Tegan Quin exposes the dark side of stan culture

Those are some strong words, but then Quin has very good reason to feel so passionately about the state of the fandom union. It is earned outrage, as audiences will see displayed and unwound in the frequently shocking and utterly absorbing documentary Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan & Sara.The film sees the singer alongside filmmaker Erin Lee Carr (Britney Vs. Spears, Mommy Dead and Dearest) embarking on a years-long investigation into a fan turned catfish known as “Fegan” (fake Tegan). Fegan has spent more than a decade terrorizing Tegan and Sara and using the former’s identity to manipulate and emotionally torture their fans. Along the way, the very real Tegan is forced to confront both victims and perpetrators in the hunt to discover who hacked her personal files and attacked them — as well as the people closest to them — publicly. This person shared intimate details, photos, unreleased demos, private family medical information, and more with the world, and generally robbed the duo of a kind of innocence and feeling of safety, both in their spaces with fans and with their closest inner circle — and even romantic relationships.

Fanatical’s premise sounds like a nail-biting true crime story and a whodunit. What it ultimately proves to be is more of a whydunit and a treatise on a larger societal problem, one egged on by a culture that encourages toxic parasocial relationships. Spurring these conversations is a major factor in why Quin decided that now was the time to open up and tell the world about this genuinely frightening chapter of her life.

The Quins, who’ve always shared a deep connection to their fans, have in recent years increasingly shared pieces of their histories in intimate projects that go beyond their music. With their memoir-turned-TV-seriesHigh School, their graphic novelJunior High, and their Words + Music pieceUnder Our Control, Tegan and Sara have propped open the door to previously private parts of their lives — but always with a purpose in mind.

“[With] High School and Junior High, the purpose was to create LGBTQ content to hopefully reach a younger audience, or anyone who was searching for it,” recalls Quin. “With Fanatical there’s a desire to have this reach fans and regular human beings, and to have them ask the hard questions they ask themselves, [like] are they currently having a parasocial relationship with a famous person and band? Are they projecting or imparting feelings, thoughts, emotions, and experiences into a celebrity or someone they don’t actually know? What does their behavior online look like? I hoped that people would watch it, and even just on a baseline level, would say, ‘Man, it’s maybe not nice to say shitty things under a celebrity’s Instagram post, because they’re actually real people, and they feel like shit when they have to see that, and it drives them offline.”

When Quin initially sat down to write the story, her intent was for it to possibly become a podcast; however, it quickly took on a life of its own with [producer] Jenny Eliscu and [director] Erin Lee Carr coming on board and developing it into a film. Its timing feels serendipitous as it drops this week just as we’re in the midst of a larger cultural conversation around how fans interact — and have expectations from — the celebrities they adore. While fandom isn’t innately problematic, when lines grow fuzzy and disappear, or the love turns to resentment, it can become not just unhealthy but dangerous. It’s something that Chappell Roan has notably been speaking out about in recent months, a conversation that Quin not only relates to but applauds.

“First of all, I love Chappell, and I think it’s so amazing that she’s speaking out the way that she is. I think this younger generation in general — then, of course, the celebrity or music or entertainment side of this younger generation — is so amazing. They catapult themselves onto social media with like, brazen [confidence], no media training, no filter, and it’s amazing,” she says. “I think what’s happening with Chapell right now is the latest version of taking a normal person and then tossing them into another universe. It’s unnatural, it’s sickening, what happens when you become that famous that quickly.”

It’s something that’s been on the minds of both Quin sisters lately. “Sara said something recently that was really interesting,” recounts Quin. “There has been a lot of focus on female artists, specifically like Mitski, boygenius, Hayley Williams, and Chappell Roan in the last handful of years, talking about how overwhelming and scary [it can be]. There’s been this narrative that came out that both our ears have pricked up about, profiling how all the queer artists are being attacked by their queer audience.” While those conversations are certainly valid and essential, they really are just the tip of the iceberg, as Quin is quick to point out.

“It feels like maybe a teeny bit yucky,” she continues. “Because Justin Bieber’s been screaming for people to listen to him and stop hunting him and stalking him and ruining his life for years. Katy Perry wore an Adidas tracksuit for, like, three years in public because then it made the photos that the paparazzi were trying to sell less valuable.”

