Head On Fire

When does fandom get too extreme? with Sam Aburime

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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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      Head On FireBy Don Martin
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