The turn-of-the-century internet was organized not around content selected for us by algorithms, but around shared interests that we sought out. Whether you loved a band or were devoutly religious or had questions about your sexuality, someone had made an AOL chatroom or a message board or a LiveJournal community where you could meet people like you. It was often invigorating and life-affirming, especially if you felt lonely in the real world. It seems like the exact opposite of today’s personality- and ad-driven internet.
The new, eye-popping documentary “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara” (Hulu), directed by Erin Lee Carr, is about that era and what became of it. But the lens through which it tells the story involves a truly bizarre series of events related to Tegan Quin, who with her twin sister, Sara Quin, formed an eponymous indie pop band that became huge right as the social internet was taking off. At the start of the film, Tegan says she’s never talked publicly about the situation before, which began 16 years ago. In fact, she admits to Carr, she already kind of regrets talking about it now.
The duo started to become famous after their 2004 album, “So Jealous,” when the sisters realized their growing audiences skewed young, mostly female and mostly queer. Their concerts were safe spaces, and their fans often found one another through sites devoted to the band. Both women, but Tegan in particular, were active on the internet, and made a point of connecting with fans both online and at shows. They fostered a community.
But “Fanatical” is not a profile of the band or its fans. It’s a horror story.
In 2008, a fan named Julie contacted a Facebook profile that appeared to be Tegan’s. A yearslong messaging relationship ensued, one that turned close and even intimate. But then, in 2011, Tegan did something that felt off to Julie. So she contacted the band’s manager.
From there emerged the kind of mystery that’s actually a nightmare, a story Carr tells through interviews with fans, the band’s former management, a few experts and both sisters. The user Julie had been talking to for years wasn’t Tegan at all — it was someone impersonating Tegan, a user they all started calling “Fake Tegan,” or “Fegan.” For Julie, this relationship had been deeply meaningful, especially since Tegan and Sara’s music was a way to process her fear when, as a college student, she began to question her own sexual orientation. When “Fegan” turned aggressive, even verbally abusive, she was wounded — and realizing that years of her life had been spent unburdening her secrets and her soul to someone who wasn’t Tegan was horrifying. As the band and their management discovered, these intimate messaging relationships went far, far beyond Julie — and so did the fallout.
Technically “Fanatical” is a true-crime documentary, but its main focus isn’t the crime of impersonating a celebrity, which, presumably, happens all the time. Instead, Tegan (and, to a lesser extent, Sara, who has not to her knowledge been impersonated in this way) talks extensively about the pain, confusion and fear that she and everyone in her life experienced as a result.
Carr also widens the lens. After all, why would someone do this? Especially if “Fegan” is a so-called fan of the band? As Carr and Tegan try to figure out who the perpetrator is, they also discuss the origins of fan and “stan” culture, and the ways that communities built around common interests can turn vicious and manipulative. It’s an important exploration, in part because internet-enabled toxic fandoms now extend far beyond pop culture. Politics and activism, for instance, often operate by similar rules. They can dehumanize outsiders as well as the objects of their adoration. Late in the film, an interviewee expresses surprise that any of this “affected” Tegan; after all, she is a powerful rich rock star, right?
Tegan’s visceral shock at this statement reveals how disconnected the assumption is from reality; her reaction has a far greater effect onscreen than it might in a printed interview. “Fanatical” is both a truly appalling story and a peek into something darker and more sinister about the way social groups form and evolve — and devolve, too — when the internet mediates it all. What happened to Tegan and Sara is frightening. But they’re far from alone.
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