Awards Season: Stan Twitter's Super Bowl

Everything has become stan twitter, and stan twitter has become sports fandom. Here’s how it’s affecting awards season. 

The 2025 awards season has finally come to an end. From discourse around Timotheé Chalamet’s Marty Supreme marketing campaign (and everything else about him), to stan wars erupting from the results of every major awards program, social media has become a hostile hellscape. But since when did social media have this much of an impact on major awards ceremonies? Why does the prestigious nature that these events seem to have had in the past no longer exist? 

Simply put, everything has become stan culture. While this may be a broad statement, it seems that the notion of shows like the Grammys and the Emmys have become hubs for fans of every individual nominee to fight and compare why their favorite nominee has to win and why any other nominee cannot. The Grammys in particular have become saturated with categories, leaving room for more nominees. It has become more embarrassing for your fave to not receive a nomination than it has for it to be an honor. 

Musicians such as Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish have developed intense fanbases that tend to believe in awards supremacy. Eilish, who holds 10 wins with 34 nominations with her career being less than a decade old, has slightly stirred the pot within the past few years of the awards. Evidently, becoming a darling of the Recording Academy rarely goes home empty-handed. In the 2025 awards, Beyoncé won Album of the Year, arguably the highest honor of the night, and stans of the 24-year-old musician were incredibly displeased. Arguments of who had more streams and track virality piled against Cowboy Carter, the winner of the award. Fandoms began to point fingers at one another, the Beyhive alleging racism against fans of Eilish for the outrage of her win, Eilish fans concluding that the award was paid for by Roc Nation. What neither seems to consider is that experts and knowledgeable members of the Recording Academy simply saw Cowboy Carter as the album of the year, plain and simple. However, fans could find some sense of peace after the 2026 ceremony, after Eilish re-released the track “Wildflower” as a single, well after its initial May 2024 release on the album. To have qualified for the 2026 Grammy Awards, music had to have been released between August 31, 2024, and August 30, 2025. Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft " was only eligible to be nominated for the 2025 Grammys, and she released “Wildflower” as a single on March 4, 2025, nearly ten months after it had already been released with the rest of the album. There are no rules against this per se, but the song won the “Song of the Year” award for the 2026 Grammys, which left some viewers upset with the snub of other songs in the category, such as “DtMF” by Bad Bunny and “Luther” by SZA and Kendrick Lamar. 

Alas, Eilish has now won a Grammy for the previously “snubbed” 2024 album. This culture of stans demanding higher numbers, more wins, and better statistics is highly reminiscent of sports culture. Variety reported that for the 2026 Oscars, betting on the awards has become a $100 million business, with bets wagered on who will win. Kalshi and Polymarket ads are difficult to ignore, with the amount of commercial time betting platforms had during the broadcast of the Super Bowl and when the latter partnered with the Golden Globes to integrate live odds into the ceremony. While online betting forums have been around for years, they gained massive popularity right before the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election. Once players bet correctly on Trump’s win, sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket have entered the mainstream for various events. Online predictions do not necessarily count as gambling (which is regulated by a few states in the U.S.), which is why these sites are able to promote their platforms as heavily as they do. 

Stan culture and betting are intertwined has turned the awards season into a gamified event. Press and publicity have been around for as long as Hollywood has, but now more than ever can a potential smear campaign or just saying an ill-worded statement on ballet and opera can change the public’s perception of “deserving” the award. Chalamet’s Best Actor campaign for Marty Supreme was nothing short of interesting, to say the least. From standing on top of the Las Vegas Sphere as an orange ping-pong ball to tapping slightly into method press, becoming Marty, embodying greatness, and desiring to be at the top. Many have been turned off by his behavior as it drastically opposes his previously indie-darling persona from the late 2010’s/ early 2020s. Recently, he has found himself in hot water with his comments about ballet in opera while in conversation with former Interstellar costar, Matthew McConaughey. Major ballets and operas across the world have given their two cents on the matter, dissing Chalamet in any way they can. This event has caused a major setback in the public’s view of who should win Best Actor, leading many to one: root for and two: bet on Michael B. Jordan to win. Ultimately, the award went to Jordan, not without some ballet and opera jokes thrown Chalamet’s way during the ceremony. 

The prestige of the award remains partly in its title and the doors it may open for performers and filmmakers. However, the run and the “competition,” so to speak, is no longer a test of the “best performance,” it's a game of numbers. This is where I believe stans across the board would do well in sports fan culture. Once awards and streams became a commodity within stan culture, the direct correlation became blatantly evident. The awards season has now become an amalgamation of stan wars and morality olympics. Does Chalamet deserve an Oscar ever because of his comments? Should movies with bad characters playing antagonists win Best Picture? Can Beyoncé or Taylor Swift win another Grammy? They’ve already won plenty! 

Numbers have no place in the space of honoring art. If you want to bet on winners or compare stats, watch a sport.