Who is barbz nicki minaj

Cracking the inner sanctum of The Barbz is a major achievement. On the periphery of the group is your average fan, the person who simply loves the music, posts lyrics and hopes for a sliver of acknowledgment.

At the center of all the Nicki fans, though, you will find your true die-hards. She has been a Nicki Minaj fan since she was 19, and eight years later talks about the pop star with reverence. A more colorful description of the Barbz comes from Shaheed, 26 and Ayan, With zero prodding, they both gave similar descriptions to describe their community. You feel like you have different people that are close to you, do things that you really care about, especially people who in a way are defenseless.

Nicki Minaj — one of the most talented, beautiful, rich and most successful rappers of all time — is not defenseless in the traditional sense of the word. That horde of adoring fans become hell-bent on stopping that train, in the process becoming staunch activists for their favorite famous musician. Over the phone, he compares the fandom to the Beyhive , the Ariantors and the Swifties.

So I think as fans we get frustrated and so we have to go out and try to prove to people you know exactly what kind of person she is, her accomplishments. According to Shaheed, the kind of person Nicki is to her fans is a caring one. It makes you want to fight for somebody that you know would do it for you. Unfortunately, for the past year, there have been many skirmishes to fight on behalf of Nicki in the minds of the Barbz.

Last year, some incredibly aggressive Taylor Swift fans even doxxed a music critic over a review of her Folklore album. Rapper Talib Kweli is still harassing a critic a year after he was kicked off of Twitter for obsessing over her and launching his fanbase at her in dangerous ways. Sometimes, a celebrity does need defending from racism , sexism, or homophobia.

Sometimes, their fans actually are doing the right thing in reacting to an aggressive bigot who feels empowered to attack a celebrity for clout. When a celebrity like Minaj or another public figure riles up their own following in order to launch them at someone else, what else can follow but public harassment that can last months or even years?

Where does personal responsibility for the celebrity come into play? At what point does a celebrity or public figure have the responsibility to handle things privately or to even call out their own fans for taking things too far in the name of defending them?

Fandom can be a powerful force for good. However, it can also be a space where people get mercilessly attacked and mistreated by strangers. Those fans were celebrated by the left for using tactics largely pioneered by internet trolls—spamming their enemies, driving trending hashtags, coordinating in private to manipulate something public. Read: Why k-pop fans are no longer posting about k-pop. But these tactics can be used to push essentially any message.

Just a few days before the Met Gala controversy, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education—a nonprofit focused on college-campus free-speech issues, funded by right-wing heavyweights such as the Charles Koch Institute—published an open letter to Harvard in defense of a Nicki Minaj fan. The Barbz have a reputation as one the largest and at times meanest online fandoms. Like the persona-shifting rapper they love, the fandom has many faces.

Its members can be ludicrously self-righteous , but they can also be playful and self-deprecating, and they often make tongue-in-cheek comments about how frequently Minaj calls them in to do battle on her behalf.

They mostly hated Trump, and many of them spent the Democratic primary tweeting BarbzforBernie.