As the final round of Academy Awards voting comes to a close, the greater world sits on the edge of our seats as we wait eagerly for March 2nd. But a smaller world, tucked away in the dark corners of indie movie theaters across the world, clutch their pearls, and their iPhones.

Awards season voting is a temperamental and singular process, unique to each show and voting body. For example, there are the slew of guild awards, which are voted for by members of said guild: SAG (Screen Actors Guild), DGA (Directors Guild of America), and the WGA (Writers Guild of America). Then, there are the various other awards shows: the BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Arts), the Emmys, and the Golden Globes. The awards season culminates with the Academy Awards, colloquially the Oscars.

Those hoping to predict the upcoming Oscars wins often look to the films and actors who won big at the SAG, DGA, WGA, and BAFTA awards, as the voting bodies are most comparable. However, the Golden Globes are the most separate of all the awards shows. They’re also a notoriously bad litmus test for the Oscars, as they are voted for by the Hollywood Foreign Press association, aka journalists, with no direct ties to people actually working in the film industry. But I digress.

The Oscars, presented by the AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) are viewed as the most prestigious of all awards shows: highly coveted, solidifying, legendary. To win one of those little gold men is the mark of a true Hollywood star. Part of that prestige comes from their rigorous, insular voting process. First, nominations are finalized by the people within that category (directors vote for directors, writers for writers, actors for actors, etc.). Then, the final voting round opens and all members of the Academy vote for every category.

Though the results are not always predicted, the system itself is tried and true. All of this to say, the general population is rather satisfied with the process, as is the film industry. But let's jump back to those back-row dwellers, the self-proclaimed cinephile, the Letterboxd Lurkers.

When the nominations for the 2025 Oscars were announced, there were two concentrated uproars. One side focused on the issues with the nominated films, namely the 13 nominations cinched by Emilia Perez. They flooded social media and the comments sections of industry news sites. An anonymous comment on a Deadline article captures the general reaction: “And the spiral continues.”

However, a far more rabid reaction quickly presented itself. From the depths of Twitter (X) came the aforementioned Letterboxd Lurkers, specifically this time, it was the stans. A stan, both a noun and a verb, is “an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity.” Stans, as a faction, come together to form stan culture, primarily on Twitter. Stan culture is characterized as “fervently and blindly supporting their chosen celebrity or team, often demonizing or reviling anyone or anything opposed to, or not sufficiently devoted to, the object of their worship.”

The stans make edits and theories, they bounce off of eachother. It is an echochamber, and sometimes it reaches explosive proportions. The proportions, in this case, are the stans revolting against the Oscars nominees. These stans are usually the same teen girls who also thirst after a certain type of man in film. And what movie best represents this intense infatuation, unyielding adoration, dedicated ‘standom’ other than Challengers (2024).

Challengers follows the dynamic of tennis players Tashi, now a coach, her husband Art, and Patrick, Art’s ex-best friend and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend. But the most gripping takeaway that came from the film was inarguably its underlying queerness. The film was turned into gifs and edits and threads and thirsting, all about Art and Patrick and that one scene. It quickly became deemed one of the best films of the year by the teen girl cinephiles. Challengers was the shot heard round the world on teen girl stan Twitter.

The infatuation with the queer side of the love triangle and the physicality of the actors quickly snowballed. Suddenly, the writing and the acting was supreme. The camera work was revolutionary. The film, according to stan Twitter, pushed the envelope. It was the favorite of the teen girl cinephile faction, and, not only that, but it was a technically great movie, they claimed.

(Now, do not get me wrong in any way, shape, or form: I absolutely loved Challengers. It was one of my favorite movies of the year. But I am under no assumption that it has the technicality required to be a critical winner.)

So imagine the outrage, the revolt, the disbelief, when it was nominated for no Oscars. The most nominated films were critical and technical darlings, as well as past winners at other awards shows: Emilia Perez, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave. When watching these other films (sans Emilia Perez), the difference is glaring, and the validity of their nominations for their technical excellence rings true.

But don’t tell that to the stans. Immediately, they were up in arms. They began to outsource any possible reason as to why Challengers wasn’t nominated: the film came out at the wrong time, the Academy is corrupt and biased, and a slew of others. They attacked those who pointed out the disparity between it and its competitors, defending the film as if it were their very own child. The stans went through the first six stages of grief, but posts emerge everyday resenting the “snub” (a favorite word among stans) of Challengers. It seems they will not make it past the final stage of acceptance anytime soon.

A similar phenomenon occurred when Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter won Album of the Year at the Grammys. Stans of the other nominated artists (most fervently, the ‘Swifties’ and the Billie Eilish fans, who are apparently called ‘Avocados’) argued against the validity of her win.

But it begs the question of subjectivity versus objectivity in spaces such as awards shows, where opinions are put aside to try to reward the most meritable. Stans believe so fervently in the superiority of their deity, that all logic begins to evade them the farther they go down the rabbit hole. Is there a world in which the stans level out, when their deity finally measures up to their dedication? The expectations are insurmountable, and I’d argue that no person or piece of art could ever begin to meet them. 

The stans attach and identify themselves so tightly to the object of their affections, that the ups and downs, wins and losses of said object become their ups and downs, wins and losses. These stans will not be satisfied if their object is not the object of affection, if the world does not begin to fawn over the person or piece of art as well. It is a deep belief and dependency that drives this rejection of differing general opinions, such as awards shows. A question arises: if this art is not good, and I am one with this art, then who am I, really?