Grasping the Nostalgic Online Community Behind Ariana Grande

When Twitter was a different world and Ariana Grande was small enough to host a dinner party in New York and have fans enter into it via tweet submissions which she and her family members spent a week counting the votes manually, my relationship with her—amongst a fairly large community of pre-teens and teens and some 20 year olds—was more personal than mainstream celebrities’ current relationships with their fans, even in our parasocial climate. The Internet felt smaller, Twitter especially. We all knew each other back then. It felt as though you could know everyone, and so it also felt valid to claim that an artist had been able to Save You from The Real World. 

Ariana Grande has since blossomed into an inconceivable level of fame—one which once seemed unfathomable, as someone who watched her hit one million followers on Twitter in 2011 and participated in almost every live stream, tweet-spree, follow party or watch-along she hosted in the invisible space we built together through an impressive means of imagination. I don’t think we had any idea what we were doing then, but we had partaken in the creation of spaces which evolved into what’s online today. We built the foundation by exploring online relationships, and set the baseline for what could be done with just words (360 characters, back then). 

It was the beginning of online parasocialism. It was a relationship that had phased out of mainstream celebrity and later became replaced by online creators who let you get to know them with a similar amount of intimacy. 

Adjacent to the fandoms which One Direction, Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato cultivated around 2011 to 2016, Ariana’s community online wasn’t completely alone in its intensity. The core gravitational energy which brought people in was mostly identical—they were like neighboring towns. The grandness of these fandoms only made them feel more important and real. It was a space you could truly live in. 

I often find myself looking there these days, inside old meet and greet photos, concert videos, screenshots of Twitter “notices” (an interaction or mention from the person you were “stanning”) or group chat Skype calls. It’s astounding to me that something so intangible was able to keep me alive as a child. I wonder how I was able to be happy with so much less than what I have now. Solace became me, grasping my being, congealing as the root of where I’d operate from forever. The main source of it was so unreal, and I guess that’s what made it fun, but if it made me that happy in a way that is hard to fathom now, then I wonder how “unreal” it truly was. 

Sometimes all I have to do is put on Yours Truly, or the unreleased tracks and old 2012 covers available through SoundCloud during a drive to get close to those feelings again. 

It starts me back up. I start going on like anyone else in the car knows what it all means (it’s not fun for them) and reminiscing on the days where I’d rush home from the swim club in the summer to catch Ariana’s livestream, still damp from swimming in the air conditioned computer room with my arms dripping on the mechanical keyboard attached to the desktop, trying my hardest to say something that would catch her attention. To become a recognizable fan. To matter. I hoped to be a part of something, and worthy of whatever it was that Ariana Grande saying your username out loud could change within you as a 12-year-old girl. 

When I heard that the Grandes were staying in my hometown for the month of October 2024 due to Frankie Grande’s part in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I figured it was personal. That the love and devotion that a 12-year-old girl had for this family must have psychically pulled them there and destined the whole thing. I made plans to travel home from Philly for opening weekend in hopes of meeting my childhood needs of meeting the Grandes in public, the types of meetings where you get enough time to have an actual conversation with them. The kind that was every fan’s dream back then. 

At this point in my life, I’m far less connected to the idea of this than I once was. But lately, I’ve had a harder time connecting with myself. I thought that taking myself on the New Hope, Pennsylvania escapade might show me something that I’ve been missing all this time. Or help me understand what I’ve been missing, and myself, at least. 

Instead of going on a date with my situationship like we planned (he was going to take me to a field or something) on October 13th, I convinced him to drive us to New Hope so that I could try to meet my childhood idol Ariana Grande and the rest of her family (good guy). 

He parked while I stationed myself outside of the Bucks County Playhouse with another friend in the area (We had met a few weeks prior when I joked loudly at the Love Says The Day store across the way, “Someone should ask if Frankie has been in here… Hey… Has Frankie Grande been in here?” The girl working there heard me pestering my friends about it and responded without question that he had been in, and told me that she too had a fan account for Ariana and would be trying to meet her in the coming weeks). Another girl joined us in The World of The Waiting when we made eye contact across the courtyard and quickly surmised that we were there for the same reason. Both girls were devoted and kind. We shared theories as to what night Ariana would be arriving, but then we just talked about our lives, acting from these similar states of minds where we all felt immediately understood. I always find that it’s instant that way—talking about a shared love makes it far easier to talk freely, and in general. 

As people flooded out from the daytime showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Frankie Grande, Joan Grande (Ariana and Frankie’s mother), Hale Grande (Frankie’s husband) and two others who I didn’t recognize exited the theater.

