PSA: ‘antis’ named themselves. please stop accusing everyone else of naming them.
for those of you who aren’t in fandom, here’s some context on why people talk about ‘antis’ so much.
when the move to tumblr obliterated fandom communities, tags became our new community space, and it was considered hella rude to ‘tag your hate’. so if someone wanted to complain about a ship, they would tag their venting or critical posts ‘anti-[ship]’ so it would still have a tag but wouldn’t pop up in the ship tag.
shockingly (/sarcasm), fandom members began to form social groups around being ‘anti-[x]’ because the anti-[x] tags would act as a community space just as the [x] tag would. members of these spaces began to identify themselves as being ‘anti-[x]’, exactly the same way others would describe themselves as being an ‘[x] shipper’/’[x] fan’.
and hey, it’s not exactly a wonder that when people are bonding over disliking something they begin to think worse and worse of the thing(s) they dislike. and in a fandom space that’s heavily mixed with social activism - where media representation of marginalized relationships is near-worshiped, and ships are praised or criticized on that basis - is it a surprise people who were anti-[x] turned to policing fandom via enforced ‘education’ on why their ship is Bad? (or that what anti-[x] self-identifiers considered themselves to be ‘anti’ to expanded to fiction containing kink/rl kinky relationships, darkfic, or fictional relationships that would be unquestionably abusive irl?)
so:
Antis named themselves. They call themselves ‘antis’ in reference to their identification as someone who is opposed to a ship, a kink, nsfw content/porn, etc.
- this self-made label naturally grew out of how fandom communities gather on tumblr
- People who are anti-[x] will refer to themselves as ‘an anti’
- when people like me are addressing people who are anti-[ship], anti-[fiction genre], anti-[kink], anti-[content], etc as a whole, it’s more efficient to refer to ‘antis’ as a general term - though this also follows how antis refer to themselves as individuals
if you don’t know this then I assume that you’re not really in fandom spaces (or kink spaces, probably) and you probably also have no idea that anti spaces use and abuse the definitions of words like ‘pedophilia’, ‘incest’, and ‘abuse’, applying them liberally to content they dislike even if the content has nothing to do with these buzzwords
so I hope this gives you some context on ‘antis’.
this has been a PSA.
Note: Although the noun “anti” grew from varieties of the adjective “anti [x]”, it refers to this lot, which is… not the same as just being a hater in general.
Do not confuse people being “anti [x”] with being “an anti”. Yes, they named themselves, and no: the adjective and the noun are to not the same.
to go into more detail regarding @into-september‘s addition (thank you; if I understand it correctly, the following will be more specifics):
people who consider themselves ‘anti-[ship]’ aren’t always part of the doxxing, harassing, suicide-baiting communities. they may just not like a ship for a variety of personal reasons and respect that others disagree and enjoy shipping it. I’d call these antis ‘people with NOTPs’, but unfortunately this term fell out of use and now it’s hard to tell who doesn’t like a ship but also doesn’t like harassment and who thinks shippers are terrible people who deserve harm for their shipping choices.
fanlore also linked to the post about early tumblr anti-shipping history that I wanted to reference but couldn’t find while making this post, but it’s really good and you should read it.
To be clear, what I meant is that I’ve seen people describe themselves as “an anti” in the meaning “I am against pedophilic/incestuous ships and I will actively argue against their right to exist on the internet”.
In the most extreme cases, “pedophilic” is defined as “shipping any character younger than the age of consent in a number of US states if you the shipper are older than them, particularly if you’re shipping them with someone who is also older than the age of consent”. “Incestuous” can be actual familiar relationships, but is also applied to “well they once said they’re like family in canon”.
“Antis”, as such, are out on a moral crusade that within some people’s logic justifies the dogpiling/doxxing/IRL reporting of people because but think of the children. In comparison, people hanging out in the “anti-naruto” tags will not think they’re saving CSA victims by bitching about how stupid Sasuke is.
Apologies for misunderstanding! reblogging to share your clarification.