Have you seen Twitter over the last few days? Yikes!
In 2008 the Stephenie Meyer novel "Twilight" was adapted into a film. It's all been quite low key; you might not have heard of it. It starred Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, a vampire, and Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, a girl who probably has some sort of carer desperately searching for her. Ultimately the on-screen mouth breathers became an off-screen couple, much to the delight of "Team Edward" - the half of the Twilight audience who rooted for the sparkly vampire over his werewolf rival with the shirt allergy.
Fans of the Robsten pairing (see what they did there?) have had their faith tested this week amid rumours that Kristen Stewart has been getting a bit too friendly with Rupert Sanders, who directed her in Snow White And The Huntsman. The pair's supporters have been extremely vocal in their defence across the social networks, dismissing the tabloid accusations as lies and grouping together in solidarity. "Robsten is unbroken" was in the top ten worldwide trending topics on Twitter for 13 hours.
Things have started to unravel a bit since Stewart confirmed the rumours. The actress released a statement apologising for her indiscretions, leaving Robsten fans forced to accept that the source of their fandom is on a knife edge. Or so you'd think. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's fans are so devoted to the couple that, in the face of photographic evidence of Stewart and Sanders' intimate moments and admissions of guilt from both parties, some are still swatting the story away as fake and rallying to keep the Robsten community together.
It's the last part that's particularly interesting to me as a community manager. We'd all love for our communities to advocate for us in the most difficult of times, but how often is that a realistic expectation? Stewart and Pattinson have no official social media presence and yet the community that's been built around them, whether they asked for it or not, is more fanatical and supportive than any deliberately created community that comes to my mind. It has more in common with religion than the social media communities most of us work with.
Though the Robsten brand clearly still has plenty of support, the way the last few days have played out has had interesting consequences for Us Weekly, the magazine who published the incriminating photos of Stewart and Sanders. The Robsten community's #WeHateUsWeekly campaign hasn't taken hold to the extent that "Robsten is unbroken" did, but it does demonstrate that a brand can get on the wrong end of a lot of negative sentiment, even when they report the truth.
It remains to be seen whether losing this audience will have any tangible effect on Us Weekly's sales, but is it in a brand's interest to avoid upsetting large online communities to avoid the backlash? Whatever you may think of their sense of proportion, Twilight fans certainly aren't the only community who are willing to use the social networks to campaign against perceived opponents.