The two friends who I made and I approached Joan in the courtyard which lay adjacent to the theater while another older fan spoke to her and took photos and shook. As they interacted, Joan made eye contact with me a few times. Once they finished conversing and I finally did get a chance to speak with her she stated that her and I had met before. My forehead felt hit by a lightness. “Not in a while, but, yes, a long time ago I was around, when I was younger,” I replied. I was shocked that she might’ve recognized my face which had changed a lot in the decade-plus since I had frequented the shows, meet and greets and online spaces. 

I always felt like I was just another person at one of those shows. There were so many fans and it felt like something profound would have to happen to ever be a fan who they knew. But understanding it now, I had stuck around a long time. I’d been posting my face on stan twitter since I was 10 years old. I’m now 23. It made sense, especially coming from a parent’s perspective (her mother feels more real than Ariana herself in some way, even though the whole time we chatted I couldn’t stop being awed by their similarities). It’s pretty realistic that she herself would have observed the fanbase for a long time, witnessing what people posted for her daughter. She got to know the faces of people who constantly showed up for Ariana and kept an eye on them with an aspect of safety probably involved. I’m sure Joan was online, watching it all since the beginning, when it wasn’t so unlikely that you could be known by the person you idolized because the space was so much smaller. The meet and greet photos that people would post online, the inside jokes. She was old enough to process it all right then and there. Being a part of an online community for eight years is more significant than you might realize. 

Being online like that felt like common sense at the time, like it couldn’t be any other way, despite the fact that that particular iteration of fandom had pretty much only just appeared there and was a completely new experience. It was somehow intuitive—to exist in the purely mental space which we all spawned and energized. 

If I were to imagine my own mom being put in the position of interacting with her daughters’ fans, it makes sense that she would remember them. Especially the ones who were there for a long time or grew older with her. Relating in this way feels important—it’s what I thought about as I began to work through the shock of being slightly known by someone who I admired for so long. I think it’s important to draw these connections, and ground them in this way. It’s something I have to remind myself to do: iterate over the detached tendencies and grasp through thought experiments (which is our best chance at understanding when observing people who feel so removed from us). The instance itself shook up a lot of what I had compartmentalized in terms of the parasocial relationship. 

I think that I started the larger conversation by telling her that it had been truly magical to spend time as a kid watching her family online. To return home to their live streams and tweet sprees, to watch Frankie’s Disney World vlogs of their family and feel a part of it. It filled my upbringing with love when it felt empty of it—I didn’t have a lot of friends at school and I resorted to the Internet to fill that void. It was so beautiful how interactive and personal and genuine it all was back then, and how connected it had made us all. 

Joan said that Ariana got so personal back then because she just loved everyone so much. During Victorious, the Internet was a lot different than it is now. People online now are not how they were back then. I said it was really special, and that being a part of that community changed my life at the time. It completely impacted who I am as a person and the way that I value love and friendship. It showed me a community in place of where there had been a gut-sized hole when I was younger. “I think that’s a lot of the reason why those kids were there,” I told her. And it’s crazy—a lot of those people are still my greatest friends. They didn’t feel as real when I was young, but really they’re just as tangible as the people who are physically around. I could go see them if I wanted to. I’ve met a lot of them. 

“We all grew up together,” Joan said. Her and Ariana often talk about how people post online about meeting in different countries through the shared experience of being a fan or going to a concert, and they think it’s really beautiful. She talked a bit about meeting Stevie Nicks and how she grew up with her music too—that it was a crazy and beautiful thing to get to know her after loving her from afar. The girl I met in the shop showed Joan her “Pink Champagne” tattoo (a reference to an unreleased Grande song). The third girl asked Joan if it’s weird to watch Ariana Grande grow up so globally. I wondered if it was weird to have so many people feel like they know your family so personally.

Talking to her was simpler than my child-self ever imagined. It was just reality. 

Two days following this conversation, I heard Ariana would supposedly be in town for the 7pm show and I returned back to New Hope, this time with my best friend. We spent the day in the town working remotely and hoped to catch her outside before or after the production.

Since we were waiting there, we went inside the actual Playhouse and checked if there might be any open seats or cheaper day-of tickets. We spoke to a few people in the theater and eventually approached the will call booth to ask about the ticket availability. We had a brutal interaction and no luck. We ended up talking to Hale outside, and he asked what we were doing there again since we saw the show on Sunday. We told him that we hadn’t seen the show, which confused him as to why we were there. I joked “Well you see…” and he responded “You came to meet Frankie?” 

