Fractured Fandoms: Contentious Communication in Fan Communities 1498552560, 9781498552561

Table of contents :
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1 The Dark Side of Fandom
2 Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms
3 Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures
4 Harassments Arising from Fractured Fandoms
5 The Negative Impacts of Fractured Fandoms
6 The Positives Emerging from Fractures
7 Resolving Fractured Fandoms
8 Beyond Fractured Fandoms
Appendix: The Sense-Making Methodology Self-Interview
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Fractured Fandoms

Communication Perspectives in Popular Culture Series Editors: Andrew F. Herrmann, East Tennessee State University and Art Herbig, Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne Communication Perspectives in Popular Culture examines the integral role that popular culture plays in scholarship and teaching. We use it to critique culture and to exemplify theory. We use it to understand public discourse as well as help us to explain the role that those discourses play in our daily lives. The way popular culture helps construct, define, and impact everyday reality must be taken seriously, specifically because popular culture is, simply, popular. Rather than assuming that popular culture is an unimportant place of fantastical make-believe with no impact beyond the screen, this series studies popular culture and what it can tell us about identity, gender, organizations, power, relationships, and numerous other subjects. The goal of this series is to provide a glimpse into the differing relationships between academic research and a number of popular culture artifacts from a variety of perspectives to create a space for larger discussions. Titles in the Series Fractured Fandoms: Contentious Communication in Fan Communities, by CarrieLynn D. Reinhard Beer Culture in Theory and Practice: Understanding Craft Beer Culture in the United States, edited by Adam W. Tyma Communication Perspectives on Popular Culture, edited by Andrew F. Herrmann and Art Herbig

Fractured Fandoms Contentious Communication in Fan Communities CarrieLynn D. Reinhard

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2018 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 978-1-4985-5256-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-5257-8 (electronic) TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my mentor Brenda Dervin for showing me the path and to my partner Christopher J. Olson for walking it with me.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

ix

The Dark Side of Fandom Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures Harassments Arising from Fractured Fandoms The Negative Impacts of Fractured Fandoms The Positives Emerging from Fractures Resolving Fractured Fandoms Beyond Fractured Fandoms

1 33 61 89 115 135 155 179

Appendix: The Sense-Making Methodology Self-Interview

213

Bibliography

217

Index

231

About the Author

237

vii

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people for helping me to complete this book: Christopher J. Olson Jennifer Dunn Kathleen Turner Lara Stache Jimmie Manning

ix

Chapter One

The Dark Side of Fandom

“Fandom used to be an escapist place where people were tolerant and accepting of each other.” —Peyton “My main question was: why can’t we all enjoy the things we like without some people wanting to impose their views of the world onto others? What is wrong with not liking the same thing? Why do these people feel the need to be so mean to people they don’t actually know?” —Cheri “That even in a fandom where I was supposed to be able to bond with other people through common interests, I couldn’t. It made me feel insecure and worthless.” —Olivia

Proper etiquette suggests that people should never discuss religion and politics. In contemporary public discourse in the United States and elsewhere, people may fear bringing up a topic related to religion or politics because doing so guarantees the discussion will quickly devolve into a shouting match. Others may bring up the topic to have just that reaction. It seems this state of affairs also applies to fandom. Topics related to fans, fan communities, and fandoms now can lead to the same contentious communication. Sometimes this is because the fandom topics involve similar issues as those pertaining to religion or politics, such as social justice, racism, and misogyny. Other times the topics are specific to the fandom, but the differences in how people think or act appear to lead to the same communication problems. Throughout this book, fans like those quoted above will discuss experiences that soured their fandom. For instance, Peyton, a 39-year-old selfemployed male from the United Kingdom, reflected in more general terms on problems in fandom because “I noticed a change in things culminating around 2010 where this was no longer the case and getting worse since then.” 1

2

Chapter 1

Meanwhile, Olivia, a 69-year-old retired, white British female reflected on the bullying she found in her fandom. Fans like Hiromi, a 24-year-old Asian woman from Australia; Kimi, a 28-year-old Native American two-spirit from rural Alabama in the United States; Jiao, a 20-year-old nonbinary, Asian college student from California; and Illeana, a 35-year-old female ItalianAmerican all shared their stories about problems they experienced while engaging with other fans or non-fans. One hundred and one fans shared their stories, in their own words, about heated disagreements over what to like, how to behave, who to follow, and even what things mean. These stories cover a wide variety of fandoms, issues, and spaces, and describe fights breaking out at stadiums, in homes, over Twitter, or across cyberspace. Their stories detail alarming behavior such as stalking, mob attacks, physical assault, and bullying. While they may not seem like a big deal to outsiders, looking at these fans’ lives reveals that the fans themselves found these incidents important enough to respond to an online self-interview to relay what happened. This book collects and presents their stories in a bid to understand what led to these problems, what the fans experienced because of these problems, and how they ultimately resolved—or did not resolve—the problems. These stories represent different experiences with what I call “fractured fandom,” a label I apply to the tensions that exist within or between fandoms and fan communities and arise primarily through communication problems. As the quotes above suggest, fandoms are often conceived of as positive experiences centered on connecting with like-minded individuals. Yet communication problems “are fundamentally problems of understanding, specifically the lack thereof;” such problems can occur when people refuse to understand one another for some reason. 1 Fandom consists primarily as connections between people who share similar interests, which explains why fractures can have such a negative impact: when fans no longer attempt to understand one another, the resulting sense of rejection can have devastating effects. While some fans recounted positive experiences due to fractured fandoms, others relived bad memories. Nonetheless, all stories provide valuable insight into both the phenomenon of fractured fandom and the role communication plays in causing, exacerbating, and resolving these issues. The study presented in this book does not concern what fans do with the objects of their fandom. Nor am I arguing that this phenomenon of fractured fandom arose only recently; research from fan studies and the stories from this study’s participants all indicate communication problems have manifested in fandoms and fan communities for some time. Instead, this study focuses on what fans do to one another when they communicate, and it considers when, where, and how such communication succeeds and/or fails. In other words, this book seeks to understand how people make sense of situations in which the communication devolves.

The Dark Side of Fandom

3

Fandoms and fan communities hinge largely upon fans’ interactions with one another (as well as anti-fans and non-fans), and therefore such communities, the spaces they occupy, and the people in them are largely constructed through communication. 2 Thus, communication builds a fandom or fan community, but it can also lead to rifts between fans. This approach to fractured fandom focuses on how such communication problems can negatively impact fans, fan communities, and fandoms—but also how better, more positive communication could potentially build it all back up. I have endeavored to write this book in a clear and accessible way to make it approachable by fans, so they can understand how fractures occur, and what can be done to potentially heal them. My hope is that academics and fans alike will learn more about the power of communication in creating, and dousing, the fire at the heart of fandoms and fan communities. THE DARK SIDE OF FANDOM Before describing and clarifying the concept of “fractured fandom,” I must first define the terms “fandom” and “fan.” Over the past several decades, different scholars have studied fans and demarcated them from other types of audience members, resulting in different definitions, terminologies, and taxonomies. 3 According to Mark Duffett, “The term ‘fan’ now covers a wide range of ordinary people who [have] positive emotional engagement with popular culture.” 4 Andrea MacDonald offers an expanded definition that also considers cognitive alongside affective dimensions: For the most part fans are people who attend to media texts, icons, stars, or sports teams in greater than usual detail. [. . .] Fans use intertextual cues, such as previous story lines and their understandings of the world, to construct meaning of their favorite text. [. . .] Fans are people who attend to a text more closely than other types of audience members. Texts provide a focal point through which fans can identify to which community they belong. They might even adopt ideals, beliefs, and values (or ideology depending on how you look at it) that they feel the text valorizes. 5

Adding to the cognitive and affective aspects, Cornel Sandvoss mentions behavioral aspects when he defines fandom “as the regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text in the form of books, television shows, films or music, as well as popular texts in a broader sense such as sports teams and popular icons and stars ranging from athletes and musicians to actors.” 6 Research into sports fandom also argue for cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects important for understanding a sports fan or a professional wrestling fan. 7

4

Chapter 1

In this book, people self-identified themselves as fans, but across all their different stories, their identity as fan aligns with the definition I use: a fan is someone who repeatedly engages with an object of affection—whether that object is a celebrity, a sport, a television show, a movie, a game, and so forth. Thus, the object itself is negligible; the act of repeatedly returning to that object demonstrates cognitive and/or affective needs that exceeds those of a person who could be classified as a viewer, reader, or player. Being a fan involves bringing together cognitive, affective, and behavioral intentions and orientations to a specific “thing,” be it an entity or process. Everyone is a fan of something because fandom is life. All people love and think highly of something, whether sports, popular culture, food, religion, nature, exercise, and so on. Fandom combines certain types and amounts of affective, cognitive, and behavioral activities. Fandom, then, is an attitude. Thinking highly of the thing constitutes the cognitive dimension, and having a positive regard for it the affective dimension. Repeatedly returning to it results in the behavioral dimension. Breaking down being a fan to these constitutive, attitudinal elements allows comparison of fans across different fandoms, as well as the processes involved in fandom. Additionally, this definition allows for a porous membrane separating fans from non-fans (who are affectively disaffected), and even from anti-fans (who, as discussed below, are affectively negative), as people can move between these groups based on changes in their cognitive, affective, and/or behavioral states. However, simply focusing on the individual in relation to the object of affection is not enough to understand what is a fan and what is fandom. According to Henry Jenkins, fans need to be understood through their communal relations as well: “One becomes a ‘fan’ not only by being a regular viewer of a particular program but by translating that viewing into some kind of cultural activity, by sharing feelings and thoughts about the program content with friends, by joining a ‘community’ of other fans who share common interests.” 8 This social dimension of fandom can intensify the cognitive, behavioral, and affective aspects of being a fan, such as how co-viewing in sports fandom reinforces the experience of a match, 9 or how professional wrestling promoters position their audiences. 10 Furthermore, audiences and fans construct each other, “assigning values, pleasures and beliefs,” 11 thereby establishing the boundaries and expectations for their interacting with one another. At the heart of a fandom is an object of affection around which fans converge through their activities, but fans only recognize themselves and others as fans by how they engage with one another in the community that emerges around this object. In this view, fans cannot exist in isolation— which flies in the face of stereotypes about the maladjusted fan. The historical trajectory of fans has gone from categorizing and understanding such individuals as “fanatics” to appreciating and even celebrating

The Dark Side of Fandom

5

their active participation in modern capitalistic economies. In the second half of the twentieth-century, mainstream culture viewed fans and fandom as an aberration. According to Cheryl Harris, like any mass audience, media industries viewed fans as “an important constituency to be measured, controlled, co-opted, institutionalized, and appropriated for their value as a ready market for products and as a public relations tool.” 12 While such actively engaged audiences could be good for business from a capitalist perspective, mainstream media outlets tended to stigmatize fans by dismissing their activities as silly, abnormal, and even purposeless. 13 Thus, fans have been seen as a force to exploit for profiteering purposes, either through direct sales or indirectly through sensationalistic storytelling. Fandom, fans, and fan communities have had a long history of being “essentially pathologized [. . .] without leading us much closer to understanding the important phenomenon” 14 of what fans are, why they exist, and how they matter to the world. According to Joli Jenson, this conceptualization of fans emerged from viewing them “as a potential fanatic,” which in turn positions fandom as an “excessive, bordering on deranged, behavior.” 15 Fans have often been stereotyped as socially deviant loners or members of a dangerously hysterical crowd. 16 From this pathological perspective, fans are considered irrational and vulnerable to external influences because they are not bonded to traditional communities and institutions, or because they seek psychological compensation for something they need (i.e., lonely people seeking companionship through fandom instead of more traditional, and thus “healthy,” relationships). 17 Fans were seen as “them” and as different from aficionados, who are considered higher class and more educated, and thus more stable and respectable. 18 The overly emotionally yet mentally infantile fan needed to be set apart and contained, through ridicule if need be, to prevent attacks on higher cultural texts and values. 19 Separating lower-class fans from higherclass aficionados allow the higher class to maintain traditional sociocultural power dynamics as well as boost the egos of those so-called “aficionados.” Near the end of the twentieth century, as more academics turned their attention to understanding fans and developing fan studies, scholars wrestled with the definition of “fan,” such as the aforementioned conceptualized continuum from “social deviant” to “aficionado.” 20 MacDonald, meanwhile, explains that fans “are either zealots of mass culture or magically creative individuals reworking mainstream meanings into new resistant forms.” 21 This view on fans parallels a rise in audience and reception studies overall; the emergence of more interactive media technologies since the 1980s helped shift the focus in audience studies from the passive spectator to the active user. 22 This academic work sought to understand and demonstrate the agency of fans to counter the negative perception of them that marginalized them along class lines. 23 While such acceptance has increased among academics, the general public tends to continue the “othering” of fans—especially media

6

Chapter 1

and popular culture fans—as “less-rounded human beings [too] inept to deal with the full range of emotions.” 24 To be clear, in this book, my focus on fractured fandom is not meant as an argument for a return to such othering and marginalization. I do not believe fans are ill (especially as I consider myself a member of many varied fandoms), but are instead humans struggling with their communication just like anyone else. Indeed, my focus on communication reflects this goal of understanding fan agency. Furthermore, the focus on active, participatory fandom did include some concerns about the darker side of fandom, although it wasn’t a widespread concern as scholars worked to legitimize fan studies. For example, many who studied fans of science fiction media through the end of the twentieth century believed hierarchies did not exist in fandom. According to MacDonald, “delineating fandom along a hierarchy of any kind is a problematic act because fandom views itself as being antithetical to ‘mundane’ social norms;” instead, fans saw fandom as involving “notions of equality, tolerance, and community. Fans do not explicitly recognize hierarchies, and academics also hesitate to recognize hierarchies in fandom.” 25 If scholars recognized this potential, they might have said such fans form subgroups, or they might identify differences ascribed by fans due to knowledge, 26 “levels of experience, age, region, attitude, and behavior.” 27 Instead of looking for differences, fan studies focused more on “the remarkable similarities between fan practices.” 28 In other words, to legitimize the field, scholars needed to demonstrate the uniqueness and importance of the field. They found that legitimization by arguing for a unified fandom capable of resisting mainstream culture and capitalist media industries through its “discursive power.” 29 This led to a “‘Fandom is Beautiful’ phase” that operated to redeem the people and activities “Othered by mainstream society” and “render normative” those previously ridiculed. 30 Since then, the focus has been more on examining fandom as either a force for cultural and economic resistance or as part of normal, everyday life. 31 As Jenson writes, fandom became conceptualized as “how we make sense of the world, in relation to mass media, and in relation to our historical, social, cultural location” and thus provided a means to explain “what it means today to be alive and to be human.” 32 Thus, fan studies, understandably, focused on the positive aspects of fandom “to rehabilitate the fan, to validate fan practices, to celebrate and defend fandom,” 33 and to demonstrate the power of fans in contemporary capitalist societies. Even with the more recent shift to understand fans’ pleasures, identities, and activities (i.e., fanfiction, fanart, fan activism, etc.) to achieve those pleasures and perform those identities, the focus remains, implicitly or explicitly, on the power struggle between fans and producers—and just how much power fans have in those struggles. 34 While many fan studies scholars sought to legitimize the study of fans by focusing on the power they wield or the pleasures they get, others exhibited

