Fandom Is Ugly: Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture
Fandom Is Ugly: Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture
Associate Professor
Cite
Abstract
Ugly fandom is fans who are willing to destroy what they love when it doesn’t go the way they want, like trying to get a show cancelled because their favorite character was killed or responding to fan fiction they don’t like by attacking the author or the hosting website. Ugly fandom is fans who think they’re so marginalized that they are punching upwards when they send waves of social media harassment. Ugly fandom sharply distinguishes the good “us” from the evil “them,” whether “good” and “bad” fans, fans and industry, or whoever the “them” who have wronged “us” may be. The specifics differ, but Fandom Is Ugly: Affective Attachments and Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture argues that to understand cultures organized around reactionary politics, we need fan studies, and to understand media fandoms, we need the insights of research on reactionary cultures. In each case, participants have intense attachments to texts and people they organize communities about online, from TV shows to politicians. Community members talk about interpretations and create and circulate their own texts, from art to memes, forging ties that enable taking collective action, at times even offline. Drawing on a corpus of angry social media posts using a combination of discourse analysis and digital humanities methods, Fandom Is Ugly finds that ugly moments happen when deep emotional attachments collide with social structures and situations that have been misunderstood, showing why we need to think about contemporary public culture through the lens of fan studies.
-
Front Matter
-
Introduction: Toward a Theory of Fandom Ugliness
-
1
What Real Fans Want Is Straight White Heroes: Constructing Fandom in Comicsgate
-
2
“#SenatorKaren Back Stabbed Bernie”: Antifandom and Political Engagement on Social Media
-
3
On the Homonormativity of Slash, from Curtain Fic to Canonicity
-
4
Hell Hath No Fury like a Fan Queerbaited: The Death of Lexa and Fan Vitriol
-
5
The Anti Wars: Sex Crimes, Free Speech, and Papering Over Racism
-
6
“I Just Joined the #MugClub!”: Fan Consumer Activism meets the Culture Wars
-
7
“Teaching White Kids They’re Bad”: Antifandom of Critical Race Theory and Fannish Attachment to Whiteness
-
Conclusion: Of Victimhood and Vitriol
-
End Matter
Sign in
Personal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
- Add your ORCID iD
Purchase
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
Purchasing information
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.