I went to the 2025 MTV VMAs. These are the artists who got the loudest cheers from fans.

ELMONT, N.Y. — Get there up to four hours before the show. Prepare to walk a mile to the arena. Lock your phone in a magnetic pouch that renders it useless. Dress on-trend, but don’t wear white, sequins, neon, heels, open-toed shoes, hats or shirts with logos on them. Clap with your hands above your head. Keep that enthusiasm for three straight hours.

These are just a few of the rules that the people who have been selected to serve as on-camera audience members have to follow to attend the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards, which are kind of like the Olympics for pop music superfans.

I infiltrated the seated section just beyond the pit, where audience members gather around the stage to cheer for the many acts that deliver short but intense performances throughout the night. In those higher levels, we didn’t have to stand for seven hours or surrender our phones, which made me all the more appreciative of the more intense stans who did. Their stamina and offline enthusiasm were nearly as impressive as that of the artists themselves.

Superfans, assemble

MTV set me up with a seat through 1iota, a website where fans can apply for free tickets to on-air events. Inside the UBS Arena, where the VMAs were held, I sat beside two 27-year-olds from Queens, N.Y., who have been going to concerts together since high school. Joyce goes to a lot of events through 1iota, including the VMAs in 2022, where she specifically wanted to see K-pop group Blackpink. Her friend, Anika, joked that she was Joyce’s third choice for a plus-one, but she wasn’t offended because she knows Joyce is very strategic about her fandom.

Joyce was even hesitant to tell me which artists she was most excited to see. To get these tickets, we all had to list which acts we wanted to watch the most, and Joyce tells me she just named as many people as possible. She didn’t want to discriminate. As a fan, she’s a generalist, which means she’s just constantly enthused.

That seemed to be exactly what the show’s producers were looking for. One took the stage just before the broadcast to instruct audience members on how to clap — with your hands above your head, because that’s what looks best on TV.

“I’m here to make sure we make good television today,” the producer said, reminding people to “show love to everybody who hits the stage.” The same stans screaming for Tate McRae would also need to lose their minds for artists whose careers peaked before they were born, like Busta Rhymes and Ricky Martin. It’s an odd request for fans in 2025, when the internet is more fragmented and radicalized than ever. Even the audience-voted awards at the VMAs pit superfans against each other, mobilizing online armies to swarm web pages, promote their causes online and tear down the competition.

Still, the absence of rabid stans — or the pacification of them — was likely deliberate. The goal in the arena was good TV and good vibes, not sparking internet debate about which artists had the best outfits, sets or music. That’s a game that can be played entirely from home.

On my left sat my husband Alex, the most even-keeled person I know. I planned to compare his reactions as a fish-out-of-water to the fans who were taking this event, and their roles in it, very seriously. He has one weakness, though: He’s been a longtime Lady Gaga supporter, aka a little monster, since 2008. Naturally, she was the first celebrity everyone freaked out about, including him — especially because no one expected her to actually show up to the UBS Arena when she had a performance scheduled across town at Madison Square Garden at the same time. Her powers transcended the limitations of New York City traffic.

Just before the show began, there was a rustling in the middle of the venue as people throughout every section craned their necks and phones to see what celebrities had descended to sit among the common folk. It was Ariana Grande in polka dots and Lady Gaga in a dramatic feathered dress. This was no TV-friendly response, but a burst of authentic, widespread joy — the A-listers’ arrivals set the bar high for fan reactions throughout the night.

Fandemonium

As someone who spends a lot of time lurking in fan spaces online, I thought I could predict most of the artists who would inspire an especially intense reaction, but I was still surprised by a few: People rushed to their feet for Lola Young’s 2-minute performance of her TikTok-famous song “Messy.” McRae’s particularly athletic dance moves earned feral cheers. A Busta Rhymes fan behind me screamed so much throughout his wildly energetic performance that she was later singled out by a security guard and pulled down into the pit for a better view of the remainder of the show.

When I polled the people I passed in the audience before the show started, the artist people were far and away most excited to see was Sabrina Carpenter. Despite facing online backlash for her provocative new album “Man’s Best Friend,” fans at every level of the arena were on their feet and straining to record her performance of “Tears” backed by drag queens and ending with a splash paying tribute to Britney Spears.

In contrast, whenever Alex Warren’s name was read aloud, there was scattered applause and relatively muted reactions. He’s got the biggest song of the year so far — “Ordinary” is the song of summer and impossible to avoid online and in the wild as it dominates the radio. When he performed it backed by dark forest visuals and surrounded by a drumline, his secular praise music made the audience rise to their feet. Those allowed pulled out their phones to record, but they remained silent. It’s like we all knew we were watching a new star emerge, though not totally sold on him yet. He won Best New Artist, which was probably correct.

As the night wore on and the mandate to support each musical act equally fell by the wayside, I noticed a gaggle of young women crowding on one side of the stage. They were trying to catch the eyes of Katseye, a global girl group that recently broke the internet with a tightly choreographed Gap ad. I saw a woman performing the dance from the commercial to try to get their attention from her seat. It worked — as did the cheers of fans breaking the rules to get closer to them. They didn’t perform in the arena, but they still managed to get the biggest crowd reaction of the night. When I checked X after the show, my feed was filled with memes of them for the first time ever.

‘That is eternal’

Given the youthfulness of the audience, I was mildly concerned that the legendary-but-older artists MTV recruited to spark nostalgia might get a lesser response, but I was wrong — they took the stage early in the night and performed recognizable medleys.

Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey both delivered skillful vocals while surrounded by high-energy dancers, whom Alex obsessively recorded. Anika and Joyce mistakenly identified Steven Tyler and Joe Perry as members of the Rolling Stones, not Aerosmith, but were still moved by their tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, led by Yungblud. “Seems like a silly guy,” Joyce said about Osbourne as projections of his face appeared on a gothic background.

Ricky Martin ascended from a cage above the audience before bouncing around across the stage. “What a zest for life he has,” Joyce remarked, only loosely recognizing him. The pair quietly tried to work out who he was among themselves, and Joyce was surprised to hear that Martin is gay.

Just as Joyce was moved by Martin, Alex was moved by J Balvin, whose performance was high-energy and neon-tinged, featuring break dancers and a giant boot. That’s the magic of the VMAs — music lovers of all generations get to become fans of artists through their most impressive performances, giving them momentum to keep exploring and getting to know them deeper. That’s something that algorithms can’t necessarily recreate.

“Music evolves, videos evolve, but the fun, that is eternal,” Carey said in her acceptance speech for the Video Vanguard Award, MTV’s high honor bestowed upon a music video legend every year.

As someone with both thoroughly modern superfans called “Lambs” and casual supporters who ride her surges in popularity every December when “All I Want for Christmas Is You” returns to the top of the charts, she might be onto something. It’s hard to define fandom in 2025, but you can count on the fact that it’s evolving and still extremely fun.