The Dark Side of Fandom

7

concern for problems in fandom and fan communities. Two decades ago, as mentioned above, MacDonald studied hierarchies in fan communities and determined they involve differences in “knowledge, level of fandom, access to ‘inside’ knowledge, leaders, and control of venue.” 35 At the same time, Christine Scodari analyzed online discussion boards to understand how soap opera fans handled disagreements: “Although a haven from such external disapproval, soap opera discussion groups on the Net provide new spaces for the disparagement of marginal women’s pleasures more so than for the ‘collectivized’ celebration of such pleasures.” 36 The marginalized do not represent producers’ desired audience and do not occupy privileged positions in fandom as a result. Scodari argues that “This occurs when the more marginal segments—nonwhite and, especially, older women—are compelled to incessantly defend their interests amidst the diminishing options and returns offered by soap opera creators or else fall silent.” 37 Thus, while unity and equality may serve as the goals, neither existed. Since then, more fan studies scholars recognize the existence of social hierarchies and competition founded on knowledge, skills, and access. 38 Within the past decade, fan studies have included more research to consider the darker side of fandom by exploring the problems associated with contemporary fandom and fan communities. This turn may be a response to an increase in intergroup strife as people with different value systems come into contact, and conflict, with one another in a globalized, online world. 39 Fan studies research now regularly includes considerations for and questions about such issues like fan labor exploitation, anti-fans, fan shaming, and fan harassment. Fan exploitation studies focus on how profit-driven industries use fans to further their own goals. The redemption of the fan from fanatic to “specialized yet dedicated consumer” means that media industries routinely focus on developing or addressing fans as part of their marketing strategies. 40 Because of their collective work, fans became a “force to be reckoned with” 41 and valuable in capitalist structures as consumers, constituting “perhaps the most important market segment.” 42 This material and economic reality creates tension with a dominant political and academic conceptualization of fans as empowered to resist mainstream culture and messages; however, many fanscholars address this tension because “it is impossible to ignore the extent to which media industries may be said to engage in an attempt to economically disempower fans by encouraging heavy spending on artifacts and merchandise, which to fans represent a kind of ‘capital accumulation.’” 43 From this perspective, fan exploitation studies are concerned with this “parasitic relationship” in which fans “help the culture industries recoup their marketing costs for stars and texts in return for its limited access” while “[r]eal control of the industry remains in the hands of the few.” 44 Thus, fan exploitation studies focus on how fans provide free labor through their fan activities. 45

8

Chapter 1

Other studies consider the relationship between fans and producers to understand the continuing negative aspects of this relationship. Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen examined the relationship between Supernatural fans and the shows’ producers. One focus of their research concerned the shame these fans feel for “investing time, energy and emotion on something so frivolous.” 46 This research returns to the worry of pathologizing fandom, especially the affective aspects of being “too” emotional about the object of affection. Feeling such shame can hinder communication between fans and non-fans, as fans seek a “stringent policing of the First Rule of Fandom,” 47 which is to not talk about fandom and thereby maintain a safe space in which fans can engage with one another. Similarly, Paul Booth investigated how media producers court both fans and non-fans by depicting and mocking excessive displays of fandom; portrayals of such “hyperfans” draw on discourses and stereotypes regarding the pathological fan to thereby shame fans into a proper, disciplined, normal type of behavior. 48 Such constructed shaming appears to have an impact on how fans position themselves, as some fans discursively distance themselves from such “hyperfans” due to the stereotypes and stigmas attached to them. 49 Meanwhile, anti-fans studies from Jonathan Gray and other famous scholars focus on people who actively hate and oppose some object at the center of another fandom; 50 in a sense, their anti-fandom still centers around an object of affection, but their affection is decidedly negative. 51 Anti-fans may oppose some aspect of the object of affection or the fandom surrounding it— possibly for ideologically-informed reasons, or because they feel superior to fans—and may develop a rivalry with their opposed fandom. 52 Such antifandom becomes a part of fandom when rivalry is required, such as spectator sports like football and American football: to identify with and love one team often involves de-identifying with and hating another. 53 Such oppositional anti-fandom occurs outside of sports fandom, such as the rivalry between Star Wars and Star Trek fans or DC and Marvel fans. Similar to fans, who use their fandom to create a safe space in which to exist outside of the mainstream society or culture, 54 anti-fans also create this utopic area in which they can exert control over their world. 55 In both instances, fans and anti-fans attempt to control their position in a chaotic contemporary world that may not completely align with their personal values. 56 Furthermore, anti-fans may possess as much knowledge about the object of affection as fans—but the valence of their affection is completely opposite. 57 While negativity fuels their perspective on the object of affection, and has the potential to shape how they engage with fans, anti-fans still seek the same types of relationships to the text and one another, because of their need to construct identity and have strength in numbers. While anti-fans engage their object of affection through hatred, other fan communities bring hatred into their fandom-related discussions and activ-

The Dark Side of Fandom

9

ities. Christian Fuchs argues that fan-scholars ascribe too much progressivism to the fan communities they study. 58 He criticizes such studies as the academics’ attempts to rationalize their love of popular culture and commodity culture “by trying to identify progressive political aspects of the consumption and logic of cultural commodities.” 59 His criticism then identifies what he calls “fascist communities” 60 as fan communities that demonstrate ultra-conservative, fascist tendencies, such as anti-Semitism and radical right-wing extremism. Such right-wing extremism has been seen in the presence of racism, sexism, and homophobia in both gaming culture 61 and European football fandoms. 62 Lauding all fan communities as active spaces of participatory culture cannot be done while ignoring the very real hatred festering within some. Finally, fan harassment increasingly receives attention given mainstream news stories about harassment within fan communities and associated with fandoms. Such harassment occurs in relation to gendered politics, as women in male-dominated online fan spaces like MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) have described being harassed inworld and in real life. 63 In one sense, such stories serve a sensationalistic purpose, drawing on the pathologizing of fans to grab the attention, and profits, of non-fans. On the other hand, issues of harassment between fans must not be ignored for the real harm that they can cause. Thus, this book dedicates chapter 4 to this issue. This problematizing contradicts the conceptualization of fandom and fan communities as positive experiences. This recognition, however, does not mean a return to the conceptualization of fans as obsessive and dangerous fanatics, or as socially-isolated and awkward individuals. This still happens, as journalists and the public engage in fan shaming 64 by considering fans as “crazy” or as basement dwelling social rejects or posers, 65 and those who produce the fandom’s object of affection negotiate what constitutes a “good” or “appropriate” fan. 66 Instead, this turn suggests a recognition of the problems plaguing fandom and fan communities just as problems exist in other parts of people’s everyday lives, such as religious and political beliefs and actions. While it remains important to study fans to redeem, empower, and understand them, it is also important to acknowledge the “constitutive centrality of antagonism and power” in fandoms and fan communities. 67 Furthermore, this turn toward understanding the darker side of fandom is nothing new in sports fan studies. While sports fandom may be more accepted by mainstream society or culture, it is inherently more “tribal and based on a controlled, competitive mentality” in comparison to other media fandoms. 68 The rivalry and anti-fandom inherent in sports fandom often leads to playful teasing and banter to rib opponents through trash talking: “They enjoy participating in a ‘game,’ as they call it, of exchanging witty lines with their ‘rivals’ and take up a contest of who will defend and prove

10

Chapter 1

that her/his fan object is better.” 69 Such good-natured one-upmanship, of course, happens more when the fans are in a positive frame of mind; tensions over losses can tinge such communication with a darker hue as the fans seek to recoup their sense of identity and pride. 70 Sometimes, those negative moods spill over into physical hostility, such as with football hooliganism. Overall, the common understanding of fandom views it as a positive experience. According to this perspective, any fandom experience is positive because it is shared between like-minded people; if fans like the same thing, then they like each other and get along better than with people in other communities or social interactions. This rather utopic vision of fandom makes sense, especially when considering how fandoms and fan communities (or fan collectives) form, but this conceptualization also elides the very real problems that occur in communities when people with very real differences interact. Indeed, this utopic perspective potentially silences people from speaking up and dealing with problems, as they may feel inappropriate in highlighting such matters. If the view is that fandom is great, then perhaps their perspective is what’s wrong, and not some aspect of the fan collective. This book addresses this generally utopic assumption about fandom by building on the research done by those looking at the darker side. Additionally, it operates with the assumption that fandom is a human activity and therefore complex, multifaceted, contradictory: in other words, fandom should not be thought of as “a unified concept”; indeed, “[j]ust as audiences are not unified, these ‘extreme’ audiences are not unified in their motivations or rewards for fandom.” 71 According to Lori Hitchcock Morimoto and Bertha Chin, a fandom, especially an online and transcultural one, is “always already a site of difference, and even potential danger, for fans who do not hew to the cultural norms of the imagined community.” 72 Per Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, each single fan community represents “a complex figuration of figurations that links up different local groups in a range of interdependent activities” due to fandoms’ reliance on different digital communication technologies. 73 For Matt Hills, this collective is “a network of networks, or a loose affiliation of sub-subcultures” 74 which he terms a “fan world.” Rather than monolithic communities in which all individuals share many overlapping characteristics, fandoms are instead collectives of various factions held together by the commonalities they share, which may be one single yet important commonality: an affection for a specific thing. Subgroups form within a fandom when all fans agree that they like something, but what aspect they like, how much they like it, and how they express this affection differ from subgroup to subgroup. Subgroups occur based on individual and cultural differences that lead to a variety of participation types and amounts. Differences can exist because various fan communities form their “own customs, norms and expectations for participation,” 75 exist separate from one another given their reliance on a specific social media plat-

The Dark Side of Fandom

11

form, 76 specialize “in different modes of fan activity,” 77 or even have “different degrees of access to and identification with power, and vulnerability to textual misrepresentations or violence mirror in fandoms.” 78 Previous studies have classified and categorized these differences as the non-fan, or the fan who is lurker, aficionado, enthusiast, die-hard, fair-weather, cult, true, big, casual, story-oriented, series-oriented. 79 Even anti-fandoms can have such typological differences. 80 Fandoms possess a plurality of ways to be a fan, with each fan “following one possible pathway within the wider fan world,” 81 resulting in pathways that “will be subjected to disapproval, discursive policing, othering, or moreor-less acting negatively (and even ignorance) of those occupying alternative branches of the fan world.” 82 Fans will debate amongst themselves these differences and distinctions, such as Bruce Springsteen fans who would debate who “is allowed to use the label of ‘fan,’ who is a poseur or ‘casual fan,’ and what kinds of activities constitute fandom.” 83 In many ways, hierarchies and other methods for differentiation exist within fan communities to distinguish people’s position within that community, and such positioning also exist between communities to determine their station in a fandom or larger sociocultural context. As Rukmini Pande argues, rather than just see fandoms as safe spaces with critical consumers, we need to understand how they are “also spaces of contention and of conflict.” 84 Doing so is the goal with the fractured fandoms perspective. Within any fan collective, the differences between individuals can result in fractures that illustrate the formation of a subgroup, and that a fandom consists of any number of these subgroups. This book looks at the cracks, gaps, fissures, fractures that exist, emerge, and disappear within these fan collectives. The fractures within a fandom demonstrate where these differences, whether small or large, lie. These fractures can lead to diversity and the spice of life, or to combat and the devolution of the whole. DEFINING FRACTURED FANDOM Fandom helps people discover their identities, and determine what they like and dislike. Identifying as a fan helps people find friends, establish communities, and develop a sense of belonging. Having a fandom allows people to express themselves creatively, whether through theories, writing, artworks, or costumes. Being a fan is a means for everyday people to establish themselves as active and powerful creators and participants in a capitalistic system that otherwise sees them as nothing more than passive consumers. In other words, being a fan is considered a positive aspect of life. Sometimes, however, being a fan becomes problematic: for the fan; for those the fan engages with either inside or outside of any fan community; or

12

Chapter 1

for entire fan communities that clash with one another, whether those problems emanate from within the same fandom or come from different fandoms. Fandoms and fan communities exist as a patchwork of different factions stitched together. Each faction revolves around a specific interest and practice, and these factions may agree or disagree with one another over reception, interpretation, and/or appropriation. As individuals have different motivations for engaging with an object, the differences may create tensions within the fandom that can manifest in several ways. Differences hold the potential to cause problems in how individuals treat one another, and can impact people’s behaviors in such a way that what once seemed brilliant and fun becomes unwelcoming or even threatening. Such instances can lead to “fractured fandom.” This study examines when the stitches have been pulled, leaving gaps and fractures, and explores how various fandoms and fan communities handle such gaps and fractures from the perspectives of those involved in the processes to negotiate them. As indicated in the previous section, other scholars have turned toward studying this darker side of fandom, examining different antecedents and consequences of the problems that can lead to a fractured fandom. In studying the factions within the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, Derek Johnson used the term “fan-tagonism” to explain the “ongoing, competitive struggles between both internal factions and external institutions to discursively codify the fan-text-producer relationship according to respective interests.” 85 Essentially, his analysis concerned how internal and external entities negotiated the tension between different readings of the text in an attempt to normalize the appropriate readings and relationships between the text, fans, and producers. Melanie Kohnen presents a similar argument in her analysis of media industries legitimizing “masculinized affect” as “quality fandom.” 86 Analyses focusing on factions competing to control the discourse of a fandom directly address the fractured nature of fandoms. At the same time, such analyses focus on a specific type of fracture: the negotiation of different readings or interpretations. I argue that fractures could happen for this reason, but also for other reasons. Bethan Jones considers another of these reasons with the concept of “intra-fandom antagonism” by suggesting that some fans focus on defining appropriate fan-related capital and behaviors and then using these definitions for how they engage with others. 87 Thus, fans may judge others, and harass them, based on seeing them as “true fans.” 88 Jones aligns this concept with Hills’s idea of “inter-fandom antagonism,” which he positions as less antagonistic than anti-fandom but still concerned with a fandom or fan community attempting to negotiate and position itself as different from another fandom. 89 Nathan Hunt found fans willing to use their fandom-based trivia as the means to distinguish themselves from non-fans, while protecting themselves by demonstrating their mastery of a rational trait (i.e., knowledge acquisition). 90 Judging others

