Mad One Direction fans (channel 4 right now (which is like 11pm on Thursday night))

Young wans swooning over boybands/singers is nothing new. Some have even suggested it's a developmental stage in young female sexuality. My oul lad was at a club in New York just after the war and Frank Sinatra was one of the acts and he had his following of screaming and swooning bobbysoxers up front ruining proceedings. Before that they went batshít crazy for Rudolph Valentino.

happyviolet wrote: »

It's a lot scarier though thanks to the internet and sites like twitter, gives these girls a platform to make threats towards any of these guy's girlfriends and also show how REALLY obsessed they are, which is scarier.

Yea, like any social trend, social media really concentrates, magnifies and spreads the madness.

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Just to to clarify boybands are part of the 'Entertainment' industry. Rock and Roll bands are part of the music industry.

Both the Beatles and the Stones had them wetting themselves and screaming their lungs out too, so sometimes it can be both, though nowadays I can't imagine that kinda crossover. Duran Duran were probably the last to kinda have a foot in both camps?

Prettyblack wrote: »

As for insane, well the Beatles had the most insane fans of all - Charles Manson, the "Paul is Dead" believers and of course Lennon's murderer.

Yep. Imagine if you had twitter and social media back then. Scaaaaary stuff. Even without that they had to be careful. If they said the wrong thing the fans would go nuts. IIRC Ringo once mentioned in interview he loved jellybabies or similar and they were pelted with them at gigs. Lennon's response was along the lines of thank **** he didn't say he liked tins of beans. They and the Stones had regular death and bomb threats and young wan's threatening to kill themselves. The beatles even had people bring their disabled kids to them so they could touch them in some freaky near religious madness. One of the reasons they knocked touring on the head. It all got too weird. In many ways boybands today have it easier. They're more protected for a start and the machine behind them is well practiced. Back in the day it was a very new thing and the rules were being written on the fly, though press intrusion was far lower. Those bands were ridin their way across the US and no stories of "I rode Keith Richards and he was crap" stuff.