5
So far we have discussed how fan-audiences engage with participant culture seeking benefits “(mostly) limited to being part of and contributing to a community, sharing a passion or realising creative ambitions — often leading to increased social currency (and higher status, greater reputation — after all, status-seeking is one of the cornerstones of the social media age)”.[1] However, we must not think that this increased sense of community (or social currency) is premised exclusively on positive feelings. “Fan culture is often motivated by a complex balance between fascination and frustration, affirmation and transformation.”[2] While much of the focus on media and audience studies has been on ‘positive’ fandom, there is of course a wide variety of modes of engagement with texts. Some go so far as to suggest that “many of us care as deeply (if not more so) about those texts that we dislike as we do about those that we like.”[3]
Thus, to ignore the affective power of dislike means missing out on a large component of what motivates fans’ passions. We ought to highlight the transformation that occurs through frustration, and thus we turn our attention to the phenomenon of anti-fans. We should first define anti-fans, then elaborate on the context for why anti-fans are seemingly more prevalent compared to the past, then we have to clarify what makes anti-fans distinct from (regular) fans (or ask the question if anti-fandom is becoming more regular/typical of fandom in general).
Originally, the term ‘anti fan‘ was coined to refer to “those who hate or dislike a given text, personality, or genre”[4] We must be careful, though, to place fans and anti-fans into a fixed binary; while fandom and antifandom “could be positioned on opposite ends of a spectrum, they perhaps more accurately exist on a Möbius strip[5], with many fan and antifan behaviors and performances resembling, if not replicating, each other.”[6]
Thus, while it might seem as if fans’ passionate liking and loving of texts is diametrically opposed to ant-fans’ disliking and loathing of texts, this is too myopic a view. “Fandom is not a simple, life‐long and unproblematic relationship, but one where positives and negatives, fandom and antifandom are often present all at once.”[7] The möbius strip analogy suggests that fans and antifans can exist within the same community and even within the same person’s identity at different times. Fans and antifans (and fannish and antifan readings of texts) can significantly overlap:
What is the opposite of fandom? Disinterest. Dislike. Disgust. Hate. Anti-fandom. It is visible in many of the same spaces where you see fandoms: in the long lines at Comic-Con. at sporting events, in numerous online forums like Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and Reddit … and in our politics. This is where fans and fandoms debate and discipline. This is where we love to hate.[8]
It is difficult to assert that there is more anti-fandom now than ever before, but it is easy to assum