The Dark Side of Fandom

13

based on some preconceived notions and expectations for what constitutes fandom indeed represents another way that fractures could occur. This book aims to understand these reasons and more for what causes a fractured fandom. However, perhaps more importantly, it also seeks to consider what happens because of the tensions that arise in such situations. Fractured fandom experiences concern more than just the fracture; they concern the impact of the fracture on people’s lives. Rather than just study the communication processes, this study seeks to understand how those communication processes impact the fans’ lives and the functioning of the fan collective. Before going further, I need to clarify that I study fans from a communication studies perspective instead of a purely cultural studies or social science perspective. According to Duffett, “Fandom is a process of being;” 91 this means fans only exist in relationships (with the object, with each other, with non-fans) that become enacted and embodied in actual situations. To me, fans participate in communication situations that focus on fandom, and their interactions with one another in that situation determines their identity as a fan. Thus, this approach means focusing on communication processes whereby a fan comes to understand themselves and others. I am not studying a text, a type of fan, a specific fandom, or a fan community. I am interested in the interactions of those entities. All social interactions are communication activities. Communication exists within situations in which individuals and their texts interact with one another; whether those situations exist synchronously or asynchronously, they are still bounded by a specific space and set time. Thus, fans exist in relation to one another through their situationally-bounded communications; to understand the role of the text, the identity of the fan, the dynamics of the fan collective, or the power of the fandom requires understanding these situationally-bounded communications. Fan collectives emerge and develop due to the interactions of the fans who seek out others, gather together, recruit others, and define the boundaries and rules of membership for their communities, whether offline or online. This view of fan collectives relies on a social network perspective that sees communities as discursively created through social interactions. 92 In a sense, this conceptualization incorporates a basic understanding of community participation as communicative: if fans failed to communicate with one another, the community cannot form around a specific object of affection. To truly understand the emergence, maintenance, and potential demise of any fan collective, one must examine the communication practices of its members. Answering these questions is best accomplished by delving into the experiences of the fans that constitute the community. Seeking to understand these processes does not detract from the legitimization of fan collectives as a field of study. Indeed, doing so strengthens such work by seeing

14

Chapter 1

fans as real people communicating with others to develop the structure and feeling of community that is universal among humans. Focusing on communication processes allows comparison of fan communities for different fandoms as well as maintains the interest on studying fans as active, empowered, and potentially resistant of dominant ideologies—while recognizing the space for fan collectives experiencing problems. Boundaries of separation are just as communicatively determined as bonds of community. While tensions caused by boundary negotiation are not necessarily a problem in and of themselves, the handling or resolution of these tensions may result in problems. Sometimes the communication processes determining these boundaries lead to creativity; sometimes, to calamity. A fracture is a communication problem that arises out of a tension between communication participants within a fan collective or between different ones. The gaps involve tensions, struggles, and problems when people interact with others. Fractured fandom, then, occurs any time communication between fans, with anti-fans or non-fans, within fan communities, between fan communities and/or between fandoms breaks down. Fractures manifest through verbal and nonverbal communication behavior. These behaviors manifest due to an interaction of a situation (e.g., drinking, power dynamics, being online, etc.) and individual differences (e.g., interpretation, preferences, beliefs, etc.). Fractured fandom refers to the tensions within and among fans and fan collectives that cause gaps or fractures that may result in antagonistic and hostile behaviors. This book seeks to understand why the communication breaks down and how fans handle such breakdowns. If communication problems lie at the heart of these fractures, then hopefully improving communication can resolve the problems that occur or prevent them from occurring in the first place. While I recognize that not all fractures lead to problems, and that not all fans engage in the problems that cause such fractures, I argue that it is important to be aware of the darker side of fandom as this allows for better understanding of how the phenomenon of fandom functions during the early part of the twenty-first century. With fractured fandom, those best suited to address such problems are fans themselves. Fans may be more likely to listen to other fans than to anyone else, such as those perceived as outsiders. Thus, academics who study fans tend to identify as fan-scholars to handle this identity negotiation between fan and scholar. 93 I have identified as a fan throughout my entire life, with the Star Wars franchise and The X-Files having the most significant impacts on my life. At the same time, I am a communication scholar, and see the need for communication as fundamental to improving and safeguarding civilization. Because of my interest in communication and fandom, I use these fractured fandom experiences as the cases in which to study communication as both the cause of and solution to contentious public discourse. Recognizing the role communication plays in

The Dark Side of Fandom

15

fractured fandom could help fans develop the skills to address problems in their fan communities and fandoms, and to extend those skills beyond their fandom experiences. To understand these communication problems and power dynamics, this book draws on different theoretical perspectives that have been used in fan studies: critical/cultural views on the relationship between the individual and powerful institutions and ideologies; the sociological examination of the fan collective (be it fandom or fan community) and social relations; and the psychological uses and gratifications of the fan as an individual. This book draws on these theoretical perspectives from the metatheoretical vantage of Brenda Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology (SMM). Thus, the study focuses on the fan as an individual-in-situ—a sense-maker, moving through a situation that involves engaging with others in helpful or hindering ways— and negotiating these different perspectives as necessary to begin to understand the agentic and structural forces at work. 94 With this focus on the individual working through how to deal with an experience, the analysis can illuminate the fan’s struggles with communication problems. FANS, FRACTURES, AND DIALOGUE I define fractured fandom as manifesting from and being exacerbated by communication problems. The goal of this book is to understand how this happens, and to understand if communication can potentially solve fractured fandom. Dialogue is a specific type of communication, philosophically positioned and empirically studied to bridge gaps between individuals and groups of differing belief systems. In communication studies, dialogue is routinely cited as the ultimate form of interpersonal and intergroup interaction that can lead to better understanding and the resolution of conflict. Can dialogue, then, bridge the gaps in fan collectives? At the same time fan studies emerged, so too did the theorizing and studying of dialogic communication processes and effects. Indeed, these two concurrent trajectories appear interconnected given the cultural and social conditions of the last half of the twentieth century. T. Dean Thomlison began writing about the need for dialogic communication nearly four decades ago, but what he wrote then is just as relevant today: We live in the most advanced age of communication technology that any society has ever experienced. [. . .] Ironically, we have not advanced as quickly with human communication. We seem to accept the belief that ours is an age of fear and alienation. We have come to fear ‘getting involved.’ Through its cultural communication, society has taught us to reveal little of ourselves to others. [. . .] We have come to believe that we can do without others and that ‘independence’ means not needing others. 95

16

Chapter 1

Thomlison wrote that observation in 1982, before the Internet would create a globalized society, where anyone could speak with anyone else. Yet the great democratization and equalization potential of the Internet has been met with increasing segmentation and segregation. People personalize and customize their online experiences, and thus filter from their lives that with which they disagree. People now perform versions of themselves online, to have the most “friends” or “followers,” to engage one another less in person, and to engage less with people who are “different.” People prefer the “safety” of echo chambers and their online performances. People seek out such safety as a coping mechanism, to help them deal with the tensions, problems, strife, conflict, and fractures that emerged in the twentieth century. Sociologists described the industrial age and rise of urban areas in the early twentieth century as a time of anomie, where people felt alienated as they lost their roots in traditional communal organizations like family and religion. 96 As the industrial age gave way to the post-industrial and information ages, theorists saw this anomie increasing. According to Daniel T. Rodgers, “the last quarter of the century was an era of disaggregation, a great age of fracture.” 97 This disaggregation involves the breakdown of larger social, civic, and cultural institutions, replaced by more local and personalized ones. Movements emerged in mid-twentieth century “against the dominant culture [. . .] through the invention of countersolidarities.” 98 People sought control over their lives and worked to create communities to better reflect their own personal interests and needs. Thus, counter-cultures and subcultures emerged from youth movements, such as beatniks, hippies, punks, slackers, and so forth. The rise of fan communities during this same period is another example of such sociocultural reorganization. While the notion of fans, especially coming from the term fanatic, has been around for centuries, fandom became more associated with youth cultures pre-WWII. 99 The counter-culture youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s emerged at the same time as landmark fan texts (i.e., Star Trek and Doctor Who) and the beginning of fan conventions. 100 Thus, fandoms functioned as new identity-focused communities that allowed people the means to form new collectivities meant to give some coherence to their lives, but without relying on traditional aggregating forces like religion or location. 101 Instead, people could cope with changes to their world by focusing on preferences for escapism. This view is not to say that a fan only finds communal relationships in a fan collective, 102 but that fan collectives could serve as an organizing and stabilizing force people could choose to participate in to help them in their lives. Seeing fandoms from this perspective helps explain how they have become caught up in cultural wars, such as those in the United States, where “highly polarized moral values flooded into partisan politics [that] had a long history in the American past. [. . .] Across the last quarter of the twentieth

The Dark Side of Fandom

17

century, the emergent talk of fluidity and choice grew in tandem with contrary desires for centers and certainties, each drawing on the other’s energy.” 103 Seeing fan collectives in this way also helps explain the view of fans as aberrant; since they were not aligned with traditional communities, they were positioned against such communities and the stability long associated with them. Fan collectives could be viewed as threats, and stereotypically portraying them as irrational, socially deviant, and so forth demonstrated mainstream culture’s attempt to delegitimize them to reestablish traditional communities. While such fracturing was occurring, Deborah Tannen also noted the rise of an “argument culture” in the United States and elsewhere. 104 Argument culture describes the adversarial nature of contemporary public discourse; this adversarialism informs how divisive and acrimonious public discourse has become, with individuals focused on critiquing, attacking, and opposing each other for the sole purpose of winning and subjugating their opponents. 105 “To cope with the tension of living in an apparently nasty and brutish world, we address our differences and disputes through the argument culture.” 106 This argument culture hurts the public common good and individuals’ lives. Rather than see how power oppresses all, we only see how we are pitted against one another; for example, both men and women are adversely affected by a patriarchal system that sets norms for how genders are meant to behave, and yet many see each other and not these norms as the problem. 107 Adversarialism bolsters self-reliant individualism at the expense of communalism. Fan collectives can provide people with an escape from this adversarialism, because they only engage with people who share their preferences for some object of affection. While a fan collective may contain fans who engage in different types and amounts of participation and performance, the overall idea of the fan collective is meant to provide a safe, stable space in which people can express their fandom in a coherent, unified manner. 108 “Unsurprisingly, then, the strain of ever-present antagonism leads many to seek social refuge. Most immerse themselves in homogenous, like-minded groups, righteously separated from others by wedge issues and buttressed by polarizing leaders and a partisan media.” 109 Fandoms are these social refuges—or at least they were. Yet these fandoms are not alternate realities completely separated from the outside world or other areas of the fans’ lives. The same ideologies and habits fans use to cope with other areas of their lives come into play in their fandoms and their interactions with other fans both within and without their fan communities. As MacDonald and Scodari demonstrated, disagreements within a fan community can emerge as preferences and tastes fail to align completely. Accepting fan collectives as non-unified means that fractures can occur and increase through communication. Such communication problems could be

18

Chapter 1

the same type of disagreements as those that constitute argument culture. Thus, the same arguments that drive wedges between people along political or religious dimensions could also occur in fandoms and fan communities. If dialogue is a remedy for political and religious disagreements and conflict, then it should also apply to fractured fandom experiences. Thus, it becomes necessary to explain what dialogue is and why it matters. For dialogue scholars, humans need one another, and that without recognizing interdependence, sociocultural problems cannot be solved: “To disagree constructively and productively, we must reunite individual interest with social responsibility.” 110 Humans need one another to solve social, cultural, environmental, and global issues, and even when communicating across differences proves difficult, many still wish to do so because they understand this fundamental aspect of humanity. 111 “Consequently, we need communication practices that facilitate self-expression and meaningful connection, especially across our differences and disagreements.” 112 Even in contentious times, social justice movements call to be heard and to see communication not just as one-to-many persuasion but as genuine interaction. 113 Dialogue becomes the means to solve problems, but only if people can step out of the entrapment of adversarial individualism and argument culture. As Josina Makau and Debian Marty observe: “Using this [adversarial] lens, we rely on a range of confrontational communication habits—primarily judgment, blame, and defensiveness—to promote our interests and to protect our reputations.” 114 Such communication activities keep people apart rather than bring them together. Humans do not engage in dialogue because they “fear rejection” or are caught in argument culture and a “‘take no prisoners’ partisanship [that] leaves people with no rational reason to communicate.” 115 Furthermore, they may also hesitate to engage in dialogue because people “have few patterns for relating across our human differences as equals.” 116 Rather than be vulnerable, humans instead engage in monologue, which is power-focused over other-focused and can destroy rather than create positive human relationships. Monologic communication comes from those who want to control others. 117 For dialogic communication, “power is not vested in either of the participants, but exists in the interaction which holds potential for two-way impact” 118 as participants do not manipulate but potentially influence one another. Dialogue focuses on learning and understanding to possibly lead to change: “Learning through engagement with the Other, with that which or whom we do not know, reshapes us.” 119 Dialogue is not focused on winning arguments and making differences disappear, but on respecting differences as fundamental to human existence. Monologic communication is often goal-oriented and results-oriented, such as winning an argument, and less focused on the experience of communicating with another person. Dialogue brings focus back to the communica-

