(On Music Fans and Idols and Their Detractors)
I’ve already written in the past similar articles concerning the so-called music-idol phenomenon. However, the ongoing Justin Bieber fever, which to me is nothing new, still unpleasantly surprises many people. Or, are these people just a bunch of haters or frustrated and insecure closet wannabes?
I mean, if you’re the type whose passions include music, film, and other forms of showbusiness entertainment, then you should have realized long ago that the thousands of fans worldwide—mostly teens, but include also many adults—screaming for Justin Bieber is not a new occurrence. It happens every time there are new rising showbiz personalities—add to that, some media people’s sensationalizing them. Music idols have always been out there in the entertainment scene—since perhaps the time records, the radio, and the TV became commercialized. Screaming teens—girls and boys (yes, including boys! and nothing’s wrong with this)—have always been there, admiring the likes of Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, New Kids on the Block, The Moffats, Hanson, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers, and the list goes on and on. You may even ask your parents or your grandparents if they were themselves once screaming fans during their teenage years; and I bet many of them indeed were, at some points in their lives, unless they had boring lives when they were young.
So, I wonder why to this day many people remain dismissive of such adoring fans. What’s wrong with a person’s screaming her lungs out when she hears her favorite songs; more so, when she sees her favorite stars? To me, that is normal and common. In fact, at my age, seeing my all-time favorite stars live in concerts or listening to my favorite songs can still move me to tears or charge my adrenaline up.
So, if you’re a teenager and feel like screaming when you see your favorite star; go on, don’t be shy, scream your heart out. It’s far more healthful than repressing your emotions and projecting these in negative ways. As long as your actions do not harm, disrupt, or disturb, then I think you’re just fine.
More often than not, people who negatively criticize fans or enthusiasts who have the courage and individuality to express their passions proudly and loudly are the same people who don’t have interesting hobbies of their own; or, they are simply self-centered, thus failing to empathize with the excitement fans feel when they see their favorite stars or hear their favorite songs.
Final Note
Haters can mock fans and their music idols all they can, saying that the adoration of such teen fans will disappear as they grow up and that the light of such “overnight” stars will eventually die out; but the fact remains: It’s better to have once become a young one idolizing a star or to have once become popular and the idol of a thousand fans than to have grown up into a cynic adult who is always ready to ridicule the ways of the young, forgetting that s/he too was a teenager once.
