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12 Craziest Groupie Names

Are Lady Gaga's Little Monsters more powerful than the RihannaNavy? From the die-hard Deadheads to shrieking Beliebers, check out monikers bestowed upon loyal followers.

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The pop star started using her affectionate nickname for her fans on Twitter some time after the release of her album, The Fame, which also featured a song called " Monster." She coined the term out of her fans' solidarity with “ the self-professed freak of the universe,” and thanked them in her recent VMA acceptance speech: “All you little monsters watching, tonight we’re the cool kids at the party.” She even has their name tattooed on her arm.

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Mariah likes to be a little mysterious with her fans. This summer she tweeted about an apocryphal “ Lamb handbook.” Some fans think the nickname was just her term of endearment, while others guess she chose it because of the way her followers flock around her. Either way, the “lambs” do a lot of flocking, boosting Carey’s singles on the charts and defending her when someone dares to speak ill of her on the Internet.

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Justin Bieber’s crazy Twitter followers—all 6 million of them—have developed their own lexicon. To “Belieb” is to be a rabid fan and strenuously oppose the comments and activities of “non-Beliebers.” The 16-year-old Canadian pop star rewards his enthusiasts with daily interactions, bestowing upon them the treasured gift of a retweet or just by making triumphant declarations of gratitude for their devotion.

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Those who traveled far and wide in full tie-dye to see Jerry Garcia and his bandmates throughout the 1960s and 1970s were the original cultish music fans. What started as a groundswell around the beloved psychedelic band in San Francisco’s hippie-ville of Haight-Ashbury soon turned into a national identity. The term for the rabid fanbase first surfaced in 1971 on the sleeve of Grateful Dead—the band's second live album—in a quest to build up their mailing list for the Deadheads newsletter. Many decades and joints later, they’re still around. “Safe within the fuzzy bubble of Deadhead-land, the band coasted for years on end,” Slate writer Marc Weingarten said. “But no matter how negligent or desultory the performance, they always had the Deadheads to fall back on.”

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Clay Aiken’s fans, who grew exponentially during his run on the second season of American Idol, are legendary for their obsessive nature. They call themselves “Claymates,” and have even divided into ethnic subgroups, like “Claysians,” “Claynadians,” and “Clayropeans.” Claymates are notorious for punishing critics by posting hundreds of comments on negative reviews of Aiken albums and performances. As tales of their devotion spread, Aiken trademarked their name and called them “the best fans in the world.”

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It’s no secret Rihanna loves military getup: In the music video for her single “ Hard,” she was on the frontlines in sexy military gear, dodging land mines and commanding troops. The singer’s team ran with the imagery when creating her street team, RihannaNavy, which invites fans to “ join the battlefront.” The nautical theme also happens to dovetail with Rihanna’s first film, Battleship, expected to be released in 2012. And the “Only Girl in the World” artist was spotted on-set wearing the obvious, but necessary garb to complete her seafaring theme—a U.S. Navy uniform.

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Slipknot’s “maggots” were named for the way they feed off the band’s thrashing heavy metal. Maggots made headlines in 2004 when more than 350 destroyed a house in Des Moines, Iowa, while filming the video for Slipknot’s “Duality.” They were instructed to leave the house intact, but the shoot got out of control to spectacular effect. When the band’s third album was released, fans were thrilled to find an anthem written just for them: “ The Pulse of the Maggots.”

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Anyone who grew up in the 1980s who still believes Jordan, Jonathan, Joey, Donnie, and Danny have the right stuff calls him or herself a “Blockhead" (in the non-Charlie Brown sense). Devotees commonly use the term to articulate their addiction to Boston-based boy band New Kids on the Block. Much like a Postal Service employee, Blockheads will withstand rain, sleet, and snow with their glittery posters and adoring T-shirts for their band. All they want is some “ face time” (Donnie Wahlberg’s term for a meaningful moment) with the now fortysomething guys (Joey McIntyre, the baby of the group, is only 37). When they recently made their “comeback,” 20 years after “Hangin’ Tough” hit the charts, CNN noted that some things never change: “It appears something has carried over from that distant era. Something loud, something jumpy, something ready to roar: Blockheads.”

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A street team named after a song on 30 Seconds to Mars' 2002 debut The Echelon is responsible for bringing friends to shows, voting for the band on awards shows, and plastering posters everywhere. Fans of the Jared Leto-fronted band adopted the moniker, and now refer to themselves collectively as “The Echelon” on Facebook and Twitter. Leto often stokes them online, tweeting things like “ The ECHELON is life.”

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Military members draw black lines under their eyes, but the KISS Army dons a very different type of face paint. The 1970s rock band’s extreme mugs and sky-high platform boots earned quite the following in the latter half of the decade, eventually leading to a six-figure fan club called the " KISS Army." Two Indiana teens unofficially started the group in 1975 by rallying for the band’s songs to get air time on local radio stations and claiming to be the "KISS Army.” Soon, the band heard about the boys’ efforts and thus, the official fan club was born. And some of their fans are equally as famous. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a member of the KISS Army.

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Long before Dwayne Johnson asked wrestling fans if they could smell what The Rock was cookin’, Terry Bollea stepped into the ring in the 1980s with his bold platinum blond facial hair and rocked the World Wrestling Federation. Under his stage name Hulk Hogan, the wrestler won the WWF Championship title in 1984 and a commentator proclaimed, “Hulkamania is here!” Soon, a wild group of devotees became known as Hulkamaniacs. In a mock history lesson, Cracked.com identified the faction by four symptoms—“spontaneous ripping one’s shirt in half,” “believing in oneself,” “sudden onset mustache,” and “hardness of hearing (specifically when it relates to the sound of a nearby audience cheering for you).”

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Should you find yourself wasting away in Margaritaville, you're likely to bump into a few Parrot Heads. At the risk of stereotyping, Jimmy Buffett's Parrot Heads are rarely seen during their leisure time in anything but Hawaiian shirts, flip-flops, and cargo shorts—and they're always sipping some sort of tropical beverage. The group gets their name from a 1985 Buffett concert when the singer commented on the crowd’s affinity for the bold shirts and noted one cluster who kept coming to see his shows wearing parrot hats a la Deadheads. Parrot Heads dream of living a life where their feet are perpetually in the sand and there’s a neverending frozen cocktail in their hand. “Through Jimmy, they can feel as if that's the way they'd be living if they didn't have the four kids and the job at the factory,'' one former Buffett associate told Entertainment Weekly of the bird-brained craze.

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