The Dark Side of Fandom

19

tion process where the goal is not to command but to commune. 120 This focus on people does not mean the goal should be the erasure of differences—such is not necessary to connect with others. Instead, people just want to feel that they matter, and being listened to assists with that. 121 Humans connect with one another when there are genuine attempts to understand one another “by means of an open mind, an honest exchange, and fair evaluations.” 122 Thus, the goal should not be to converge or diverge, to conform or to tolerate, but to recognize both similarities and differences, and to respect each other’s choice and right to be both similar and different. 123 Communication is fundamental to being human, as is having disagreements: “an individual cannot not communicate, and when people communicate there is the inevitability of some difference in meaning.” 124 Meanings are in people, shaped by the situation. Communication is more than interaction; it is transaction. Meaning is generated through communication, and is not just transmitted from one to another. From this perspective, dialogue is the best communication process whereby to create meaning and thus understand one another. Dialogue is more than just a “good” conversation; it recognizes connections between society, language and mind. 125 Dialogue is more than just an exchange between people. Dialogue is a process of communication which initially takes place within you and is eventually extended to another person. The communication is purposeful and truth-seeking, open and honest, but nonmanipulative and not imposing. The person with whom you are communicating shares in this view of communication so that both reach out to join each other in a communion of meaning to bring about mutual understanding or a solution to a problem. 126

Dialogue requires all participants to be honest and open, “without feeling the need for a façade or the need to hide parts of ourselves.” 127 Dialogue cannot be forced from the outside but nurtured, moment-to-moment, from the inside. For dialogue to occur, six characteristics need to be present in all communication participants: genuineness, empathy, understanding, “unconditional positive regard,” presentness, “spirit of mutual equality,” and a “supportive psychological climate.” 128 Regardless of status, participants need to view each other as distinct, unique, and equal. 129 Dialogic communication requires an openness to new ideas, perspectives, and willingness to change, which requires a willingness to listen without judgment. Perhaps most basically, dialogue requires “a felt need to communicate,” an “acceptance of disagreement and conflict with a desire for resolution,” and a “positive attitude for understanding and learning.” 130 Overall, Thomlison defines the “dialogic process” as involving the following: The more an individual engaged in interpersonal interaction perceives the other participant as real or genuine, as empathic, as having an unconditional

20

Chapter 1 regard for him, the more that individual will move way from a static, unfeeling, fixed, impersonal, monologic type of communication and the more he will move toward dialogic communication which is marked by a fluid, changing, acceptant experiencing of differentiated personal feelings. 131

Thus, dialogue “involves interacting with one another [. . .] rather than the monologic modes of talking to, at, or for others.” 132 Because of its requirements, dialogue is “fundamentally an attitude or philosophy of communication. [. . .] It grows out of something inside us rather than from dos and don’ts which we follow in a cookbook fashion.” 133 Because it is philosophically informed, dialogue can occur in any type of situation or communication context, whether face-to-face or mediated, synchronous or asynchronous. However, given these requirements, it is not surprising just how difficult dialogue is to achieve. Dialogue and being dialogic has many benefits. Despite the difficulties, dialogue is desirable: dialogic communication’s focus on mutual recognition and understanding can help people feel they are being heard and recognized as important, even in times of immense disagreement and conflict. 134 Dialogue leads to changes in sense of self, self-confirmation, reduced selective distortion, increased self-esteem, reciprocity, flexible valuing system, selfactualization, increased awareness of feelings, restored and improved relationships, and less defensiveness and more emotional release. 135 Self-disclosure in dialogue leads to disclosure, which deepens and nurtures a relationship. 136 Thus, being dialogic can change how people view the world and each other, resulting in people who can “equip themselves and the broader community with the tools needed to make the best possible decision in any given situation.” 137 Those who engage in dialogue can better understand themselves and others, and in being so empowered they can help others to work through and with their differences to improve their communities. In this view, dialogue serves as form of therapy due to how the communication process involves acceptance and genuineness. 138 Finally, to understand how dialogue is used in this book, I must refer to how Dervin’s SMM relates to dialogue. 139 Dervin argues that SMM assumes “that the concept of dialogue pertains specifically to the presences of difference” since without difference communication is unnecessary. 140 In Dervin’s analysis, dialogic research tends to focus on disciplining the “whats” and “whos” of dialogue rather than the “hows” of dialoguing; rather than engage in real dialogue, the tendency has been more for those in power to use their position to give a semblance of equality and respect without actually doing dialogue. 141 Dervin’s SMM views humans as sense-making beings who continually attempt to make sense of the world around them so they might understand what, why, and how things happen. SMM assumes “1) that both humans and

The Dark Side of Fandom

21

reality are sometime orderly and sometimes chaotic; 2) that there is a human need to create meaning, and knowledge is something that always is sought in mediation and contest; and 3) that there are human differences in experience and observation.” 142 People use information to make decisions and move through the situations they face every day. From these assumptions, SMM “presents the human being in phenomenological terms, as a body-mindheart-spirit moving through time and space, with a past history, present reality, and future dreams or ambitions.” 143 A fourth key assumption rests on Richard Carter’s discontinuity assumption “that there are persistent gap conditions in all existence—between entities (living and otherwise), between times, and between spaces;” assuming that people’s experiences can be defined by such “gappiness,” “differences arise not just because of demographics or the historical situations of their lives, but because of how people make sense of and act within their lives.” 144 From these assumptions is the idea that “communicating is best isolated, studied, and generalized by focusing on these gap conditions.” 145 Communicating occurs because of gaps, and presents the means to deal with a gap. “Communicating is best isolated by utilizing a gap perspective because gap is where communicating dynamics are found.” 146 When such gaps exist, “communicating is the bridging behaviors with which we deal with gappiness.” 147 SMM, then, presents the means to understand how differences manifest and are exacerbated through communication, and thus suggests that dialogue could be used to bridge the gap, whether that gap exists between people or within a person; through dialogue, people can learn from one another how to make sense of their experiences and bridge the gaps they encounter. 148 In this book, communication situations involve some form of communicating between people who differ in a gap in power, a worldview, an opinion, and so forth. Yet this gap is not necessarily detrimental, as difference is a necessary condition for communication and sense-making to occur. 149 From this SMM perspective, I define dialogue as a communication process that attempts to bridge the gap in the situation. The question is not what type of characteristics (e.g., personal or situational) must occur for a dialogue to exist; instead, the question is how could communicating processes, intra- and interpersonally, interact to produce dialoguing. Shifting from “dialogue-assituation” to “dialogic communicating as bridging” removes the emphasis on an outcome of harmony or persuasion (both of which are tenuous given the assumption of the fluid nature of human beings). 150 Instead, the goal is the bridge itself, the process of creating an understanding whereby different people come together on some level, some common ground, even if that gap is not filled in and those differences do not disappear. If at some later point this bridge is used to construct something else—from harmony to persua-

22

Chapter 1

sion—then that would occur in addition to the dialogue; the dialogue itself will not accomplish this. THE FRACTURED FANDOM STUDY Before I can describe the fans’ stories, I need to discuss how they were collected, as doing so provides vital information regarding the depth of detail many fans recalled. Hills has referenced the issues in studying fans who, because of their traditional status as marginalized by a mainstream society and culture, can be wary of outsiders seeking to analyze, critique, and potentially further marginalize them. 151 Many academics who study fans have adopted the aca-fan perspective to negotiate their dual identities of fans and academics. Additionally, scholars have sought more dialogic ways to study fans, such as ethnographies and interviews. 152 Given the complex nature of SMM, 153 I utilized this approach to produce a self-interviewing protocol that required fans to interrogate their own experiences. To understand fractured fandom, it becomes vital to understand what causes such fractures, what happens because of them, and how to address them. To answer these questions, I needed to understand the perspectives of people experiencing the fractured fandom, and to do that I drew upon SMM. Fans may have experienced fractured fandom before—perhaps many times before. Given this prior experience, fans may make sense of and manage such situations in rather rote or habitual ways; that is, if they experienced such behaviors in the past, and dealt with these behaviors in a specific way, they may keep responding in that way. On the other hand, fans may experience a facture for the first time, or a different type of fracture that leaves them uncertain about how to best deal with the problem. Whether they faced new experiences or have dealt with them repeatedly, SMM interviews allow them to thoroughly interrogate their own experience and reflect upon what happened. Using philosophical assumptions about the nature of humans, this approach to gathering interviews focuses on how people see their own experiences and empowers them to tell their own stories by investigating how they make sense of their own lives: Sense-Making looks at the hows of communicating (how individuals define situations, how they bring past experiences to bear, how they make connections, and so forth) to provide a framework that allows us compare communicative behavior in a way that concentrating on specific contexts or static characteristics cannot. 154

SMM accomplishes this by requiring that certain steps occur in any SMMinformed study:

The Dark Side of Fandom

23

First, Sense-Making mandates the framing of research questions such that the respondent is free to name his or her own world. [. . .] Second, the SenseMaking interview is designed such that the respondent is able to circle, or repeatedly engage with, the given phenomenon or situation. [. . .] Finally, the metatheoretical tenets of Sense-Making are reflected in the analytical aspects of research through the search for patterns in terms of processes or verbs rather than things or nouns. 155

Following these steps helps the researcher work with their research informant to circle the informant’s experience and thereby understand various aspects of their experience. Communication is used to understand the informant in a way that does not subject the informant to the researcher’s academic predispositions. SMM has been used in various reception studies to understand how people make sense of and use the media products in their lives. 156 Such studies have considered how people interpret and negotiate various media products or how they use media products in different situations. These studies have demonstrated that using SMM allows the individual to take control of their own recollection, and provides them with the reflective tools needed to dig deeply into their experience and even see things they had not seen before. Thus far, however, SMM has only been used to study fans in a study I conducted for my dissertation. 157 This study included a discussion of men repeatedly returning to, and thus perhaps being fans of, media meant for women (i.e., Sex and the City or musicals). 158 The SMM-structured interview asked men to consider how their experience with that media related to their conceptions of what is considered appropriate for men and women; being asked to interrogate issues of power and ideology in their own experiences led many to consider gender in new ways. Similarly, using SMM in this study allows me to understand the complexity of the intertwining factors involved in those situations fans described as fractured. In their self-interviews, fans identified problems that caused them to consider how they could address and potentially fix the situation, and they reported different ideas, emotions, learnings, helps, hindrances, and views on themselves and others that can illustrate how they dealt with these fractures. With its metaphorical foundation, SMM informs different interviewing protocols meant to foreground the person’s subjective, interpretive, phenomenological perspective on their experience by seeing the person “as a carrier of both structure and agency.” 159 Because Dervin’s SMM views people as theorists of their own lives, SMM interview protocols are designed to engage in a dialogic exchange and empower people to speak as much or as little as they like about how they see their situations and all the factors that comprise them. 160 The self-interview constructed for this study applied the core SMM questions to have fans discuss how they experienced the fractured fandom at three points in time: what led to the fracture, what happened during the

24

Chapter 1

fracture, and what happened after the fracture. Given that fractured fandom experiences can involve highly volatile memories, feelings, and ongoing situations, I decided to further provide this neutral space for self-reflection by creating an online self-interview protocol that people could complete anonymously and at their own pace. The Appendix details the format of this SMMinspired self-interview as well as the questions participants were asked to answer. Once the self-interview protocol was complete, I utilized various social media platforms to distribute the link, asking for people from various types of fandoms around the world to participate in the study. Over the course of the study, 395 people attempted the self-interview. After the study ended, the only self-interviews accepted for analysis were those that fully answered the questions (meaning the demographic questions at the end were completed), took the questions seriously (meaning little to no nonsense answers were given), and answered on topic (meaning the problem was related to a fandom in some way). These criteria resulted in a database of 101 self-interviews in which fans offered their stories, in their own words, of the fractures they faced and how they faced them. To allow the fans’ own voices to tell their stories, editing was done only to fix grammatical errors in those instances when they impede understanding the quotes. Additionally, I have provided each fan with a pseudonym that will be used consistently in telling their story to help foster readers’ identification with their experiences. I will introduce each fan with their pseudonym and pertinent demographic information, as they described it, when utilizing their stories. Overall, these stories offer vital insight into what leads to fractures, what happens because of them, and how to prevent them. PREVIEW OF THE ANALYSIS This book observes the fractions that occur as fans and fan communities experience differences in interpretation, opinion, expectation, and behavior regarding the object at the center of their fandom. My analysis demonstrates the fractures in fan collectives through an examination of self-interviews, collected news stories, and previous research regarding these fractions to inform a discussion of what causes such fractures and what happens because of them. The goal is not to direct blame at any specific group or type of fans or fan communities, but rather to explore the potential causes of the fractures. This book explores how people make sense of problems in situations where the only acts constituting the interaction, or lack thereof, are communicative acts. The analysis in this book demonstrates how negative communication practices cause problems, including various forms of harassment, and reveals a need for positive communication practices to solve those problems.

The Dark Side of Fandom

25

Chapter 2 presents the nature of the fractures, and looks at the various reasons for why fans experienced fractured fandom. The analysis in this chapter reveals five main reasons that primarily communication-based but demonstrate the influence of power dynamics impacting people’s communication. Chapter 3 examines what led to the fractures by first considering the fans’ demographics and fandoms and then analyzing the situational factors, such as where the experience occurred (i.e., online or offline), and the type of fan activity in which the person engaged. The analysis indicated a mixture of identity and situational factors having unexpected and expected impacts on the fractures. Chapter 4 explores the fractures leading to harassment. The harassment types broke down between being online or offline, resulting in physical assault, sexual harassment, cyberbullying, cyberstalking, and cyberassault. The reasons for the harassment were analyzed to understand the extent to which identity, situational factors, and nature of fractures were causing specific types of harassment to occur. Chapter 5 continues this exploration of the impacts by analyzing the negative outcomes of fractures. By negative, I draw on SMM to discuss how the impacts in some way hurt or hindered their journey through life. Even when harassment was not part of the experience, almost always such a negative impact was. Chapter 6 considers the positive outcomes of the fractures. By positive, I mean the impacts on the fan’s life that in some way helped them in their lives. Even during harrowing situations of harassment and anguish, some fans could recall learning a new skill or discovering a new power they did not previously realize that they possessed. Chapter 7 returns to the focus on communicating. Because the fractures emerge through problematic social interactions and communications, their resolutions should as well. This chapter analyzes the resolutions of the fractured experiences to understand what actions the fans took to resolve the situation, and what actions they wished they could have taken. Often, the resolution involved a further breakdown in communication, as people stopped engaging with one another. At the same time, many wished for improved engagement to advance the resolution of the situation. Finally, chapter 8 concludes this book by reviewing what was learned about communication and fractured fandom. Here the goal is to argue for improved communication practices through more mindfulness and education on how to engage in a more dialogic approach to social interaction and communication. The final argument is made for why this approach matters, not just in fandom, but in other areas of our social and cultural lives. NOTES 1. Amardo Rodriguez, Revisioning Diversity in Communication Studies (Leicester, UK: Troubador Publishing Ltd, 2010), 82.

