"Fangirl" here is a neutral term for someone who squees, squicks, and Was There. General fandom posts encouraged!
Towards a working definition of "anti"
Towards a working definition of "anti"
Most of us know it when we see it, but I figure any discussion about fandom antis and how to respond to them would benefit from having a solid answer to "what even is an anti, anyway?"
tumblr.com




This nonny's response will probably become my go-to should antis ever invade a part of fandom I requent.
LOL!
I'm going to have to use this in the future :)
that is beautiful. =)
What's an "anti," please and thank you?
Someone who engages in
I'd add in that a lot of antis specifically target older fans, by which they mean 'adults', because they don't believe fandom is for everyone, but only for kids/'them'.
they'd be horrified to wander into any of the local conventions I frequent where it's perfectly normal for me to chat about anime for an hour with an octogenarian gentleman and then wander over and debate favourite Transformers with a friend's kids or something"SJ-flavored"?
Social Justice-flavored
SJ stands for "social justice", so in this case "SJ-flavoured" implies a disingenuous argument that's framed in terms of being concerned with social justice issues (like, say, tackling sexism or racism or concern for abuse survivors) to make it harder for anyone to disagree without looking bad.
Antis are basically the modern equivalent of old-school "But what about the children!!!" anti-slash or anti-smut crusaders - they make spurious arguments that a certain type of fic or art is Morally Wrong and has to be stamped out because it's harmful for people to stumble across it (and they're often completely hypocritical about it too, because it's not really about the content at all, it's about winning a shipwar or stamping out types of stories they don't like by 'proving' that X ship is terrible and you're a bad person if you like it).
Unfortunately in the modern fandom environment on sites like Tumblr, that kind of argument can get a lot of traction because it's common for people to get publicly called out and shunned or piled on by hundreds of people if they're deemed to be into anything Bad. So no one wants to be the one to argue with someone saying, "Liking this sort of thing makes you a terrible person and here's why," no matter how ridiculous their argument is. (Even though it's often things like, "Shipping two adult characters with a big age difference is exactly the same as saying you support real-world child abuse," and the like.)
Interesting. I would not have the slightest problem spitting in the face of an "argument" like that--one of the benefits of being old.
People (not just fans) can be so fucked up at times. Makes my wrinkled ass tired.
:-)
Solid post. I manage to avoid most antis on tumblr, which i guess is a combination of following the right people and being relatively unknown or in small fandoms.
I'm glad that people are starting to talk about this. The abuse in fandom is getting out of hand on tumblr. I thought this post had some good points.