Broadway Facebook Fan Groups (Fandom/Obsession) — Page 2

The 'young theatre fan group community' - or whatever we want to call it - need to realize that their actions are incredibly disrespectful to the actors, creatives and crew of the industry they admire. I remember when the Mean Girls fans were flooding The Band's Visit's instagram with hatefully toned messages about how it didn't deserve the Tony's it received and how disgusting it was then. I worry this is going to be a pattern every season.

Being a young adult who has always had theatre in their life, I have to admit the rise of the entitled attitudes among theatre fans has somewhat alienated me from one of my favorite hobbies.

TobiasRagg said: "TobiasRagg said: "Yeah, they really are harmless. I’ve just never seen fandom to that level and I had to remove myself before it completely ruined the show for me.

There’s about 50 memes posted every day, a guy who is pretending his last name is Maitland because it gets him attention in the group and posting at least once a week “I’m so lucky I have this last name”, and a week later, there’s still Tony Award bashing. It was laughable at first and now it’s just sad."

And if anyone wants to relay to the group that I’m not just being an a**hole or “toxic”about theperson mentioned above, that’d be awesome. There’s literally a link to the theatre group he’s apart of on his Facebook that shows his real name on a cast announcement.

I may be blunt, but I’m not a liar.
And I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, I was just trying to show how this level of obsession is clearly making theactors and people involved in these shows uncomfortable. And clearly someone took it too far and felt the need to threaten the cast.

I’ve pretty much said all I need to say about the matter at this point and my heart goes out to the cast. They enjoy meeting their fans as much as we enjoy meeting them. Very sad that they feel too unsafe to stagedoor."

People really need to learn to relax on facebook. Like I know there's plenty of people on this forum who are just as bad, but at least they're not posting every ten minutes. But it's more about the that line Alex was talking about - a lot of these people border into obsession over this show. Changing your name to match the show isn't really even obsessive since it's a thing people have been doing for years.

Anyways... I hope the cast has a great show tonight and everyone remains safe. It looks like it might be a few days before stage dooring happens.

Not something from the group we’re talking about, but if you go on Alex Brightman’s tweet about how obsession is unnecessary because “We’re all people”, some lady replied:

“ If you're all just people...why don't any of you ever respond to fan mail? I was raised differently I guess. If someone sent me a gift...I would say thank you.”

I know that he’s not stagedooring tonight because of a threat, but I don’t blame him if he never wants to again. He doesn’t owe us anything but a great performance. That’s where it ends. He doesn’t need to reply to every piece of fan mail and he doesn’t need to show up at the stage door every night. He’s not obligated to do any of that. If I were treated the way he’s being treated, I’d never show my face outside the theatre.

It’s so disrespectful. People need to grow up.

Updated On: 6/19/19 at 09:20 PM

In my opinion the thing that bothers me the most about these "stans" and people who cross the line into obsession with shows is when they call actors their parents. It's creepy and not right.

cdf1983 said: "...Things that border on the creepy obsessive side - calling actors who aren't your friends mom and dad. Like I get the joke behind it, I've got a couple friends I jokingly call mom and dad because they actually will call me to check up on me, etc.

It's just weird.

Edit: The are all genuinely good people, they just have to learn how not to cross that line into the weird zone."

You're not being cute. It's not funny. It's creepy! I don't get people who do this.

It is scary the amount of people on that page who direct messaged the cast once they found out that the show was closing. This happened even when it was just a rumor.... Now they are onto the Tik Tok stage, and now trying to figure out how to keep the show open. Some are suggesting to get Hugh Jackman to take a stand with Beetlejuice...