Marina Joyce And The Fan Phenomenon: Conspiracies And Kidnappings
A few months ago, a British YouTuber named Marina Joyce He uploaded a video titled “Date outfit ideas” to the Internet. Technically, the content of this video was no different from the others that she had already made public and that had helped her gain a few hundred thousand subscribers. However, there was something strange that caught the attention of some of the audience.
Within hours, some of Joyce’s followers began leaving comments drawing attention to the attitude and the apparent psychological state of the youtuber She seemed absent, some said; Others directly claimed that she showed the symptoms of a drugged person.
It was the beginning of one of the cases in which the fan phenomenon was going to be shown in a more spectacular way and massively.
Stories were quickly created entirely based on speculation. Some users came to the conclusion that the YouTuber was in danger, kidnapped by someone, and that I was trying to send an encrypted message without his captor or captors realizing that he was asking his followers for help.
In this way, very detailed theories were put forward about how Marina Joyce’s partner I could have kidnapped her, or another unknown person, or directly the Islamic State. Other people created other equally unfounded theories, according to which Joyce had severe mental disorders or was planning to commit suicide.
All this he did, among other things, that the police go to visit the young woman’s house after insistent calls from fans and, furthermore, that the hashtag #savemarinajoyce was a worldwide trending topic in just a few hours. Collaterally, the video that started the suspicions surpassed 23 million views, and the number of subscribers to his YouTube channel skyrocketed.
But things did not stop when the first objective signs arrived that Marina Joyce was fine, including statements from the police. The young woman’s fans had created his own account of the events that he fed himself, and any objective data that did not fit with this was manipulated so that it did not deny the legend that had been created around the YouTuber. Reality was forced to fit fiction.
The problem was that not even Marina Joyce herself could retain credibility about what was happening in her own life.
When the fan is part of the problem
When the YouTuber claimed to be fine from one of her social media profiles, a large number of her fans did not believe her. They continued to find signs of the danger that Marina Joyce was in, searching through your messages, videos and photos
Some were convinced that the young woman’s body was full of bruises and wounds caused by her captor, and others were looking for coded messages left as clues by her, as if they were obvious signs that there was something she was hiding. A lot of information about the YouTuber was being disseminated and analyzed as a way to learn more about her intimate life.
There were many who said they wanted defend Marina Joyce from a danger that only existed in her own imagination However, by doing so they were violating the privacy of the young woman, and nullifying her ability to use her social networks normally.
What had happened?
The obsession with celebrities and the Internet
The fan phenomenon is not new: it has existed since welfare societies and the mass media began to produce famous people whose image was disseminated by the media and, at the same time, a sufficient number of audiences with free time to become obsessed. with those celebrities.
However, the increasingly widespread use of the Internet has made the fan phenomenon take on a new dimension. The case of Marina Joyce is an example of this.
Before, there was no possibility for an influencer to connect with his or her audience in real time, but it was also not possible for fans to be in contact with each other constantly and massively.
In the case of the myths about Marina Joyce, what occurred was a mixture of several psychological phenomena.
Creating the conspiracy myth
First there is the obsession: The fact that someone is famous makes many other people spend more time thinking about them, and this increases the chances that someone will come up with a bizarre connection between two ideas based on the slightest hints. It’s a matter of probability.
Second is herding, a phenomenon studied in social psychology. Because of the large number of fans that a person can have, it is possible that from a small spark a true herd movement can be born that is not based on what is directly observable in reality: It only rests on fantasies and speculations
Interestingly, thousands of people can agree on a surreal version of events without anyone knowingly trying to deceive them. The delirious explanations about what could be happening feed each other.
