March 07, 2023

When does fandom get too extreme? with Sam Aburime

1 hour 7 minutes

The internet allows all sorts of people to come together to share their love of musicians, actors, tv shows and movies, and...anything. Everything. There are communities who share a love even specific characters from a book series, and I've even recently come across a diehard community of people who share a specific love of Uncrustables - a frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich snack.

But what happens when fandoms go too far? What happens when a group of people with a lot of big feelings, access to all sorts of personal information, and the anonymity of a screen name decide to turn on you? That's when fandom gets extreme.

I spoke to illustrator and researcher Sam Aburime about the rise of Extreme Fandoms. Sam kindly provided resources for you to use as a springboard if this topic interests you:

Further Published Reading on Anti-Fans:

"Jonathan Gray describes anti-fans as those who 'strongly dislike a given text or genre, considering it inane, stupid, morally bankrupt and/or aesthetic drivel' (Gray 2003, 70). He also acknowledges that 'fans can become anti-fans of a sort when an episode or part of a text is perceived as harming a text as a whole' (73). However, as his contribution to this collection discusses, anti-fan practices are varied and take a number of different forms." (Williams, 2020, Anti-fandom: Dislike and hate in the digital age)

Symposium specifically related to Antis: Aburime, Samantha. 2021. "The Cult Structure of the American Anti." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 36. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.2147.

Wikis:

‘Anti-Shipper’, (2023), Fanlore Wiki, May 12, https://fanlore.org/wiki/Anti-shipper

Books & Articles:

Click, M. A. (ed.), (2020), Anti-fandom: Dislike and hate in the digital age, New York: New York University Press.

Gray, J. (2022), Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste, NYU Press.

Gray, J. (2003), ‘New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-Fans and Non-Fans.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6 (1), pp.64–81

https://books.google.com/books/about/Cultish.html?id=L-n8DwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description

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