Fanatical: The Catfishing Of Tegan And Sara

Why do be people want to become famous? For Tegan and Sara, it was an accident of sorts. They simply wanted to play their music, to enjoy the thrill of creating songs and sharing them. To begin with, the people who attended their gigs felt like part of the same community, young queer women finding their voice, and they enjoyed spending time talking to them after shows. They weren’t really ready for the moment when people who felt like friends became people who felt like fans, when something shifted in the psychology of that connection and they could no longer keep up. Still, all in all, they coped pretty well for a couple of kids who had to figure most of it out by themselves. Not everybody can handle fame. For some people, though, the idea of the power that goes with it is so alluring that if they can’t make a name for themselves, they’ll take somebody else’s.

There are a lot of brave women in Erin Lee Carr’s documentary, which was the centrepiece of Newfest 2024. One of them is Julie. A fan of the band who knew their reputation for being sociable with fans, she got talking to Tegan online and they hit it off. Casual conversation evolved into a friendship that lasted for years. Julie told Tegan things she’d never told to anyone else. Tegan entrusted her with private family news, personal photos and even demo tracks which had never been released. It was a little odd for Julie being friends with a celebrity but, well, celebrities do have friends, and it’s clear from her testimony that it wasn’t just Tegan’s fame that made it special. Sometimes, though, little things felt off, and one day she decided to contact the band’s manager, only to receive a shocking response; Tegan didn’t know who she was at all.

Who had she been talking to? That’s one of the central questions in this film, as the director and her team chase clues around the world trying to track down the person or persons responsible, but it’s far from the only one. Julie was far from the only one. When the band put out a warning to say that Tegan was being impersonated, they were deluged with responses from other fans who had thought that they, too, were Tegan’s friends. Somebody had been impersonating her on a full time basis.

What was going on? Was the motivation personal? If so, who was its target? Tegan herself experienced a backlash, with some people thinking she really had been corresponding with them and had then started lying about it; others revealed that the fake Tegan – or ‘Fegan’, as the real star calls her – had become abusive towards them, bullying and isolating them, so there may have been intentional reputational damage involved. Other possibilities also presented themselves. Could this be part of a larger scam? No-one appears to have parted with money, but in at least one case the correspondence became sexual. Furthermore, one thing not mentioned here is that not all of the victims will have been out to their families, and that could make them vulnerable to blackmail.

Much of the story is recounted here by Tegan herself, beginning with the birthday party in LA where she first found out about it, and covering 16 years. The problem is, as she explains, still going on. It has evolved since those initial correspondences, and has included attempts to break up her relationships. Here the film takes on other aspects of the experience of fame and the nature of fandom. It is stressed that there are healthy ways to be a fan, but there are always people out there who fail to understand boundaries. Tegan talks about her experiences of being stalked, of having strangers be horrible to her friends and girlfriends, and even of having people grab her and try to carry her off. It’s scary stuff.

UK viewers might be reminded of the tabloid phone hacking scandal of 2009 as Tegan discusses the distress that the impersonation caused her. Because Fegan referred to things she had hardly told anyone, she found herself wondering if she could trust her closest friends. It left her paranoid, isolated and struggling to form friendships, and it clearly had a similar effect on many fans, some of whom share their stories here. It profoundly damaged what had been a supportive community with real value in people’s lives. Of course, the idea that virtual communities might be vulnerable to this sort of thing is not new, but this is a powerful example of the phenomenon because it has affected so many different individuals, lending itself to a deeper analysis than is often possible.

It might have been useful to see a little more focus on the value of online friendships here, because they frequently are real and they can be hugely positive – one hates to think that viewers will be left suspicious of everyone they meet in that context. That said, the various red flags that some of the victims reference are educational, as are the references to their various efforts to check up on what they were told. in this case the scammer was generally clever, but most aren’t. There is also some good advice about when to think twice about a friendship regardless.

In addendum to this, other psychological issues come under the microscope: Tegan’s feeling that she has a duty of care towards her fans, and evident feelings of guilt over this having happened; one fan’s difficulty being around her because, though she knows that it wasn’t her fault, she has difficulty separating her emotions about the real and fake people. Meanwhile, the filmmakers face the challenge of determining who they can trust in the course of their investigation, especially when it becomes clear that at least one Fegan is on to them. The result is a multi-layered and fascinating film with plenty of interest for fans of the band and for viewers at large.