26

Chapter 1

2. Rhiannon Bury, Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female fandoms online (New York City: Peter Lang, 2005), 16. 3. Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (New York City: Routledge, 2002), preface. 4. Mark Duffett, Understanding Fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture (New York City, Bloomsbury, 2013), 17. 5. Andrea MacDonald, “Uncertain Utopia: Science fiction media fandom and computer mediated communication,” in Theorizing Fandom: Fan, subculture, and identity, ed. Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1998), 135–6. 6. Cornel Sandvoss, Fans: The mirror of consumption (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2005), 8 (italics in original). 7. For examples, see: David E. Beard and John Heppen, “The Dynamics of Identity in the Communities of Local Professional Wrestling,” in Sports Fans, Identity, and Socialization: Exploring the fandemonium, ed. Adam C. Earnheardt, Paul M. Haridakis, and Barbara S. Hugenberg (Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2011); Walter Gantz, Brian Wilson, Hyangsun Lee and David Fingerhut, “Exploring the Roots of Sports Fanship,” in Sports Mania: Essays on fandom and the media in the twenty-first century, ed. Lawrence W. Hugenberg, Paul M, Haridakis, and Adam C. Earnheardt (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2008); Matthew D. Shank and Fred M. Beasley, “Fan or Fanatic: Refining a measure of sports involvement,” Journal of Sport Behavior 21, no. 4 (1998). 8. Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring participatory culture (New York City: New York University Press, 2006), 41. 9. Walter Gantz, David Fingerhut and Gayle Nadorff, “The Social Dimension of Sports Fanship,” in Sports Fans, Identity, and Socialization: Exploring the fandemonium, ed. Adam C. Earnheardt, Paul M. Haridakis, and Barbara S. Hugenberg (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 72–3. 10. Benjamin Litherland, Wrestling in Britain: Sporting entertainments, celebrity, and audiences (London: Taylor & Francis, 2018), 90. 11. Ibid. 12. Cheryl Harris, “Introduction Theorizing Fandom: Fans, subculture and identity,” in Theorizing Fandom: Fans, subculture, and identity, ed. Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1998), 4–5. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Joli Jenson “Fandom as Pathology: The consequences of characterization,” in The Adoring Audience: Fan culture and popular media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New York City: Routledge, 1992), 9. 16. Ibid., 10–3. 17. Ibid., 16–8. 18. Ibid., 19. 19. Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, 40. 20. Jenson, “Fandom as Pathology,” 18–23. 21. MacDonald, “Uncertain Utopia,” 135. 22. Victor Costello and Barbara Moore, “Cultural Outlaws: An examination of audience activity and online television fandom,” Television and New Media 8, no. 2 (2007). 23. Sandvoss, Fans, 3. 24. Henrik Linden and Sara Linden, Fans and Fan Culture: Tourism, consumerism and social media (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017): 1. 25. MacDonald, “Uncertain Utopia,” 136. 26. Ibid., 136; see also Nathan Hunt, “The Importance of Trivia: Ownership, exclusion and authority in science fiction fandom,” in Defining Cult Movies: The cultural politics of oppositional taste, ed. Mark Jancovich, Antonio Lázaro Reboll, Julian Stringer and Andy Willis (New York City: Manchester University Press, 2003), 198. 27. Daniel Cavicchi, Tramps Like Us: Music and meaning among Springsteen fans (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1998): 182. 28. Harris, “Introduction,” 50.

The Dark Side of Fandom

27

29. Derek Johnson, “Fan-tagonism: Factions, institutions, and constitutive hegemonies of fandom,” in Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York City: NYU Press, 2007), 287. 30. Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, “Introduction: Why study fans?,” In Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York City: NYU Press, 2007), 3. 31. Ibid., 9. 32. Jenson, “Fandom as Pathology,” 312. 33. Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen, Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, shame and fan/producer relationships (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012), 1. 34. Johnson, “Fan-tagonism,” 298–9; Zubernis and Larsen, Fandom, 7. 35. MacDonald, “Uncertain Utopia,” 136. 36. Christine Scodari “‘No Politics Here’: Age and gender in soap opera ‘cyberfandom,’” Women’s Studies in Communication 21, no. 2 (1998): 183. 37. Ibid. 38. Hills, Fan Cultures, 46. 39. For more on online, global, transnational fan communities, see Lori Hitchcock Morimoto and Bertha Chin, “Reimagining the Imagined Community: Online media fandoms in the age of global convergence,” in Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York City: NYU Press, 2017). 40. Gray, Sandvoss and Harrington, “Introduction,” 4. 41. Neta Yodovich, “‘A Little Costumed Girl at a Sci-Fi Convention’: Boundary work as a main destigmatization strategy among women fans,” Women’s Studies in Communication 39, no. 3 (2016): 290–1. 42. Linden and Linden, Fans and Fan Culture, 215 (italics in original). 43. Harris, “Introduction,” 43. 44. Ibid., 51. 45. For examples, see Mark Andrejevic, “Watching Television Without Pity: The productivity of online fans,” Television and New Media 9, no. 1 (2008); Nancy K. Baym and Robert Burnett, “Amateur Experts: International fan labour in Swedish independent music,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 12, no. 5 (2009); R. M. Milner, “Working for the Text: Fan labor and the New Organization,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 12, no. 5 (2009); Ling Yang, “All for Love: The Corn fandom, prosumers, and the Chinese way of creating a superstar,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 12, no. 5 (2009). 46. Zubernis and Larsen, Fandom, 57. 47. Ibid., 62. 48. Paul Booth, Playing Fans: Negotiating fandom and media in the digital age (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2015), 75–7. 49. See Cornel Sandvoss and Laura Kearns, “From Interpretive Communities to Interpretive Fairs: Ordinary fandom, textual selection and digital media,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures, ed. Linda Duits, Koos Zwaan and Stijn Reijnders (New York City: Routledge, 2014). 50. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 48. 51. For more on the study of anti-fans, see: Liz Giuffre, “Music for (Something Other Than) Pleasure: Anti-fans and the other side of popular music appeal,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures, ed. Linda Duits, Koos Zwaan and Stijn Reijnders (New York City: Routledge, 2014); Jonathan Gray, “New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-fans and nonfans,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (2003); Jonathan Gray, “Antifandom and the Moral Text: Television Without Pity and textual dislike,” American Behavioral Scientist 48, no. 7 (2005); Sarah Harman and Bethan Jones, “Fifty Shades of Ghey: Snark fandom and the figure of the anti-fan,” Sexualities 16, no. 8 (2013). 52. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 49; Vivi Theodoropoulou “The Anti-fan Within the Fan: Awe and envy in sport fandom,” In Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York City: NYU Press, 2007), 316. 53. Theodoropoulou, “Anti-Fan,” 316–7

28

Chapter 1

54. Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, 40 55. Diane F. Alters, “The Other Side of Fandom: Anti-fans, non-fans, and the hurts of history,” In Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York City: NYU Press, 2007): 346. 56. Ibid., 354. 57. Nathalie Claessens and Hilde Van den Bulck, “A Severe Case of Disliking Bimbo Heidi, Scumbag Jesse and Bastard Tiger: Analysing celebrities’ online anti-fans,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures, ed. Linda Duits, Koos Zwaan and Stijn Reijnders (New York City: Routledge, 2014), 71. 58. Christian Fuchs, Social Media: A critical introduction (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014), 58–9. 59. Ibid., 59. 60. Ibid., 60. 61. For more, see Lisa Nakamura, “‘It’s a nigger in here! Kill the nigger!’: User-generated media campaigns against racism, sexism, and homophobia in digital games,” in The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, in Angharad N. Valdivia (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2013). 62. For more, see Jamie Cleland and Ellis Cahsmore, “Fans, Racism and British Football in the Twenty-First Century: The existence of a ‘colour-blind’ ideology,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40, no. 4 (2014); Steve Redhead, “‘We’re not racist, we only hate Mancs’: Post-subculture and football fandom,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures, ed. Linda Duits, Koos Zwaan and Stijn Reijnders (New York City: Routledge, 2014). 63. For example, see: Jessica L. Beyer, “Women’s (Dis)embodied Engagement with Maledominated Online Communities,” in Cyberfeminism 2.0, ed. Radhika Gajjala and Yeon Ju Oh (New York City: Peter Lang, 2012); Kishonna L. Gray, “Cultural Production and Digital Resilience: Examining female gamers’ use of social media to participate in video game culture,” in Fan Girls and the Media: Creating characters, consuming culture, ed. Adrienne TrierBieniek (New York City: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). 64. For examples of this discussion, see Bethan Jones, “‘I Will Throw You Off Your Ship and You Will Drown and Die’: Death threats, intra-fandom hate and the performance of fangirling,” In Seeing Fans: Representations of Fandom in Media and Popular Culture, ed. Lucy Bennett and Paul Booth (Bloomsbury, 2016); PollyPrissyPant, “As a Fan AND a Journalist . . . fan shaming needs to stop.” Like a Jaguar in a Cello . . . December 16, 2013, http:// pollyprissypant.tumblr.com/post/70170690244/as-a-fan-and-a-journalistfan-shaming-needs-to. 65. Tara Tiger Brown, “Dear Fake Geek Girls: Please go away,” Forbes, March 26, 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabrown/2012/03/26/dear-fake-geek-girls-please-go-away/ #7c48e0245370; Constance Grady, “Why We’re Terrified of Fanfiction,” Vox, June 2, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/6/2/11531406/why-were-terrified-fanfiction-teen-girls. 66. For more, see: Mark Stewart, “The Use of Social Media by Television Networks to Moderate Fandom,” Society of Cinema and Media Studies, Atlanta, Georgia, 2016; Mark Stewart, “Simon Says, Do Fandom This Way,” Fan Studies Network, University of Huddersfield, 2017; additionally, see the work of Mel Stanfill, Suzanne Scott, and Bertha Chin on this topic of “appropriate” fandom. 67. Johnson, “Fan-tagonism,” 285. 68. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 3. 69. Theodoropoulou, “Anti-fan,” 323. 70. Gantz, Fingerhut and Nadorff, “Social Dimension,” 73–4; Theodoropoulou, “Anti-fan,” 323. 71. Harris, “Introduction,” 48 (italics in original), 50. 72. Morimoto and Chin, “Imagined Community” 182. 73. Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, The Mediated Construction of Reality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), 171. 74. Matt Hills, “From Fan Culture/Community to the Fan World: Possible pathways and ways of having done fandom,” Palabra Clave 20, no. 4 (2017), 860. 75. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 19; Zubernis and Larsen, Fandom, 9.

The Dark Side of Fandom

29

76. Lucy Bennett, “Tracing Textual Poachers: Reflections on the development of fan studies and digital fandom,” Journal of Fandom Studies 2, no. 1 (2014), 12. 77. Hills, “From Fan Culture/Community,” 860. 78. Morimoto and Chin, “Imagined Community,” 184. 79. Costello and Moore, “Cultural Outlaws,” 133–4; Mary Kirby-Diaz, “So, what’s the story? Story-oriented and series-oriented fans: A complex of behaviors,” in Buffy and Angel Conquer the Internet: Essays on online fandom, ed. Mary Kirby-Diaz (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc., 2009); Gantz, Wilson, Lee and Fingerhut, “Exploring the Roots,” 65–6; Hills, Fan Cultures, ix–xi; Michelle L. McCudden, “Degrees of Fandom: Authenticity and hierarchy in the age of media convergence,” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2011), 119; Sandvoss, Fans, 30–1; Sandvoss and Kearns, “Interpretive Communities,” 102. 80. Claessens and Van den Bulck, “Severe Case,” 72. 81. Hills, “From Fan Culture/Community,” 872. 82. Ibid., 874. 83. Cavicchi, Tramps Like Us, 182. 84. Rukmini Pande, “Squee from the Margins: Racial/cultural/ethnic identity in global media fandom,” in Seeing Fans: Representations of Fandom in Media and Popular Culture, ed. Lucy Bennett and Paul Booth (Bloomsbury, 2016), 220 (italics in original). 85. Johnson, “Fan-tagonism,” 287. 86. Melanie E. S. Kohnen, “Fannish Affect, ‘Quality’ Fandom, and Transmedia Storytelling Campaigns,” in The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, ed. Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (New York City: Routledge, 2017), 338. 87. Jones, “‘I Will Throw You’,” 54. 88. Ibid., 59. 89. Ibid., 54; Matt Hills, “‘Twilight’ Fans Represented in Commercial Paratexts and InterFandoms: Resisting and repurposing negative fan stereotypes,” in Genre, Reception and Adaptation in the “Twilight” Series, ed. Anne Morey (Routledge, 2012), 115. 90. Hunt, “Importance of Trivia,” 198. 91. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 30. 92. Caroline Haythornthwaite, “Social networks and online community,” In The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology, ed. Adam Johnson, Katelyn McKenna, Tom Postmes and Ulf-Dietrich Reips (Oxford University Press, 2007), 124–5. 93. Hills, Fan Cultures, 15–21. 94. Brenda Dervin, “An Overview of Sense-Making Research: Concepts, methods, and results to date,” International Communication Association (Dallas, May 1983); Brenda Dervin, “Communication gaps and inequalities: Moving toward a reconceptualization,” in Sense-Making Methodology Reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin, ed. Brenda Dervin and Lois Foreman-Wernet (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2003), 43; Brenda Dervin, “Dervin’s SenseMaking Theory,” in Information Seeking Behavior and Technology Adoption: Theories and Trends, ed. Mohammed Nasser Al-Suqri and Ali Saif Al-Aufi (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2015), 67. 95. Terry Dean Thomlison, Toward Interpersonal Dialogue (New York City: Longman, 1982), 1. 96. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 243. 97. Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fractures (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 3. 98. Ibid., 4. 99. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 5–8. 100. Ibid., 10. 101. Henry Jenkins, “‘Strangers no more, we sing’: Filking and the social construction of the science fiction fan community,” In The Adoring Audience: Fan culture and popular media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New York City: Routledge, 1992), 213. 102. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 243–4. 103. Rodgers, Fractures, 145. 104. Josina M. Makau and Debian L. Marty, Dialogue and Deliberation (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 2013), 7–8.

