It’s been incredibly challenging for musicians to find that right balance of connecting to their fans and also protecting themselves
Pop artists like Lana Del Rey, Selena Gomez and Charli XCX have weaned themselves off social media, but what about fans? Photos: Neil Krug (Lana Del Rey), Courtesy of Interscope (Gomez), Emily Lipson (Charli XCX)
Charli XCX recently was all over the news, and it wasn’t for her upcoming album Crash, but rather for her announcement via Twitter that she was going to take a break from social media to take better care of her mental health. “I have been feeling like I can’t do anything right at the moment,” she proclaimed. “I’ve been grappling quite a lot with my mental health the past few months and obviously it makes negativity and criticism harder to handle when I come across it – and of course, I know this is a common struggle for most people in this day and age,” she added.
The singer follows a long line of young musicians recently that have also exercised restraint including Camila Cabello, Ariana Grande, and Shawn Mendes. While most have returned or put their teams in charge of posting follow-ups, some have simply not returned.
Lana Del Rey deactivated all her social media accounts in September 2021 after she shared a video with fans, “Hi guys, I just wanted to let you know that tomorrow, we are going to be deactivating our social media accounts, my social media accounts and that is simply because I have so many other interests and other jobs I’m doing that require privacy and transparency.”
The singer added, “I’m still present and I love what I do and I’m absolutely here for the music, and I’m also just going on some different endeavors. And I want to say thank you so much for all the support, and I do hope you like the record (her album Blue Bannister released the next month). It’s a compilation of older songs and a few newer songs, some written by family and friends and mostly old collaborators, and there will probably always be more to come.”
Of course, the most notable musician to leave social media has got to be the original breaking news story and that was Selena Gomez. Gomez has admitted that once she reached over 100 million followers, she “freaked out.” It led the performer to take multiple extended breaks from social media, aware of the weight her posts and her messages carried as well as the negativity and criticism that kind of following also permits.
It’s been incredibly challenging for musicians to find that right balance of connecting to their fans and also protecting themselves. Digital burnout, however, is not just something artists feel – it is also something becoming increasingly more common with fans too.
Petty wars between two musicians becomes a West Side Story-style battle where fans are pressured to choose sides and spew hate on the other artist. Song choices, wardrobe choices, music videos, touring schedules, even personal opinions are scrutinized and almost weaponized to a point that no matter how positive a story, the comments will likely include at least a significant percentage of shade.
To troll is exhausting, but more times than not, fans themselves are now getting tired of the negativity. While Selena Gomez or Charli XCX can take a break, what about the fan that ends up writing something positive about an artist’s song but then an avalanche of comments flood their personal inbox where they are told their opinion is wrong or it doesn’t matter – they don’t matter.
There is real reason to worry that fans are taking far longer breaks than musicians themselves. At the end of the day, artists need social media as a way to connect to their base. In an ever-evolving digital world, artists have to, whether they like it or not, engage in new modes of technology to find new revenue streams for their work. Fans, on the other hand, do not have to carry that loyalty with them. They can choose to listen to an artist but not follow them on social media anymore, even if they opt to stay in on those platforms. They can disengage and the only people whose metrics get compromised are the artists.
There is no easy answer for “Where do we go from here?” As a writer and someone that also uses social media to draw attention to my work, it’s a challenge. I want to have as many platforms as I can manage to share what I’m doing. I know to some extent that the more likes, views and retweets perhaps lead to more clicks, but do they?
In the past few years, K-Pop has emerged as the bulldozer when it comes to social media armys. They literally jump at the mere name inclusion of any artist within their world. A tweet about Rihanna, Kanye, Drake and Taylor Swift combined won’t deliver the level of traction a series of post by BTS or Blackpink will garner. Now does that actually mean those other artists aren’t as relevant? Or does it just mean certain teams have stronger social media presences.
It’s an important question to ask because Charli XCX by no means comes even close to receiving the same level of social media scrutiny that a K-Pop star does, yet her burnout is real. Still the pressure placed on artists, fans and everyone in social media in general is towards garnering more views and likes, and even more importantly, comments and engagement. But how much is real? How much is actually from real fans? How much is enough? How much of it matters?
I often ask this question myself. I will go weeks without logging onto social media and then there are days when I will post 3 or 4 new posts in a single day. Some days I will check the likes or who viewed my stories. Other days I won’t care. At the end of the day, does it matter? In the grand scheme of life, probably no. But then again, I’m not a musician that relies of social media as an extended sleeve. But I am someone in the creative space and after spending years building a loyal audience, I can’t just leave them right? And if I do, will they come back?
Charli XCX is lucky that her leaving Twitter became a news story. It actually garnered the singer more attention and every story included the fact (including this one) that her album is releasing soon. The reach her quitting social media story got was frankly more than her consistently being on social media delivered. Lana Del Rey still managed to have a successful launch to her album because press knew they had to cover the album as there was no social media to cover it. Selena Gomez, for all her ups and downs, continues to return to social media, whether it is promoting her beauty line, TV series or music.
Meanwhile, fans continue to follow until they can. Some eventually grow out of the following phase, some experience burnout and just leave, while others just view from afar. Regardless, the impact of negativity seems to have an equal impact on fans and the stars, especially when we see that for the former, there often tends to be very little upside to participating in any such engagement.
It’s hard to predict where things will go from here: Do we see more fatigue? How real will it really be? Will the negativity matter if the likes and views are astronomical? The only thing I know for certain is, this article, if tagged with the hashtag K-Pop and @bts_official, maybe will get more likes and views, and will hopefully drown out the hate.