ABSTRACT
Over the past few years, thousands of stories have appeared on the internet featuring the members of the male vocal group *NSYNC as their principal characters. *NSYNC, with its members Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone, Lance Bass and Justin Timberlake, rose to fame in the late 1990s with chart-topping hits and record-breaking sales; they are a quintessential boy band, adored by pre-teenage girls and derided by almost everyone else. In fact, their star function is such that their public life has become a narrative often unrecognizable to the stars themselves: Justin Timberlake (2003), for example, points out that his life in the media is more interesting and appealing than his actual life, a sentiment exemplified by the quotation that constitutes the title of this essay. However, a large number of the stories circulating on the web differ from such official accounts. As Julad's account above indicates, she became a fan of the group only via the fan narratives. Her fannish obsession with *NSYNC developed out of her engagement with the stories and the fan writing community. Moreover, rather than being a passive consumer, she clearly analyses how she is implicated in the interaction between the commercial presentation of the pop stars and her own fantasies about them.