30

Chapter 1

105. Ibid., 9. 106. Ibid., 61. 107. Rebecca Vipond Brink, “What men and women won’t talk about when it comes to the gender divide,” The Daily Dot, February 13, 2015, https://www.dailydot.com/via/mens-rightsinternet-trolling-women. 108. Duffett, Understanding Fandom, 249. 109. Makau and Marty, Dialogue, 62. 110. Ibid., 18. 111. Ibid., 62. 112. Ibid., 63 (italics in original). 113. Terry Dean Thomlison, “Communication as Dialogue: An Alternative.” (PhD diss., Southern Illinois University, 1972), 2. 114. Makau and Marty, Dialogue, 61–2. 115. Thomlison, Dialogue, 19; Makau and Marty, “Dialogue,” 62. 116. Makau and Marty, “Dialogue,” 76 (italics in original). 117. Ibid., 203. 118. Ibid., 107. 119. Ronald C. Arnett, Janie M. Harden Fritz, and Leeanne M. Bell, Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and difference (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009), 83. 120. Thomlison, “Dialogue,” 29. 121. Makau and Marty, Dialogue, 127. 122. Ibid., 128. 123. Ibid., 129. 124. John J. Makay and Beverly A. Gaw, Personal and Interpersonal Communication: Dialogue with the self and with others (Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1975), 10–11 (italics in original). 125. Per Linell, Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically: Interrational and contextual theories of human sense-making (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2009), 4. 126. Makay and Gaw, Personal Interaction, 123. 127. Thomlison, Dialogue, 23. 128. Makay and Gaw, Personal and Interpersonal, 123; Thomlison, “Dialogue,” 105. 129. Makay and Gaw, Personal and Interpersonal, 123. 130. Ibid., 136. 131. Thomlison, “Dialogue,” 205–6. 132. Makau and Marty, Dialogue, 68–69 (italics in original). 133. Thomlison, Dialogue, 24. 134. Makau and Marty, Dialogue, 69–72. 135. Thomlison, Dialogue, 263–80. 136. Julien C. Mirivel, The Art of Positive Communication: Theory and practice (New York City: Peter Lang, 2014), 85. 137. Makau and Marty, Dialogue, 135. 138. Thomlison, “Dialogue,” 68–9. 139. For more information on SMM’s assumptions, see Dervin 1983; Brenda Dervin, “Interviewing as Dialectical Practice: Sense-Making Methodology as exemplar,” International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Annual Meeting (Stockholm, Sweden, July 20–25, 2008); Dervin 2015. 140. Brenda Dervin, “Sense-Making’s Theory of Dialogue: A brief introduction.” International Communication Association, San Francisco, 1999; Brenda Dervin, John W. Higgins, Robert T. Huesca, Tony Osborne, and Priya Jaikumar-Mahey, “Toward a Communication Theory of Dialogue,” Media Development XL, no. 2 (1993). 141. Dervin, “Dialogue.” 142. Lois Foreman-Wernet “Rethinking Communication: Introducing the Sense-Making Methodology,” in Sense-Making Methodology Reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin, ed. Brenda Dervin and Lois Foreman-Wernet (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2003), 7. 143. Ibid.

The Dark Side of Fandom

31

144. Dervin, “Dialogue.” 145. Brenda Dervin, “Comparative theory receonceptualized: From entities and states to processes and dynamics,” in Sense-Making Methodology Reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin, ed. Brenda Dervin and Lois Foreman-Wernet (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2003), 63–4. 146. Ibid. 147. Ibid. 148. Dervin, “Dialogue.” 149. Ibid. 150. As informed by Dervin et al “Communication Theory of Dialogue.” 151. Costello and Moore, “Cultural Outlaws,” 131–2; Hills, Fan Cultures, 3–15, 49–50; Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, 3–4; Carly Lane, “Approach with caution: The media and the study of fandom,” The Mary Sue, April 3, 2016, https://www.themarysue.com/media-and-fandomstudy. 152. Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, 31. 153. Brenda Dervin, “Audience as listener and learner, teacher and confidante: The SenseMaking approach,” in Sense-Making Methodology Reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin, ed. Brenda Dervin and Lois Foreman-Wernet (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2003), 223. 154. Foreman-Wernet, “Rethinking,” 9 (italics in original). 155. Ibid., 8. 156. For more information, see CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, “Gendered Media Engagings as User Agency Mediations with Sociocultural and Media Structures: A Sense-Making Methodology study of the situationality if gender divergences and convergences” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2008); CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Brenda Dervin, “Comparing novice users’ sense-making processes in virtual worlds: An application of Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology,” in Researching Virtual Worlds: Methodologies for Studying Emergent Practices, ed. Louise Phillips and Ursula Plesner (London: Routledge, 2013); CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Brenda Dervin, “Studying audiences with Sense-Making Methodology,” in International Companion to Media Studies, ed. Angharad Valdivia and Radhika Parameswaran (Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing, 2013). 157. Reinhard, “Gendered Media Engagings.” 158. CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Kevin Miller, “Men watching Sex and the City, My Little Pony, and Oklahoma: The interpretation of gender appropriateness in the reception of crossgendered media products,” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 12, no. 1 (2015), www.participations.org/Volume%2012/Issue%201/5.pdf. 159. Dervin, “Interviewing” (emphasis in original). 160. Dervin, “Dialogue.”

Chapter Two

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

Nina, a Native American/Romani 20-year-old female from Connecticut, was 16 years old when she did what any gamer would do: she went to a game store near her house to find something to play. While there, two boys hassled her, and she recalled them saying that she “didn’t know anything about games because [she] was a girl.” She asked them to leave her alone but the situation only worsened; the boys grabbed her arms, held her in place, ignored her calls to be left alone, and then pushed her into a display case. According to her account, the attack left her with eight stitches and resulted in the boys’ arrest. Things only got worse from there. Like many young people, Nina shared her story online: “No one believed my story and I was sent hate mail, death threats, and several people threatened to doxx (release my address, phone number, etc.) me.” As the harassment continued, Nina became afraid. She deleted online accounts and changed usernames, anything to erase her online identity. The incident and its aftermath caused her to ask: “Why are people so cruel? Why are guys with the gaming community so threatened by female gamers? Why did this have to happen to me?” Nina’s story is just one of 101 stories collected in this book. Moreover, her story is one of thousands being told around the world. Some of these stories have received more attention than others, such as the threats directed at game designer Zoe Quinn, 1 feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, 2 comedian Leslie Jones, 3 actress Felicia Day, 4 and other women who have faced online harassment and threats of physical violence. For example, beginning in the fall of 2014, various mainstream news organizations turned their attention to the online debate known as “GamerGate.” Twitter served as the primary battleground, with people from each side lobbing insults, threats, and more at 33

34

Chapter 2

one another. 5 When hardcore gamers felt their fandom was criticized by perceived outsiders, who they saw as non-fans, some banded together via the hashtag #GamerGate to rebut, debate, and harass their detractors. Even if the conflict is more perceived than actual, the perception may be all that matters to cause a fracture and all that happens as a result. Other cases garnered news coverage, but barely made a dent in the public discourse. For instance, after the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States, various news organizations begin researching the conservative group known as the “Alt-Right,” and in doing so learned about a fracture in the furry fandom involving the Alt-Furries. Furries are fans of anthropomorphized characters, and they have routinely been dismissed or mocked as sexual deviants. 6 Some conservative furries feel unwelcome in the more progressive environment of the fandom, with some alt-furries adopting Nazi-inspired iconography to call attention to what they see as oppression within the community. 7 While some claim their appropriation of such symbols and ideology represents ironic activism, or even just a joke, others express white supremacist, homophobic, and transphobic views. 8 Whatever the impetus, the tension in the furry fandom has resulted in online flame wars and problems at conventions. 9 In other words, a fracture. This fracture may not have received any attention, however, if news organizations had not attempted to understand the Trump presidency. Stories that gain the attention of news organizations tend to involve some level of harassment, but not all stories of fractured fandom contain such pain and suffering. Many involve annoyance, aggravation, and irritation, which can be temporary or long lasting. Stories such as these rarely make headlines; people who suffer relatively minor problems, however, do confirm suspicions about “weird fans” 10 as general “others.” As such, many tales of fractured fandom become ignored or marginalized unless they feature harassment (as analyzed in chapter 4). Yet all stories of fractured fandom share a common thread: they all involve people experiencing pain in an area of their lives that would normally bring them pleasure. Furthermore, fractures that begin as a “minor problem” can escalate into a form of harassment with enduring and debilitating effects. The harassment did not cause the fractured fandom, but happened because of the fracture. Such was Nina’s experience: others took issue with her behavior and decided to harass her as a result. The perception of her actions as “doing something others did not like” caused the fractured fandom. This chapter seeks to understand how those actions and perceptions lead to fractured fandom experiences. As described in the previous chapter, the current study involved fans completing online self-interviews in which they were asked to describe a situation involving a problem or tension with another fan. This chapter contains the first analysis of the self-interviews. This analysis provides insight into the nature of the fractures that lie at the core of these experiences. Rather

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

35

than assume that the fractures aligned with some external, larger sociocultural distinction, such as class and taste, 11 the analysis presented here developed reasons that emerged from iterative readings of the stories. From the thematic analysis, three reasons directly involve communication breakdowns that I label as “misunderstood,” “defensiveness,” and “difference of opinion.” Another two reasons involved power dynamics impacting the communication, which I label “power play” and “policing boundaries.” After this focus on defining the fractures, the chapter discusses how the fractures relate to one another. THE FRACTURES When I first set out to categorize fractured fandom, 12 I thought the fractures might relate to issues of power, particularly how people wielded power to thereby create boundaries regarding what constituted appropriate behavior for “true fans.” Like other scholars who are referenced in this book, I theorized that people who considered themselves “true fans” used their assumed power to create hierarchies within and between fan communities and fandoms; in other words, these “true fans” sought to control who could be considered a fan, particularly in regard to women and people of color. At the same time, the tribalism long seen in sports fandom also came into play, as fans from different fandoms clashed over which one was “better” or more “worthwhile.” This in turn contributed to the perception that their own identity as a fan was better or more worthwhile (e.g. they might consider the Star Wars fandom more worthwhile than the Twilight fandom). I present these earlier thoughts so I might distinguish my initial hypotheses with what I found when reading the fans’ stories from their self-interviews. In reading through these stories, I saw experiences that I had not previously accounted for in my thoughts. Thus, for this study, I worked to determine the nature of their fractured fandoms as grounded in their recollections. I wanted to help these fans make their voices heard, and to use their stories as the basis for my own understanding of fractured fandom. This research goal aligns both with Brenda Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology (SMM) as well as with a grounded and inductive coding approach to theorybuilding. 13 As it turns out, my theories about the role of power did not capture the full picture of these fractured fandom experiences. Indeed, in many of these stories communication issues lie at the heart of the gaps that the fans experienced, and these communication issues often involved the sort of power struggles I theorized. This section details the nature of these fractures and how often they occurred across the situations as reported by the fans. In discussing each fracture, I also draw upon news stories of experi-

36

Chapter 2

ences to demonstrate how that problem in that fan collective results from that type of fracture. Misunderstood The first reason for a fractured fandom arises when people feel that others are not listening to or ignoring them. The fan perceives the situation as involving a misinterpretation of something they said or did which then results in the fan feeling the other person(s) fails to understand them. “Misunderstood” involves some level and/or form of misinterpretation or lack of listening during an interpersonal communication exchange between two or more people, either online or face-to-face. In a sense, the fan feels that their power or value in the situation is not recognized or is being incorrectly reacted to by someone else. Across these self-interviews, misunderstood occurred only slightly more often as the reason for the fractured fandom experiences than defensiveness, 14 the next reason discussed. From a monologic communication perspective, “misunderstandings are often attributed to recipients exclusively; it is assumed that they, the listener, fail to understand what the speakers mean.” 15 For example, Emma, a 27year-old white British, female graduate student in Scotland, felt that a university colleague was not listening to her during a discussion regarding science fiction programs: “The other person refused to discuss the shows themselves and was dismissive and mocking about my calling them science fiction.” Emma felt confused about why her colleague refused to listen to her definition of science fiction and grew wary of even speaking about the topic. Thus, this fracture most often results when fans feel ignored. Abby, a 36-year-old white female from Alabama, experienced frustration when attempting to communicate with a television writer over Twitter: “I was listening to her point of view. I was getting very frustrated because she would not hear me out.” Reports of misunderstood mostly concerned fans seeing others as poor communicators, while they themselves did not suffer from such problems. Megan, a 31-year-old white female from Ohio, indicates that a problem arose when another person failed or refused to understand what she had said: “I only meant to let her/him know how much I liked the story. She/he interpreted it as a criticism and left a series of nasty comments in reply.” Megan’s account indicates that the problem lies with the other fan’s perception of what she had said, and that Megan herself did nothing wrong. While the fan typically reported that another person was at fault for this fracture, such is not the case when truly defining and understanding miscommunication. Indeed, studies indicate that “miscommunication is collectively and reciprocally generated, often the products of the intricate interaction of participants’ interpretations of various contextual affordances and of each other’s utterances.” 16 From this perspective, misunderstandings “involve

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

37

mismatches of participants’ purposes and situation definitions; it is not just utterances in themselves that can be ‘misunderstood,’ but rather utterances in relation to framing assumptions and expectations.” 17 In other words, when it comes to misunderstandings, it is not simply that another person was not listening, but that the one person felt they needed to be listened to in a way that they felt was not happening. Perhaps the other person listened, but not in the expected way—although they may not have been able to know that what was expected of them because it was never communicated in that situation. Often, a fractured fandom experience results from the simple fact that people cannot or will not engage in an open and honest discussion or dialogue about their preferences and actions. I consider such communication actions and practices in chapter 7, particularly in terms of how they do or do not lead to a resolution for these problems. For now, though, I consider how these fractured fandoms result from missed opportunities to engage in discussion to better understand what someone said or did. Sometimes this missed opportunity occurs because of the nature of the situation. For example, at sporting events, the presence of alcohol can inhibit people’s cognitive abilities and limit their willingness to engage in a reasonable tête-à-tête. When the fractured fandom occurs, the individuals involved may wonder why they cannot understand one another, especially considering their preexisting similarities that structure the boundary of their fan collective. However, community is a practice and a process developed and maintained through relationships and communication activities. Poor communication practices often result in feeling misunderstood, which can degrade the communal nature of the fan collective. Misunderstood can thereby lead to feelings of defensiveness for the person who feels ignored or mischaracterized. As discussed next, this defensiveness can also infiltrate an entire fan collective, to the point where the fans desire insularity, listening only to themselves because they perceive their critics as refusing to listen to and/or understand them. 18 The online disagreements between movie critics and fans of the DC Comics movies Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder, 2016) and Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016) demonstrate the link between defensiveness and misunderstood. These fans even petitioned to silence a source of online criticism, the website Rotten Tomatoes, due to the negative critical reviews the movie received. 19 Fans feel others do not want to understand them, and that others act toward them based on stereotypical assumptions. Feeling thusly misunderstood could lead the fans to become defensive. Defensiveness The second type of fracture saw fans discussing themselves as part of the problem—although they were not always aware that they were doing so.

38

Chapter 2

Here fans discussed feeling personally attacked, or feeling that someone else was thusly grieved, and feeling the need to defend themselves or others. “Defensiveness” involves people feeling that their identity, ego, and/or pride has been wounded in some way during an interaction with another fan or even a non-fan. These slights involve people feeling put upon, jealous, hurt, and acting out because of this feeling. Research shows that college American football fans demonstrate a defensiveness when they feel their fan identity is threatened and they react by denigrating others and positioning themselves as superior. 20 Furthermore, in acting defensively, a person attempts to regain power in the situation. Defensiveness sometimes involves a power struggle, whereby the person views themselves as in “a fight in which we use our words, tone of voice, and body language” to gain control over others or the situation itself. 21 Of the five reasons for fractures identified in this study, defensiveness was the least commonly mentioned. 22 Thus, while this fracture indicates that people might look inward to identify the problems in the situation, someone else’s actions most often caused their hurt feelings; as a result, the fans did not consider themselves as the main problem. The fans felt that someone else said or did something that made them feel bad and angry, and therefore they reacted in kind. For example, Alicia, a 21-year-old Caucasian college student in the United States, experienced annoyance when someone disparaged Fifty Shades of Gray: “I was completely appalled by what he was saying because I have read the books multiple times and he even admitted to not having read the books.” Because she was such a fan of the series, she grew dismayed when someone who had never read the series criticized it; she considered this an affront to the series and her investment in it, to the point that she felt compelled to “get up and yell at him,” although she reported not doing so. While anger caused by another’s actions might lead to such defensiveness, other emotions could as well. For instance, Valerie, a 21-year-old white female from the United States, experienced jealousy, which led her to become defensive of her fan creation: “All of this made me a little jealous that my own meta [fanfiction] wasn’t getting the same kind of attention, even though I thought (and still think) it was better, especially when a casual fandom friend seemed to privilege hers over mine.” At the time, Valerie felt slighted, which in turn made her angry and passive-aggressive toward other fans, but she realized that “the entirety of this problem was in my head.” In terms of fractures, defensiveness occurs when fans compare or measure themselves against others, often feeling beneath or slighted by others, which in turn causes a possible kneejerk reaction brought about by hurt feelings. Fans may also feel that what they love is under attack, and perceive that an attack on their fandom is an attack on themselves. Fans may feel that they cannot criticize something they love because that would mean they them-

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

39

selves are flawed and open to criticism. In either case, the fan could feel that any power they had or could have was slipping away. These fans’ need to defend themselves against another person’s perceptions, actions, or accusations suggests a fundamental problem leading to fractured fandom. As discussed in chapter 1, fandoms have often been subjected to delegitimization, disempowerment, ridicule and subordination from a mainstream culture that tended to stereotype rather than understand them. 23 Non-fans have often pathologized fans—especially popular culture and media fans—as irrational, overly devout, fanatics, and fans will react by arguing for the legitimacy of their fandom through rational appeals. 24 Thus, fans who feel non-fans and mainstream culture perceive them as “different” may develop a defensive attitude to protect themselves by “policing the boundaries” of their fandom and fan community; fans may feel the need to protect their “safe space” out of a sense of shame for being perceived as different. 25 Over the past decade, however, such fans have begun to be taken more seriously. The rise of geeks in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, and the financial success of science fiction and fantasy products in all forms of media, 26 resulted in work to reclaim “the word ‘geek’ with revolutionary fervor.” 27 The ability to band together in online spaces such as discussion forums, blogs, and social media allows fans to voice their opinions and thereby establish themselves as an important marketing force, as discussed in chapter 1. Yet the fear of pathologization remains. Even after steadily gaining cultural capital, the defensiveness exhibited by some fans could indicate an ongoing need to be taken seriously, 28 especially if their fandom represents content that may be harder to align with rational content such as fact-based science and technology. 29 Conversely, fans may have a desire to return to an oppressed state to gain a “nerd cred” associated with a nostalgic view of fandom. 30 Such defensiveness manifests in online debates among fans, journalists, and critics over their differing interpretations of media texts. When feeling their identity threatened, fans will sometimes lash out at those they perceive as criticizing their object of affection, such as sports fans attacking critical sports journalists online. 31 Fans have increasingly turned away from established media critics in favor of their own readings of these texts, claiming that critics refuse to take fans and their preferred media seriously—even when those critics declare themselves as fans. Other critics have noted this defensiveness and have written opinion pieces on this topic. Some have wondered about the intolerance of fans, 32 who seem to have become so defensive and intolerant that they have emerged as “their own worst enemies.” 33 Critics argue the fans’ defensive behavior has resulted in communities that no longer represent the best of what fandom has to offer. 34 These critiques have led others to urge fans to stop trying to control that which they profess to love, 35 while still others hope that fan culture comes to an end

40

Chapter 2

before things get worse. 36 Such critical reflections, of course, cause more defensiveness among the various fan collectives they target, and thus goes the cycle of critique, stereotype, and defensiveness—and often all because of differences in opinions. Difference of Opinion The third reason for experiencing a fractured fandom was also the most common. “Difference of opinion” involves two or more interpretations of the fandom coming into conflict with one another. Such a “communal schism” 37 develops over differences in favorites, such as “favorite characters, actors, periods in a series, films in a franchise, or according to differences in fans’ interpretive strategies.” 38 These schisms become discursive conflicts between people having different beliefs, perceptions, values, opinions and so forth about what is true, good, or appropriate for that fan collective. This reason could be one of the first identified as causing fractured fandom, as Nancy Baym argued that “in the voicing of multiple interpretations, there is always the potential for conflict” which degenerates into “what are called ‘flame wars’” and leads to fans becoming “inhibited from contributing potentially controversial opinions.” 39 While sometimes fans can negotiate the reasons for these different interpretations, in other times the “groups splinter into narrower interests,” with conversation retreating from the public arena. 40 Given the variety of ways people could interpret and prefer the numerous elements associated with their fandom, it should come as no surprise that this was the most common fracture, occurring in a majority of the fans’ stories. 41 With this fracture, it appears that even basic disagreements over what is true or good about some text or person can become the foundation for something more, something worse—something like harassment. Here the disagreements concern the right way to read a text, or the best way to create fanfiction, or the appropriate behavior for engaging with celebrities. The disagreements may be founded on ideological differences based in feminism, liberalism, egalitarianism, and other systems of beliefs and values. 42 Here the disagreements, at their core, deal with power conflicts as the fan collective struggles with these basic questions of what is true, good, and appropriate. The most common disagreement in this study involved different ideas about which characters should be shipped, or considered involved in a romantic relationship with one another. 43 For example, Regina, a 29-year-old Sherlock fan and Caucasian female from the United States, felt slighted by the fandom at large given the other fans’ shipping preferences: “Definitely feeling underrepresented in the fandom because I do not ‘ship’ the main ‘ship.’” She wondered why her ship was so unrepresented and why the John Watson/Sherlock Holmes or “johnlock” ship was so ubiquitous. Such a fracture recurs throughout online fan collectives and sometimes gains the atten-

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

41

tion of real-life actors and non-fans. In the Outlander fandom, a subset of fans ship the lead actors—not just the characters they play, but the performers themselves—and contend that they “are in a secret relationship with one another” despite the actors’ claims to the contrary. 44 This activity caused a fracture with other Outlander fans, and even drew William Shatner, known for a completely different fandom, into the online arguments. This fracture also commonly manifests when fans discussed sports-related fandoms or attended sporting events. 45 Paige, a 21-year-old white girl college student, described a “friend that was rooting for the opposite sports team as me whose team won and mine did not.” She wondered “why my friend was being so rude.” While co-viewing a sports game often adds to the enjoyment of a sports fandom, this social dimension becomes detrimental when fans of the opposing team engage in “boorish” behaviors. 46 Such disagreements can often arise during discussions about the better team or player, such as the fallout over World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) 2015 Royal Rumble pay-per-view (PPV). 47 The company sought to position Roman Reigns as the primary champion, notwithstanding the constant and thunderous rejection by the fans, both in the arena and online. Despite the protestations of the so-called “Internet fans,” WWE bet that other members of the “WWE Universe” would support this choice, and indeed online conversations argued both for and against Reigns’ actions and accolades. 48 Given its contrived and predetermined nature, professional wrestling exists at the intersection of both sports and entertainment; as such, WWE fans demonstrate the same type of emotional attachment to wrestlers that shippers exhibit toward their favorite fictional characters. This emotional attachment could explain the reactions to the 2015 Royal Rumble, as fans supporting Reigns professed their excitement over the outcome of the PPV, while many of his detractors renounced their WWE fandom altogether. At the same time, because wrestling includes sporting elements, fans also disagree over what constitutes the “better form” of wrestler; these disagreements concern whether wrestling should focus on heavy hitting matches or involve high-flying acrobatics. 49 These disagreements center on basic opinions about good/bad, right/ wrong, appropriate/inappropriate, and other judgment binaries that emerged in the self-interviews. 50 In these situations, one fan’s preferences or judgment comes into conflict with a different—sometimes completely opposite— viewpoint. Denise, a 41-year-old white, cisfemale from Chicago, took issue with another fan’s preferences for one of her favorite characters: “Some guy posted a semi-pornographic Princess Leia pic. I love Princess Leia. I did not like her image being used that way in a forum.” Such value judgments are common in news stories about fan disagreements, such as those that analyze how fans respond to attempts to diversify characters. For instance, news reports covered fans’ displeasure with the decision by producers of Fantastic Four (2015, Josh Trank) to change Johnny Storm’s racial identity from white

42

Chapter 2

to black, 51 Marvel Comics’ decision to reveal X-Man Bobby Drake as gay, 52 and J. K. Rowling’s support of portraying Hermione as having African ancestry. 53 These responses come more from the announcement of changes that fans dislike, whereas other disagreements arise over the interpretation of a produced media text, such as a controversial scene involving Black Widow from Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015, Joss Whedon) 54 or the specific fan community that had a somewhat positive response to the portrayal of rapist Kilgrave in the Netflix series Jessica Jones. 55 In a sense, this fracture results from differences in perception, when fans prefer their own beliefs and feelings rather than an objective reality. If a fan holds their interpretation of a character, media text, or sports team in higher regard than any factual aspect of that thing, that perception can potentially alter how they respond to other fans. These problems with perception could involve the defensiveness and misunderstanding identified above. Fans could perceive themselves as under attack or consider others unworthy of communication, and the echo chamber of like-minded fans could reinforce their perceptions of what constitutes right and wrong behavior. Such problems with perceptions could become exacerbated by other fractures, as issues with power dynamics manifest. Such problems could contribute to the perpetuation of the sexism, racism, and other -isms that fracture fandoms when only certain people appear to have the power to determine the boundaries of proper or improper behavior. Differences of opinion do not always involve such power dynamics, but the perception of privilege can apparently aggravate these differences into other types of fractures. At this point, it becomes clear that any one fractured fandom could arise from a combination of reasons. Power Plays Fans who participated in the study sometimes felt that others in the fandom attempted to exert control over the fan collective. “Power plays” occur when fans perceive people enforcing their will in the situation. The fan felt as though other fans held the most power and dominated the fandom in some way, to the extent that these powerful fans prevented others from expressing themselves. Here the powerful fan abuses their privilege to control the communication within the fan collective, often for a purpose that fulfills their own personal needs rather than the needs of the fan collective. This fracture relates to a sense that the fan collective lacked a fair power distribution, as some “big name fans” (BNFs) 56 or “executive fans” 57 could influence others through popularity or direct oppression. Such fans gain power because of their cultural capital, often through some hierarchical nature that privileges some skill and/or knowledge set above others. 58 By acquiring those skills or knowledge, the fan earns popularity, status, and the privilege to influence the

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

43

actions of other fans. Such power plays emerged as the third most common reasons for problems. 59 The communal silencing of fans emerged in Christine Scodari’s analysis of online discussion boards for soap opera fans, as discussed in chapter 1. In her study, certain fans shaped the online discourse—and thus the nature of the fan collective—by how they responded to certain topics and allowed discussion on those topics to proceed. Many stories from the fans in this study reflected what Scodari saw happening over two decades earlier. For example, Zelda, a 41-year-old white European female, reported: A certain group of women was bullied in a fan-forum by the admins, because they were outspoken and questioned their behaviour. [. . .] Our group tried to discuss our point of view how things should be handled in the forum and the discussion was oppressed by the admins. What gives them the right to forbid a discussion, to forbid me to express my opinion?

