Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, by Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci.
I am the 1975 fan that real fans hate. —Kate
This past year, especially over family holidays, I’ve done my best to get my parents on TikTok. I send them videos I think they would like in hopes of curating a ready-made For You Page that spares them from the less palatable parts of the algorithm. But what I’ve learned from my own TikTok use is that you only have so much control over your own feed—and maybe even your own tastes. Sometimes, TikTok just decides you’re gonna like something. This month, TikTok decided I would become obsessed with The 1975.
Until a few weeks ago, I could not have told you the name of a single 1975 song. If I had seen a picture of Matty Healy, my eyes must have passed right over him. But as the air got colder, something changed. The band is currently hopping across North America on the At Their Very Best tour following the release of their latest album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language. In the audience, hundreds of phones are capturing videos of Healy’s on-stage choreography, full of thrusts and sulks and coy smiles and playful disdain. I must have started watching them—I don’t know, I think I blacked out—and was soon served videos of past concerts, interview snippets, slideshows about Healy’s dating history, and screen recordings of his chaotic Instagram Stories. Somewhere along the way, a straw broke the camel’s back, and by last week, my For You Page looked like this:
I’m down bad. The only time I’m not listening to The 1975 is when I’m giving myself a self-mandated break from their music so I don’t accidentally start hating it. And despite the fact that it appears as if Healy has fumbled the bag in every single relationship with some of the hottest women I’ve ever seen, I find myself contemplating if, given the opportunity, I’d leave my long-term boyfriend for him.
I had been pulled into a very dense, but insular, community. My group chat could not relate to my passion. When I tried putting the band on at Friendsgiving, someone covertly switched the playlist. But then, lo and behold, I received this text over the holiday:
The 1975 had breached containment.
What did it appears to be a video from Friday. Healy, performing in Las Vegas, brought a fan on stage during “Robbers” and kissed her. This is a stunt he used to pull back in the more chaotic early days of the band, and its return caused a frenzy in the fandom that was so powerful, The 1975 spilled over into everyone else’s feeds.
“I feel that’s it’s necessary for my mental health to come on here and just point out the startling way that my algorithm has switched to The 1975,” Annmarie Tendler posted on TikTok on Saturday night. “And this happened quickly…it was just like three days ago. Matty Healy is the only person that I see on my For You Page.”
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From what I can tell, The 1975’s stan culture originated on Tumblr. And TikTok is like Tumblr with an algorithm. It’s not only a powerful place for fandom, but one where the power of that fandom feeds into itself. The more passionate and dedicated a fan group, the more likely they trip the algorithm into broadening their reach. It snowballs until, much to their chagrin, the thing diedhard fans hold most dear is now mainstream, and they only have their own enthusiasm to blame.
What’s unsettling to me is how little a role my own consciousness may have played in me coming to like this band. If I had heard one of The 1975’s songs in a grocery store or at a party, would I have given it a second thought? Or do I only like them because I was relentlessly bombarded with TikToks until I finally admitted defeat? The fan lore and history that took years for that community to build were absorbed by me in a matter of hours. I can tell you who Healy has dated, which songs are about who, his history with drug use, and what to shout at concerts and when without having even so much as Googled his name.
Anyway, I’d love suggestions for any TikTok accounts or videos you think parents would enjoy so I can pass them along—with the caveat that they’re probably just going to get served 1975 videos, anyway.
this is the most relatable thing I’ve ever read