(PacificCoastNews and Getty)Last week, Harry Styles — arguably the most lusted-after member of UK import One Direction — was photographed exiting a star-studded gathering in London with a young woman named Pixie Geldof. Though she remains relatively unknown in the States, Geldof is a hipster "it girl" on the other side of the pond, in part because of her famous parentage (she's daughter to the Boomtown Rats' Bob Geldof and the late television presenter Paula Yates), and also because she doesn't wear very much clothing.
She's also Enemy No. 1 to many of Styles' young fans, thanks to the photos. Within hours, Geldof was hit with a number of tweets from One Direction fans, varying from fairly innocuous questions about her relationship with Harry to threats of death. That's right: Some young women have publicly proclaimed their wish to see Pixie dead. The saddest part? The vicious reaction was entirely too predictable.
Any time any woman is spotted in the vicinity of one of the One Direction lads, she's bound to face some serious vitriol. In April, Zayn Malik gave his number to a radio station secretary named Anna Crotti on air during an interview, but she received so much abuse on Facebook in one day she chose not to meet up with him. One girl sent Harry Styles' rumored ex Caroline Flack a picture of a knife late last year (Flack pitifully tweeted, "Hi one direction fans! To clarify. I'm close friends with harry. He's one of the nicest people I know... I don't deserve death threats"). And just last week, Louis Tomlinson was forced to defend his own mother when a fan attacked her on Twitter.
"Can I ask why this is ok?" Tomlinson tweeted.
This troubling behavior is not limited to One Direction fans. A handful of Justin Bieber's so-called Beliebers made headlines when, near the start of the singer's relationship with Selena Gomez in January 2011, they bombarded his girlfriend with rather
unfriendly words on the social networks. "If Selena Gomez breaks Justin Bieber's heart, I will break her face I will kill her without kindness," one punctuation-challenged fan tweeted.
Teenage girls are not the only ones issuing ugliness on Twitter, of course — they're just more likely to do it en masse, in a completely melodramatic fashion. Chalk some of it up to the semi-competitive nature of fandom: Many of these young women want to prove just how devoted they are to their idols, albeit in a most misguided fashion. Teenage girls' obsessions with pop stars have a biological component as well. Neuroscientist
Daniel Levitin found that musical tastes are hard-wired into the brain during the teen years, as permanent neural pathways take root. What's more, listening to familiar music stimulates the release of dopamine — the same neurotransmitter involved in both pleasure and addiction.
And sometimes, these fans are just jealous. The relative anonymity of the Internet makes it easy to spout things they don't actually mean, like many a YouTube commenter. Jackie Augustus, founder of
The Bieber Army and the organizer of a number of Bieber fan buyouts, says the threats are happening less often than they used to. "They've come to accept the fact that Selena is going to be in Justin's life and sending her death threats isn't going to change anything. Don't get me wrong, it still happens...but not as much.
Singer Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez enjoy a day at the beach in Maui, HI. (FlynetPictures.com)more pics »"I think fans behave this way online because they are jealous, and they feel as if sending it online isn't going to make as much of a difference as in person," Augustus added. "They definitely forget [celebrities] are normal people like you and me, but the jealousy and craving of attention is always going to happen within a fan base. You can never make everyone happy."
Thankfully, most pop stars don't take the threats too seriously. Earlier this month, One Direction's Niall Horan shrugged the behavior off in a statement to
Yahoo OMG: "It's a few brave girls sitting behind a computer thinking they can do and say whatever they want . . . I know other celebrities get freaked out by the death threats but I'm really carefree about it."
Most Twitter death threats aren't investigated by the police for exactly that reason: Rarely does anyone take the threats seriously enough to take action — with a couple of exceptions. Earlier this summer, a teenage boy was arrested over a series of abusive tweets directed at Olympic diver Tom Daley. The boy was eventually released without charge, but the UK's director of public prosecutions recently
cited the case as reason to "issue new social media rules on abuse."
"In my view, the time has come for an informed debate about the boundaries of free speech in an age of social media," Starmer warned. "Free speech is fundamental, it's very important it's respected and therefore a criminal prosecution should be reserved for cases that cross a high threshold and the law requires it to be grossly offensive."
But that's in the UK. In the United States, free speech laws offer solid protection to young ladies with laptops and foul mouths. Attorney Marc Harrold, the author of
Observations of White Noise: An Acid Test for the First Amendment, explains, "The First Amendment is generally going to protect any message unless it amounts to
actual threats or encourages others to commit a violent act."
"Generally speaking, I've read a few of these tweets, they're just bluster or bragging with little chance of being carried out, and therefore they're probably not going to be criminalized."
Yes, fans can tweet on with immunity — but they're better off just growing up.
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