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Anti-fandom
| Synonyms: | hatedom, anti-fan |
| See also: | sporking, lolfan, heifan, Akgae |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Anti-fandom is a term used by fans and especially academics studying fandom. It has been used to describe people who focus on a source text for the entertainment value of mocking it, but also might be used to characterize fans whose genuine hatred for the fandom or its canon involves no mockery or ironic distance. Sometimes anti-fans were never actually fans of the original source text to begin with, but sometimes they were fans who became increasingly disenchanted and finally angered or repelled by canon or fanon developments.
Source texts with anti-fandoms include Twilight, The Inheritance Cycle, the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton, and some K-pop fandoms. Cassandra Clare is a focus of anti-fans and anti-fandom.
Traditionally academics who researched "anti-fandom" characterized it as a mirror image of fandom that mocked or criticized rather than adored the fan-object. Discussion among academics and especially fans has since shifted to "anti-fans" who exhibit anti-social behavior. Some behaviors of extreme antifans include doxing, spreading rumors, abusing or physical harassment of other fans. Note that an antifan is not the same as an anti-shipper.
Media with large anti-fandoms
- Pokémon had a big one when it first came out in the United States, with people dismissing it as just a fad and bashing it as a cutesy animal series with annoying characters. This eventually died down and is pretty much unheard of today, as the franchise is one of the most beloved and iconic.
- Steven Universe Critical can slide into this, going from criticizing aspects of the series to outright accusing its creators of supporting harmful messages and rhetoric simply because the fan didn't like a certain episode or character. Lily Orchard is infamous for this.
- RWBY has a dedicated hatedom known as "RWDE", made up of people who either turned against the series and kept hate-watching it or never liked it and watch it solely to pick it apart and talk about how they could fix it.
- The Hellaverse (Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss) has an anti-fandom of people who think both shows are just edgy for the sake of it or promote harmful ideas. A lot of it revolves around personal attacks on creator Vivziepop.
- 7th Heaven, a WB drama that aired in the late 90s and early 2000s. Viewers felt it was sappy, sanctimonious, poorly written, and dragged on even after the original five kids grew up and they kept adding new characters no one was interested in.
Further Reading/Meta
Academic Publications
Various academics have been publishing research on anti-fandom since 2003. Some examples:
- Gray, Jonathan. "New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-Fans and Non-Fans." International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, March 2003.
- Harman, Sarah, & Jones, Bethan. 2013. "Fifty shades of ghey: Snark fandom and the figure of the anti-fan." Sexualities, 16(8), 951-968. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460713508887.
- Jones, Bethan. "'I hate Beyoncé and I don’t care who knows it': Towards an ethics of studying anti-fandom". Journal of Fandom Studies, vol. 4, no. 3. 2016.
- Click, Melissa A., ed. Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age. Vol. 24. NYU Press, 2019. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvwrm46p.
Meta
- Sympathy for Anton Ego: An Antifan Manifesto by osteophage