I explained that we tried getting the box office woman inside to give us the empty seats but they said no, and recounted the rude will call interaction in which I asked, “What happens to the empty seats?” and the lady said, “They stay empty,” and glared at us. I said, “You don’t want to fill them with two sweet girls?” And she continued to glare at us and we said, “Okay,” and left. As soon as we opened the doors to walk outside, Joan was walking through the front door and Hale was holding his dog and talking to a few fans. 

Hale went inside the Playhouse lobby after we told him about our failed attempt, then came back out with two comped tickets labeled with Frankie’s name and he told us to thank Joan too. We both cried. Not because of anything really, other than it being really kind. 

And the reality then hit me that after years of idolizing these people and hoping that they were I had always hoped, they were showing me that maybe they were. That maybe my innocent cognizance as a child chose these people out of true love, and connected with them because they seemed to really have that pure heartedness inside them. Maybe they didn’t really think that hard about it. Either way, it was still a relief to learn they were good people, just as I’d thought they were.

We enjoyed the show. As we sat in our seats around six rows back, my heart filled up. It was really beautiful to experience with my best friend. Right before the lights fell, Ariana walked in with Liz Gillies, Ethan Slater and Michael Corcoran. Seeing her made me giddy like a child. I couldn’t help but feel in my body that there was real magic there, maybe because Ariana was such a big part of my childhood, or in other ways that I don’t need to know. We didn’t meet her. It honestly didn’t end up mattering that much. 

Sitting there, my best friend Sameera said something weird when they all walked in. “It feels like we’re friends with them,” she said. I thought, How weird that Sameera feels it, too. 

It definitely was a special circumstance, to see Ariana Grande sitting in one of the back rows in my suburban town’s theater, as if she wasn’t herself and it wasn’t my town. But that doesn’t make any sense. What would be keeping her from being there when she exists and the town exists and it’s all in the same world? I guess I just hadn’t realized that when I was younger. 

When I reflect now, I wonder if the things I had once felt at my core (mainly, that Ariana was a small online woman whom I could resonate with) are still true. I see how the world she created online through her love formed me. In kindness, or discourse, or community. The fan community around her was extremely special. It was obvious that others waiting to meet her too were there for similar reasons. That we all resonated with that thing in that way. To have thought we knew Ariana like she’s one of our friends. In reality, we all know each other. 

Every single person who I met at the Playhouse was so kind and so excited to just be together in the waiting. It was an instant understanding. I hadn’t done something like that since I was really young, and it was nice to be reminded that there always will be something real in those communities. We weren’t just chasing celebrities. I had spent time in New Hope for those days because I wanted to connect to that nostalgic world, relearn it, and see how it informed my core self.

When you stand around waiting somewhere for a long time, that place becomes your world. You forget that there’s an outside one where none of the same information applies—the show start and end times are like nightfall or a programmed internal clock that tells your body when it is meant to sleep, and the people you meet become your community. Both of these things brought me a surprising amount of comfort in reliving this childhood experience which I thought might be important at my core for me to explore, and it was a contentment that I had not felt since I was young, at least not in this exact way. I was surrounded. The present moment was all that mattered because we all had a purpose, a common goal bringing us together. When it was time to leave, it felt like I was leaving behind a life that only the friends I met there would understand. An absurd one where we all agreed upon absurd rules and the lengths which people would go to—asking the valet parking employee if her car left yet and asking some other fan to watch your baby in the stroller, scanning the streets like some kind of freak, crying in front of a stranger who is also the mother of the girl you’ve looked up to for years—were completely accepted by one another. Nothing was weird.

To grow up in a day-to-day environment like this through Internet culture is not that different, but the continuousness warps you. This hyper-connected dynamic and its subsequent reflection has completely liberated my perception of humanity. I don’t see humans the same way I would’ve. I think about everything, I idolize everyone and also no one. People feel much less real, yet at this point in stan culture’s evolution, maybe those perceptions are inevitable. We talk a lot online about humanizing people and I do think we should be doing the best we can, but I also think there’s something extremely valuable inside of letting yourself love something or someone that much. In letting yourself then love everyone that much. 

At least there was a purpose beyond ourselves. I don’t think any of us would be there initially if we were doing it alone. Sure, maybe I’d still want to meet Ariana Grande out of admiration, but who would I even tell if I did? Why would it even matter to me? Who would it matter to? What would an experience like that really be worth?