Arianators' social media posts turn from joy to horror after blast

The attack on the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena is certain to have affected young women and girls more than any other social group.

Before she became a pop star, Grande, 23, was a child TV star. Four years ago, her debut album topped the US charts, and her fanbase is largely made up of teenage girls, and those even younger.

These fans have given Grande a huge social media following – 45.6 million followers on Twitter and 105 million on Instagram. Many of the 21,000 people at Monday night’s concert were recording the three-hour show and posting updates on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook Live, and Twitter; inevitably, when the lights came on and the explosion shook the arena, some were still recording.

Following the blast, Grande’s most committed fans – known as “Arianators” – mobilised to try to offer comfort to those who had been affected. The act of violence felt like an assault on them all.

The largest of the accounts that knit the community together, @ArianatorAmzex, has 154,200 followers. Its administrator was among the fans at Manchester Arena. Earlier, she had shared her emoji-strewn experience of her behind-the-scenes meet-and-greet package with her tens of thousands of likeminded followers, beginning the day by tweeting: “I MEET ARIANA TODAY!!!!”

By the end of the day she was reposting an expression of grief from her idol:

Over the course of the evening, @ArianatorAmazex went from fan account to witness account as her all-caps excitement at meeting Grande abruptly gave way to live updates from the scene of a terrorist attack:

The global fan community responded to the news with the hashtags #PrayForManchester and #RIPManchesterArianators.

Friends of fans known to be at the Manchester concert who were unaccounted for after the blast shared photos of them. One thread of potentially missing people was retweeted more than 38,000 times: “IF U KNOW ANYTHING LET PEOPLE KNOW.”

A graphic of the star’s iconic rabbit ears above the caption, “Hoping for better days,” was widely shared.

The sometimes aggressive rivalry between individual artists’ Twitter followings – which can sometimes resemble that between football teams – was largely abandoned in the wake of the news in favour of a show of support. But there were some members of other fandoms who made jokes about Grande at the expense of the dead or injured.

Those efforts were met with outrage by Grande’s fans, with high-profile accounts targeting the wrath of their sizeable followings at the perpetrators in the process and issuing appeals for sensitivity:

Many of these superfans shared information about the attack as it broke, retweeting emergency services’ statements with the same speed and comprehensiveness that hours earlier they had applied to report costume changes, set lists and merchandise.

But the prevailing sense from administrators was still one of shock: