Antis: the possible origins
So I was looking around on the internet, and stumbled upon a few articles mentioning the anti movement in its earlier stages, before it took over tumblr and made a home there.
First and foremost, a distinction: it’s always difficult to differentiate the line between fandom critical and fandom anti, especially in a time where there weren’t yet hard rules for how to act and how to speak if you wanted to belong to the community, but I think it’s necessary to observe that ambiguous razor edge since it’s what allowed sj rhetoric to be co-opted entirely for shipping purposes.
Indeed being a critical fan isn’t new nor progressive.
The Literate Union, Fandomination, sporking, Warriors For Innocence, Critics United all date back around 2008-2010 and even 2002. Hell, Mary Sue was coined in the early 70s, and badfics were a pillar of cringe culture. Couldn’t write this, shouldn’t have written that, it’s a chorus fandom writers have been hearing non-stop for decades.Fandom entitlement too, has been a thing ever since media has allowed a more direct interaction between fans and creators. Gaiman had to explain something very basic like “You’re not entitled to someone’s work when you’re not their boss” back in 2009, in an environment that more and more looked like needed not the remainder, but the lesson as if new altogether.
Whedon reflected on the incident when spotted in the lobby bar of a San Diego hotel. He said the relationship with fans had changed dramatically from when he was working on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.
“Now that everybody can reach you directly, if you happen to be on social media, there is definitely a sense of not just 'We know better,’ but also 'We should have the right to dictate.’ That’s mean, but I was sent lots and lots of – not death threats – but more just polite inquiries as to why I have not died or killed myself yet, all because of Natasha and Bruce having a romance.”
But something happened that led to the anti phenomenon to take the shape we know today, with its hybridization with social justice rhetoric, fandom activism, and hard-wired violence, and it was a change that got hard to dismiss by the time 2013 rolled in.
The Tumblr Your Fave is Problematic (YFIP) has one purpose: making sure you have a list of all the uncool things—read: racist, homophobic, sexist, ableist, sizeist, transphobic—your favorite celebrity has allegedly done or said. Normally it flies under the fandom radar, serving its intended purpose as a resource for people looking for the other side of the endless waves of praise that fandom can bestow on its chosen heroes.
Where SJ rhetoric and fandom activism meet and have a baby, the article points its finger at the 2013 blog for the call out culture that started surrounding VIPs and later on fandoms and fans, and it’s interesting to note that:
“No one is saying these celebrities are inherently terrible people who should not have any fans, no one’s trying to demonize them,” a YFIP mod explained after the aforementioned John Green post. “We’re just making their problematic behavior, as well as their responses to criticism over it, readily available.”
Which is a way different take from what we’re used to today, but it doesn’t look like fandom-related blogs inspired by YFIP took that memo too seriously.
Talking of the normalization of violence in fandoms, instead, where the term “anti” arose because tumblr sucks and we were all missing LJ dearly (“because Tumblr has no functional community structure, meaning people started using the tags themselves to replace the communities from back on LJ. In that context, tagging a negative post with the tags that apply was making the posts show up in the only viable community structure, which was a violation of LJ etiquette (where communities were self-selecting and moderated). This was exacerbated by the lack of functional cut tags, so everything was all completely visible, and you had to scroll past every post in its entirety. The culture of “don’t post anti in the tag” was a social concept developed to deal with Tumblr’s non-functionality for fandom purposes”), the association between a certain anti-like behavior and fandom ships was already a problem on tumblr and twitter around 2012 when 1D was going hard and strong.
If you’re thinking “Man, bandfandoms sure tend to attract fans that are out of control” you’re probably 1) not the only one, and 2) not all that wrong. Ship wars have always been extremely vicious, but there’s an argument that could be made about anti-like behavior suspiciously resembling what in bandfandoms and RPS spaces was known as being a “stan” (mind that now the meaning has lost its negative connotations in several newer fandoms).
“But the concept of an anti-fandom as a fandom all on its own may have arisen from K-pop fandom, where “Antis” have been at work for years bonding around their dislike of certain band members.”
We go far back in 2006 when an anti-fan poisoned a TVXQ member. 11 years later, an anti will give an artist a cookie with a needle in it, and it’s a bit like going full circle.
I’ve read extremely interesting meta regarding antis’ cult and how it relates culturally to purity wank in the US culture (hello, @freedom-of-fanfic), but here, the link to kpop and bandfandoms is something I had yet to see floating around (but maybe I just missed it).