While on paper it’s quite obvious that all of this is profoundly problematic, it’s been so normalized in practice that it’s seen as a victimless crime — but that’s far from the truth, and it’s far from uncommon. “This is literally what we do to the people we love,” explains Quin. “We have a systemic problem when we have a culture that rewards you for curating intensely intimate and inappropriate information for strangers on the internet. We reward people for telling us too much. The algorithm rewards you for showing too much. And certainly from the music side of things — record companies, publishers, streamers, touring companies — everybody’s like, ‘Get on social media, say more about yourself, give the more intimate portraits’. We’re being encouraged to build these parasocial relationships. So, I just think we have a bigger problem than we know how to deal with right now.”

But the Quins realize they’re not powerless, and through Fanatical they’re reclaiming some of their agency by opening up and revealing a story that has thrived in the dark, especially because up until the day of our interview, Quin reveals, fake Tegan remains active in their catfishing endeavors. “There are still people who are grappling with the reality of this and are unsure if it’s me or not, and fake Tegan was still responding to some of the victims. So, I just hoped that the movie would blow up fake Tegan and they’d stop doing it,” she reveals. Because the truth is, people have and continue to be hurt by their catfishing, including the Quins. “It makes me sad when people approach me and are like, ‘Do you know who I am? We’ve been talking online for years.’ It’s sad. It makes me feel sick. It makes me feel bad. I think that I just hoped that by telling the story, we could change those things,” Quin says.

Making the film has offered both Quin and the victims a surprising amount of catharsis. “A whole new buffet of positives and negatives came out of it. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is kind of cathartic. Oh my god, maybe this could be cathartic for the other victims. Oh, wow. It is cathartic for them. Oh, wow, they’re all carrying grief, too. And they’re carrying trauma.’ A lot of them were involved in things that were really sketchy and many people apologized for some of their behaviors, and that was really helpful to me to move past some of the things that had happened to us,” she shares.

It also gave Quin a chance to unburden herself of many things she’s held back from saying in the past. “I definitely feel like that’s partly because we’re 25 years in, and we kind of don’t give a shit anymore. For years, we felt silenced by the culture, by our industry, by the power that the fan has. We’re supposed to just be good, we’re supposed to just be kind and grateful and never be entitled, and definitely never express any sort of exhaustion or fatigue,” she shares. “All of a sudden it’s nice to be in a film going, ‘Do you notice the barricades and the security? There’s a reason why those are there. You’re a huge mass of people, many of whom, who knows what you would do.’ I think the vast majority of people are well-meaning, but people do crazy things and they do things that are really wild sometimes.”

It also gave her a greater sense of empathy for both the victims, the perpetrators — and those who were a bit of both, all of whom Quin says she wants to protect from feeling villainized, “including fake Tegan,” she adds. “I have a lot of compassion for everybody, even fake Tegan, honestly. Life’s hard. The world’s hard. Navigating this is hard. We all have issues.”

It’s an incredibly empathetic and generous response, but one that came at the end of many difficult conversations, particularly with those who straddled the line of injured party and offender, particularly ones who still didn’t seem to understand how painful and violating the catfishing was for Quin herself. “My email has been hacked, my world has been upended. I was afraid — and to say that to some of these people and have them react in a way that was very shocking. Many of the victims were like, “Yeah? Why? You’re rich and famous and popular and like, you probably don’t even care.’ [I was like,] ‘What!?’ That never got easier to hear,” she recalls. And yet, she has hopes that this film will be healing for everyone involved — including fake Tegan.

“I’m hoping the movie is a gentle, ethical, compassionate look at people who made some mistakes or some decisions and got hurt or hurt other people,” she explains.

Quin was ultimately able to get some of the — if not every — answer she set out to find. Life is rarely as neat and tidy as we would like. “Once we sort of figured it out, like, ‘Oh shit, it’s this person.’ I just felt a lot of compassion for them. I was like, ‘This is a complicated character. This is a person with a lot of stuff.’ The common denominator among everyone that comes into the story is that they were really young and they were queer, and I think I have maybe a little excess compassion because of that,” she reflects, adding that she is ready to move on. “I would love to talk to them. I’d love to talk to the person who I think is fake Tegan as fake Tegan. I want them to know they’re absolved in a way. I want them to know that I’ve forgiven them, and I can move on. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Quin may know who is behind the years-long hacking and who created so much turmoil in both sisters’ lives — and that of their loved ones — but the larger mission continues. “It’s bigger than a person. It’s the psychology of human beings and loneliness and queerness and the Internet and parasocial relationships, and it’s just so big,” she concludes.

Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara is streaming now on Hulu. Watch the trailer below.