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Today we have Beliebers, Swifties and Directioners. But the Little Monsters were cultivated in a way we hadn't seen before.

Despite having hustled, stripped and set fire to hairspray cans with her tits out in bars across New York City for years, it wasn't until releasing her debut album in 2008 that Lady Gaga became a household name. Bewildered journalists couldn't make sense of her platinum hair bows, tiny leotards and that purple teacup she used to carry with her wherever she went. But she was an immediate hit among pop fans, who became enthralled by her inherently flamboyant sense of style, increasingly creative music videos and refreshing determination to push boundaries in a pop arena that was actually quite cool at the time, but not particularly weird.

Although Gaga herself was undeniably eccentric, her music – particularly at the start of her career – was broadly palatable. Despite her debut being marketed as a complex Warholian exploration of fame, the tracks were catchy, repetitive and synth-driven. That said, they were also f***ing massive. The pulsing synths and hypnotic chorus of "Just Dance" were the ideal accompaniment to WKD-fuelled teen house parties worldwide and the built-for-choreography beats of "Poker Face" had the ability to turn any dingy small town gay club into a euphoric, glittering stampede. Kids across the world ate up her addictive hits, avant-garde outfits and messages of acceptance, propelling her to the status of global icon in just a handful of months.

But it wasn't until the summer of 2009 that these aforementioned kids were given a name: "Little Monsters", which she began calling out to the crowd during her live shows. Giving a whole fandom a nickname of sorts was already commonplace in K-pop, but Gaga was the first to do it on such a grand scale in a western context – using it to describe the way fans would writhe, scream and dance in the pits of her high-octane performances. Naming her fans did two things. First, it created an "us" and "them" narrative. You were either a true Gaga fan, or you weren't. And second, it grouped them all together in a way that made sense online. For a generation of kids who existed on the internet, being a Little Monster meant more than going to a few gigs. It meant having a support network of like-minded people from around the world that you could interact with, like an extended family. Finally, there was a name for all the people who spent their waking hours immersed in the online world of Lady Gaga; one that was getting bigger by the year.

Strangely, as Gaga's fan base multiplied, her personal relationship to them tightened. It was in mid-to-late 2009 – just before the re-release of her debut album, The Fame Monster – that she started using a "Monster Claw" hand symbol. It was a gesture as simple as curling her fingers and raising them in the air, but she did it so frequently online and on-stage that it swiftly caught on. Fans would put their "paws up" at concerts and she eventually got the claw tattooed on her back, which she shared on Instagram like a gift back to the fandom. She would talk about feeling like an outsider, sharing personal stories and preaching about tolerance and the importance of equality, consistently vocalising a system of beliefs that she stood for. And so, the Little Monsters had both a name, an ideology and a universal symbol to unite them. By outlining exactly what a Little Monster should be, and accelerating this sense of community among her fans, Gaga basically created a cult (but, y'know, a fun one rather than the kind that ends in something sinister like mass death). And all of this was able to snowball online.

This is precisely why Gaga's blueprint is genius. In weighing in with selfies, memes and the occasional heartfelt post at the same time as being the kind of global icon that can sell out arena tours in seconds, she has molded herself into the ultimate pop star paradox: she can release a self-aware comment on fame like "Paparazzi", yet you can also imagine getting shit-faced on whiskey with her and setting the world to rights on someone's sofa at 3AM. It takes more than a meat dress and a few hair bows to curate a fanbase as rabid yet unwaveringly loyal as Little Monsters. Many stars have tried, but without understanding the sense of extended identity that comes from these fan labels. Nobody does it like Gaga.