Fan culture is a complicated balance. Your dedication to one person for their work can teeter into scary territory quickly and with online fandom taking over social media, sometimes a “fan account” can become just as well known as the person they’re idolizing. Which is the case with Club Chalamet.
The popular social media account is a dedicated fan account to actor Timothée Chalamet. The problem is that the owner of said account, Simone Cromer, has become something of a legend in the online community. And not all legends are born for good reasons. We have, in the past, spoken about the red flags present in Club Chalamet. Now, The Wall Street Journal has profiled Miss Club, as she’s known online, and let’s not do this?
We’ve heard horror stories of obsessive fans in the past. Most famously the tragic side of the coin but even those as dedicated as Miss Club is to an actor isn’t great. Not for the actor and certainly not for the rest of us who enjoy talking about actors and their work.
I speak for myself but also any “fangirl” out there whose love of a performer has gotten her labeled as the weird girl, it isn’t fun. And it is scary when women like Cromer are spotlit and celebrated for doing unhinged and, frankly, terrifying things in the name of an actor. Cromer often is misogynistic about Chalamet’s girlfriends, she’s aggressive about the other films and actors nominated against Chalamet. Her house literally burned down and she was posting about Chalamet’s chances at an Oscar for A Complete Unknown.
And while yes, it was fun for a while to talk about Cromer’s more delusional posts about Chalamet, giving her a profile and dismissing the frightening things she does is…not the move.
This isn’t a good look for anyone
Posting about your favorite actor is fine. In fact, most fan accounts are fine. But Club Chalamet has always taken it to another level. In the interview with WSJ, Cromer pretended as if her love for Chalamet came from a more maternal place, saying she saw him as a nephew. Do you then criticize every single woman your nephew dates in a similar way?
Besides that, Cromer’s approach to engaging with the art of her favorite performer is terrifying, to say the least. She blindly supports Chalamet and his award goals prior to even seeing any of his work. It is fine to love a specific actor and his work but the dedication that Cromer has consistently shown to Chalamet has many on edge and rightfully so.
This profile is going to do a lot of harm with younger fans. They see someone like Club Chalamet celebrated and might ignore the red flags because Cromer is getting notoriety out of it all. And so let’s not? Celebrating an actor you love is fine. Posting about them is fine too. But uplifting the “dedication” that Cromer has to Chalamet is not the message we should be putting out into the world.
(featured image: Searchlight Pictures)
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