At fourteen years old, I had a teenage crush. Just like many generations teenage girls before me must’ve had crushes on famous people. But in 2013, when I was head over heels in love with the guitar player of the band 5 Seconds Of Summer Instagram had just begun its big entrance into the world. How did the upcoming of this types of social media affect my experience with the first feeling of love as a teenager?
Getting to know them through Vine
It went the usual way these things go. My best friend was in love with the drummer of the band and casually I fell in love with the guitar player. We talked on and on about those boys like we’d known them our whole lives. We could spend the whole day watching video’s of them fooling around and doing funny things. The band players uploaded their fare share of video’s on a platform called Vine where you could loop video’s of 6,5 seconds. These video’s often had funny purposes and we recalled those jokes in our daily life. This felt like a very personal interaction to us, with boys we had never actually seen and who lived on the other side of the planet. Suddenly we ‘knew’ small details of their behavior and how they interacted with one another. It felt like we were part of their friend group and their video’s often cheered me up when I was feeling sad or lonely.
Such a video that was posted by the band players
@bestof5sosvideos on Instagram at 14th of February 2016, https://www.instagram.com/p/BBxqXBVSeyY/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Sharing adoration
Fan accounts were a common thing for teenagers to express their love to a celebrity, they still even are. Owners of such an account have got many followers and are often times anonymous. They post pictures or video’s sharing adoration of the person that they’re fan of. These go accompanied by captions full of love and often hashtags to make themselves visible on someone’s feed. These fan accounts make a space where you are all on the same basis; wanting to share your love for someone. So, even when I went to high school and my friend who was a fan with me wasn’t everyday by my side anymore I could still feed my passion for 5 Seconds Of Summer by going on Instagram and sending her all the memes, video’s and pictures made about them. We could still relate to one another through these posts. In this case, I didn’t need anyone around me anymore to be a fan with because of all the communities that were built on social media platforms. I could maintain my love for these boys until I eventually grew out of it.
Social media making things easier
So wrapping things up a bit, social media platforms made my life as a fan a whole lot easier. I could ‘see’ the band whenever I wanted through their video’s, I could laugh with peers about them whenever I wanted, I could look at their photo’s whenever I wanted and I could talk about them whenever I wanted. It made the intensity of the ‘love’ for a celebrity a lot bigger compared to when I could just share it with that one friend from primary school. I could express my adoration for them to more people, at more times and much intenser.
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