false information.

So what causes the obsession with celebrities’ lives that makes these publications so popular and trusted by pop culture fans? It’s the excess amount of celebrity content available to the public that has allowed fans to foster a parasocial relationship with their idols. Fans gain a sense of hopefulness that they will be able to get closer emotionally, and even physically, to their favorite celebrities, just based on getting to know them through a screen.

While it’s unlikely that celebrities will ever be able to simply coexist beside the average person in an overwhelmingly online and pop culture-obsessed world, it’s important we at least give them and their families the common courtesy to go about their day-to-day lives off-duty like the rest of us. 

This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on September 26, 2024