When does fandom get too extreme? with Sam Aburime

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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