In that lethargic, lazy in-between week that separates Christmas and New Year, you likely found yourself lying on your couch scrolling on TikTok. And during that scrolling session, you were probably met with a video related to the impending release of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the now-32-year-old woman who was imprisoned in 2015 on a second-degree murder charge. For years, Gypsy Rose had been abused by her mother Dee Dee Blanchard, whose Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy led her to falsely posit Gypsy Rose as a disabled, terminally ill child for public sympathy. As a result, Nicholas Godejohn, a man Gypsy met online, conspired to kill Dee Dee in order to free her, which he did with Gypsy’s knowledge. Fast forward eight years — and multiple documentary and narrative TV series about her life later — and we were now counting down the days to her release like it was a pop star’s return.
TikToks laid out plans for her release day party, making up for all of the viral moments she had missed. “gypsy rose blanchard cunty edit” was a common search term on the app too, with results including stan cams and a mock-up of her in the Renaissance tour visuals. On the day of her release, she arrived — as every viral internet queen must do now — in Gag City.
The whole thing seemed hilarious, but not necessarily surreal, because the world in which a victim of child abuse who goes on to be complicit in the murder of her mother, who then gains notoriety for said act in a series of obsessively-watched TV shows, thus becoming an internet icon, is one we built ourselves. Gypsy Rose Blanchard is a victim, a survivor and — by dint of our fascination with true crime — a celebrity. In the past, perhaps our tone towards women like her would be one of solemnity and dignified support. These days, the relatively newfound language of stan culture means the same sentiment is expressed in frenetic ways: in stan cams, in “mother”, in AI generated images of this woman riding on the bonnet of a pink sports car into a Nicki Minaj invented fantasy land.
And in stan culture world, solidarity looks suspiciously close to ridicule. On the day of her release, people gathered outside prison gates with signs and made TikToks. Others suggested we all get “tipsy for Gypsy”. It is unlike anything most of us have seen, partly because Gypsy Rose’s particular set of circumstances are so singular. Most subjects of true crime stories are locked away for life or were handed the death sentence — the severity of their crimes led into their notoriety. More often than not they are rightly vilified and reprehensible people (not that that has stopped people from posting online about Jeffrey Dahmer like he was Jacob Elordi). With the notable exception, perhaps, of a figure like Anna Delvey, the modern internet has seldom lived through the liberation of a highly publicised young convict whose case raised the question, as put by E! News: “Victim or Villain?”
Some see it as a symptom of brain rot that someone like Gypsy Rose is getting that much attention at all, but stan culture, for better or worse, has been leading us towards this kind of response for as long as these communities have gathered digitally. Does Gypsy Rose have stans? You could say so. Her IG following overtook Charli XCX’s within three days of her release. Her comments sections are jammed with stan-coded replies: one on a recent post with over 8000 likes reads “Does the queen respond??”. And she does: since her release we’ve learned that she loves Lana Del Rey and what her favourite Ariana Grande songs are, facts then relayed by the ultimate arbiter of contemporary popular culture: the X account Pop Crave.
The question is: does any of this mean much to the future of Gypsy Rose Blanchard? We’re listening to her in these fascinating few days, as she steps out into a new world, but our solidarity — expressed in our silly stan language — is likely short lived and mostly performative. While real standom converts to showing up IRL, for musicians at live shows; for actors in movie theatres, it’s hard to picture whether or not any of Gypsy Rose’s passionate cohort will do the same for someone whose public notoriety was a drastic almost-accident. And how does someone cling onto relevancy in the wake of such weird fame? They pivot and diversify, become pop stars or porn stars or release tell-all books that the kids of the internet are unlikely to pick up and read.
It increasingly feels like there are no stranger corners left for stan culture to creep into, but we’ve reached a point where what someone is known for does not matter, so long as said subject is primed for social media proliferation. We’ve laughed at the memes, we’ve smashed the like button every time a new selfie is uploaded. Gypsy Rose Blanchard is a new idol for the internet masses, and while we’re not really sure why or what she’s yet to give us — A pop career? A presenting gig? The face of a fashion brand? — she’s a symptom of the shackles being lifted on who we are ethically allowed to stan from here on out. The question is for how long, and what could Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s future have been had she stepped out of prison on 28 December into a new, quiet and normal life, without having to wonder if or how the world is watching.