85 Country Music Sucks, But Does it Actually?
An Auto-Ethnography of Anti-Fandom Affiliation Turned Fandom
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Country Music Sucks, But Does it Actually?
An Auto-Ethnography of Anti-Fandom Affiliation Turned Fandom
Ella Ferrell – Brock University – COMM 3P18: Audience Studies – December 5, 2023
I’ve always hated country music; and when I say hated, I mean fully, actively, wholeheartedly hated country music. It was a huge part of my music identity, let alone my full identity. Music has always meant so much to me. Growing up I gained my music taste and knowledge from my parents and started exploring new music as soon as I could. This led to the consumption of a wide range of music genres in my created playlists; however, no country was to be found.
This auto-ethnography is a dive into how I placed myself in the anti-fandom of country music and my reasoning for that. I will look at how my environment, identity, and political placement all enforced my anti-fandom participation. I will then move into how and when my fandom status started to change and my position moved from anti-fandom to a slight consumer; the emphasis being on a consumer rather than a fan, yet on being a fan at the same time. Lastly, I will evaluate where I see my fandom status going in the future and how these factors can not be predicted.
What is an Anti-Fan?
First, I want to evaluate what an anti-fan is. Asking the question of what is an anti-fan is equivalent to asking the question: “What is the opposite of fandom?”, with the answer being: “Disinterest. Dislike. Disgust. Hate.” (Click, 2019, pg. 1). This is a good introduction to what it means to be more than a non-fan, to be more than a bystander, to actually interact in a hateful manner. This is because anti-fans “love to hate” (Click, 2019, pg. 1), they hate certain media, certain subcultures, and certain content; they have an active dislike of something and they decide to share this with others.
We see this above with Phy. They very clearly hate country music and decided to share this via Twitter (Phy, 2023).
Then with David Halley. They believe country music is not a valid music genre and shared this via Facebook (Halley, 2023).
Anti-fans love to participate in a collective interaction, sharing this experience with someone else. “Anti-fan is the new fan” (Click, 2019, pg. 17); a fan of the community they created, a fan of the connection, a fan of the hate-driven content created.
The fan content has been memes; a few examples of this memeification, shared by Mike Primavera, give insight into how country music anti-fans feel and what methods they use to make fun of their own position as well (2023).
Alongside these posts, we see groups that “anti-fan [groups] are united through dislike” (Barnes & Middlemost, 2022). A post seen on Reddit shows a quick back and forth from two country music haters and examples a moment of bonding (Crispybois_99 & Fox, 2023):
There is a sense of justification in conversation. People trying to