How Autograph Tattoos Become Stanning’s Definitive Sign

In the early days of online fan communities, stan culture, as we call it now, was a niche experience, internal and difficult to explain. It was built by people who were outside of conventional art and media, outside of the real world. the privacy and anonymity of the Internet made fanaticism easily understandable within the walls of those communities, but deeply obscure to everyone else. the most influential artists of the time made music for losers and marginalized people. You wouldn’t dare wear your merchandise to school.

However, in the last decade, as the entire world has migrated online, culture stan is the mainstream. Participating in stan culture, critically or not, has the same ring as participating in political movements or cultural scenes, or any other ideology of the day. Social capital and popularity can be gained online by pushing the boundaries of acceptability in this particular arena, and behavior that was once considered extreme in the 2010s is now much more accepted as sincere and sentimental. These tattoo videos get hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views, and the comments are largely filled with support and envy.

That envy has fans divided over how protective they should be of their tattoos. Unlike an autographed photograph, a tattoo can be replicated. In fact, the tattoos themselves are replicas. Fidan came into conflict when his Tame Impala tattoo video She went viral on TikTok because there were comments asking if she could post a high-definition photo so they could take it to her tattoo artists. “I thought, ‘I waited five hours to get the tattoo and I’m not going to send it to you.’”