In this instance, some fans used their assigned power as a forum administrator to dictate what happened within that forum, thereby abusing this assigned power to silence voices. At other times, such silencing occurred face-to-face. Danielle, a white cis-het-female from Chicago, reported how an author used his celebrity position to harass her: “The first SF convention that I attended in 1986, one of the author ‘guests’ was very grabby in the pool and would not take ‘no’ for an answer. I was first startled, as I was not used to being ‘hit on’ so I felt it was a bit of a compliment. That this ‘famous person’ found me attractive.” Danielle was 48 years old when she completed the self-interview, recalling something that occurred thirty years earlier, when she was a college student. She experienced someone who’s fame generated an aura of power that the person was then able to utilize to further their own desires, at the expense of this fan. Often, when discussing situations involving power plays, fans reported feeling less powerful. For instance, Bea, a 19-year-old Caucasian female, described an experience at a concert where another fan “kept trying to get onstage with Liza Minnelli until she, the fan, was escorted out of the theater. [. . .] I felt like she was taking away from me in the situation.” This fracture ultimately involves fans recognizing how a power dynamic that favors certain fans over others operates within the fan collective. This hierarchical structure can lead to instances in which those fans use their power for their own benefit. Such power plays can occur when the hierarchy results in one faction being positioned as an anti-fandom. Federica Lanzi found factions forming in an Italian Star Trek fan community over the rebooted film series. 60 In this fan community, one faction became openly critical of J. J. Abrams’ reboots, and those in favor of the director’s work created rules to determine how those

44

Chapter 2

they saw as anti-fans could communicate and share their critiques. According to Lanzi, they enacted this power to keep the conversation friendly toward the reboot: “Moreover, this civil war challenges the fans’ rights to be recognized as a true Star Trek fan, thus affecting the legitimacy of their own interpretation of the text.” 61 The pro-group operated as the moderators in the community, and thereby had the power to determine what was allowed and what would be banned. Thus, a difference of opinion about the director and his work led to a crackdown on discussions and people’s ability to even voice their opinions. Sometimes these power plays involve underlying ideological issues of sexism, racism, and other divisions or positions of privilege. A fan may feel imbued with power due to their gender, racial, ethnic, generational or other social identity, or they may feel entitled because they have been a member of the fan collective for a long time and therefore have done much and know many people. While fandom itself is not inherently gendered, the ways that men and women have historically chosen specific fandoms, texts, and fan activities indicates different power positions normalized by sociocultural and economic-political forces. 62 Several news stories and critical pieces have considered how white, heterosexual men tend to operate as gatekeepers in fan communities and fandoms, 63 acting out of a sense of privilege as the intended, “normal” fans. These power plays come from a conceptualization of some fandoms as masculine (such as sports, superheroes, and science fiction). 64 Yet such gatekeeping need not be explicitly or implicitly associated with such identity politics. For example, the film The Witch (2015, Robert Eggers) was met with such a fractured response by horror fans who felt it was not a true horror film. 65 Meanwhile, Japanese metal group Babymetal has experienced similar gatekeeping, as metal fans frequently deride the group as inauthentic. 66 In this fracture, a fan acquires power or decides they have power, and they employ this power to dictate the behavior of others. When those who possess power—or seem to possess power—feel that their power is threatened in some way, they may act to retain their dominant position, and this sometimes leads to the last type of fracture. Policing Boundaries The last type of fracture has recently received more academic scrutiny because it involves discursive and physical activities that attempt to create and enforce specific boundaries separating the “good” from the “bad.” 67 “Policing boundaries” involves someone who wields perceived or actual power attempting to aggressively control the activity of that fan collective and thereby determining who gets to communicate as part of the community. Policing boundaries regards the proper behavior within that fan collective 68

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

45

as some fans take it upon themselves to act as gatekeepers for that fan collective. This fracture relates to the idea that a line separates good, appropriate behavior from bad, inappropriate behavior, and that some fans act to maintain these distinctions. Power plays focus on what is communicated and how; policing boundaries is about who can communicate, as well as when and where they can communicate. Furthermore, whereas power plays deals with a fan abusing power for a selfish reason, policing boundaries is more about abusing power out of a sense of what is best for the fan collective. Thus, policing boundaries involves fans’ attempts to protect against what Rebecca Williams terms the “interloping fan” or people seen as coming into their fandom “where they are not always wanted and where others think they do ‘not belong.’” 69 They may not belong because they are not “true fans” or because of their gender, ethnicity, or age. Whatever the reason, through an abuse of power, policing boundaries sets and reinforces some perceived norms and values for that fan collective. After fractures caused by differences of opinion, the second most common reason for the problems that affect fan collectives was this policing of boundaries. 70 At a basic level, this policing develops a hierarchy designed to position some fans as better or superior to others, based on some predetermined and usually arbitrary criteria. As discussed in chapter 1, Andrea MacDonald found various dimensions to structure hierarchies, including the knowledge a fan has or the activities in which they engage. Other criteria can center on stereotypes regarding gender identities, racial identities, sexual identities, and more. They can also be based on fan activities, such as trivia, fanfiction, cosplay, etc. Illeana, a Doctor Who fan from Michigan, reflected on this type of experience when “über-fans” at Comic-Con bullied her about her cosplay: “I think it essentially came down to other fans thinking they were ‘better’ or more fanatical in their fandom than the rest of us.” She was only 22 years old at the time, and this experience stayed with her until she recalled it for the self-interview thirteen years later. The construction of such hierarchies results in the idea that the most fanatical or true fan(s) deserve a spot at the top and have the power to dictate “proper” behavior or actions. Fans and fan collectives can also position themselves against one another in a broader view of a fandom to mark themselves as superior fans. Fans of Community provide such an example, as they construct themselves in elitist ways that could hurt the fandom overall by “creating barriers against other potential fans, possibly driving them away from enjoying a show.” 71 Such fans represent Cornel Sandvoss’ narcissistic fans, who see themselves as “smart people, and they have to tolerate or put up with anyone else who does not enjoy the show.” 72 Community fans discursively position themselves to be the “better” fan in relation to other television sitcom fans as a way to cope with the diminished mainstream appeal of their object of affection: the argu-

46

Chapter 2

ment being that their fandom is better because their show is less popular— there isn’t anything wrong with their show or them, just that they “get” the show in ways that other “fake” fans do not. Such positioning work, then, reflects the ideas of Matt Hills on “inter-fandom antagonism” as they seek to maintain the existing boundaries between different fandoms. 73 The action of policing boundaries can also involve negotiating new definitions for what constitutes acceptable behavior for fans. For example, some Doctor Who fans label other Doctor Who fans as “anorak” to reflect their excessiveness. 74 In a clash between fans of Old Who and Nu Who, clashes will form over interpretations of the text, leading some fans to “erect a sturdy wall around that free space which defines who cannot play” and these fans “do not hesitate to chase out those who do not perform appropriately.” 75 Another example occurs with the cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (MLP: FiM); the series is intended primarily for young girls, but a large and vocal adult male fanbase calling themselves “Bronies” emerged. 76 These Bronies were met with public scorn for enjoying a cartoon aimed at young girls, and thus they experienced this policing of boundaries on a societal level. 77 Over time, the boundaries were renegotiated to allow for and promote this specific subset of the fandom, but even this renegotiation led to other boundary policing over appropriate fan actions. For example, some members of the MLP: FiM fandom create fan works that sexualize the ponies, such as clopfic fanfiction and fanart. 78 These fan actions have led to a fractured fandom as fans disagree over the proper interpretation of this media text and argue over—or worse—what fan creators should do to express their love for the cartoon. 79 Policing boundaries appears related to the notion of fandom as safe spaces, and how marginalized groups have used these safe spaces to exist together without fear of further attack. As with a geographic territory, fans may defend their safe space from “invasion” by individuals who do not represent those for whom the safe space was constructed. 80 For example, some policing appears to relate to ideologically-based gender issues, particularly regarding what constitutes appropriate or traditional behavior for one gender compared to another. For example, male fans sometimes label female fans as “fake fan girls” or “fake geek girls” 81 to discursively remove their right to be included in their masculine safe space. Yasmin, a white, female college student and Chicago Blackhawks fan, described her experience with male fans when she tried to express her hockey fandom: “A lot of male fans would tell me I’m a ‘puck slut,’ or a girl who only watches hockey to see the ‘hot guys’ play a ‘manly sport.’” Like Nina’s encounter described at the beginning of this chapter, this experience reflects other stories women have shared online, such as those involving a convention t-shirt designed for the 2014 WonderCon that expressed this stereotyped view of female fans. 82

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

47

This policing may reflect the perception of male fans who fear that women threaten their safe spaces for homosocial bonding. In fan spaces, men who fail to align with a prevailing notion of hegemonic or dominant masculinity 83 can be themselves and, perhaps more importantly, become the dominant identity; in desiring to remain as such, they discursively put down and distance themselves from women. 84 Perceiving women as a threat to their dominance, they seek to position these encroachers as “fake,” thereby destabilizing and preventing them from gaining any traction and/or power within these fan communities and fandoms. This type of policing could result in the problems associated with GamerGate, and could explain why some male fans worry that their fandoms and/or fan communities have become besieged by so-called “social justice warriors.” 85 Such gender-based policing has occurred in fandom for decades. In analyzing online newsgroups and discussion boards dedicated to the show Quantum Leap, MacDonald found that some women fans “were forced off rec.arts.tv via peer pressure for being what one fan called ‘too silly.’” 86 In her study, she found women creating women-only lists and hid them to prevent unwanted discussion; thus, the women worked “to police the boundaries of this communication to maintain a ‘safe’ space” where the “‘women can focus on their experiences and achievements without pressure to conform to the expectations or dictates of patriarchal authority and without fear of male censure.’” 87 This behavior reveals that the segregation of fandom due to social identities is, unfortunately, nothing new. While many people who completed the self-interviews felt that other fans policed their activities, others indicated that they did the policing. Opal, a 24year-old white female graduate student from Texas, recalled meeting a person who said they loved all of the Star Wars movies, including the prequels, which she did not like: “I felt like they had deceived me and lied about their love of Star Wars. I think of myself as a true fan, and this person was an imposter.” Throughout this self-interview, Opal expressed no remorse about engaging in such policing action against another Star Wars fan. Such lack of awareness indicates that these policing behaviors have possibly become more acceptable, and that this acceptability may result from a conscious or unconscious desire to gain the power that comes with identifying as a true fan. These policing behaviors may result from a perceived difference of opinion, as happened in Opal’s story; at the same time, fans may agree about the things they love, such as in Nina’s story, but policing could still arise due to power dynamics and ideological differences. Whatever reason generates the policing of these boundaries, it appears such behaviors can become disconcertingly normalized—perhaps because fans see the need to protect the “safe space” of their fandom or fan community from those who may not understand them. As Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen note: “Fans also continually police the boundaries of their own fannishness, negotiating what is

48

Chapter 2

acceptable and what is ‘over the line’ so they can defend against fears of being criticized or judged themselves. When it comes to fan practices, how extreme is too extreme? It’s always the fan just on the other side of that line.” 88 In a sense, fans police themselves to prevent the return to a mainstream culture of non-fans that judges them harshly and pathologizes them; at the same time, some policing actions seek to reify traditional boundaries and stereotypes, considering those as “safe spaces.” If fans feel under attack from those perceived as threatening their “safe space,” then fans will work to silence difference within the fan collective. ANALYZING THE FRACTURES At this point, it should be clear that these fractures are not mutually exclusive; different situations may involve one or more of them interacting to produce the fractured fandom experience. Some situations did contain more than one fracture, suggesting that fans recognized the more complex reasons behind the problem. Three fans reported a situation involving both misunderstood and power play, in which the other fan’s position of power perhaps led to a breakdown in communication, while five fans experienced both misunderstood and the policing of boundaries, wherein the fan felt a problem of communication relating to the other fans attempts to regulate the fandom. Defensiveness overlapped with power play for two fans, and with policing boundaries for another two fans. Thus, fans felt some power pushing back on them that resulted in their resentment toward others and a desire to protect themselves. Fans reported difference of opinion as the most common type of fracture, so it is not surprising that the most overlaps occurred with it. Seventeen fans reported that their problems involved both misunderstood and difference of opinion, suggesting that these disagreements could emerge from failing to listen to and/or understand another’s position. Eleven fans said they experienced defensiveness in situations involving difference of opinion, suggesting that meeting such disagreements caused them to dig in and fight for their position. Seventeen fans reported difference of opinion involving power play, indicating some fan’s attempt to silence disagreement within the community. Difference of opinion, then, appears highly related to other fractures, showing that what can begin or seem like a simple disagreement can become something else entirely. For the most part, overlaps occurred, and they overlapped with one another as expected, given random chance. Interestingly, only two instances emerged where more overlaps should have occurred; thus, two instances demonstrate a different type of relationship, a more purposeful one. 89 In the first instance, when fans reported situations involving difference of opinion,

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

49

they also reported less policing boundaries than expected, given the preponderance of difference of opinion. 90 While there were eleven overlaps, the laws of probability dictated there should have been more. It may be that discussing differences involves fans’ discursive work to establish the boundaries of the community; without established boundaries, nothing exists to police. For the second instance, while power play and policing boundaries had one overlap, more were expected given their numbers. 91 While both fractures involve fans seeing how power operated in their fan collectives, these power dynamics appear different enough that fans might focus on or experience one over the other. Policing boundaries does not necessarily require power, as even fans with little to no perceived or actual power can enforce boundaries constructed by those higher up in the hierarchy. Such activity resembles how a form of hegemonic masculinity can be reinforced by men who fail to embody that ideal. Most men lack the traits of a hegemonic, masculine ideal, but their actions demonstrate that they are complicit in its maintenance because they gain the benefits of this hegemony’s perpetuation. 92 In the same way, those who help to police the boundaries of a fan collective and work to prevent the influx of those perceived as “outsiders” could benefit from the continuation of any traditional boundaries, and whether they had any true power in the situation would prove irrelevant. These overlaps can be seen in four stories, which demonstrate how three reasons could interact with one another and cause the problem the fan experienced. Each story will be provided below to illustrate how the fan experienced the fractures. Three of the stories involved being misunderstood, two involved defensiveness, three involved power plays, and two involved policing boundaries—and they all involved differences of opinion. For Hiromi, her fandom of the Japanese manga/anime Gakuen Alice involved power struggles that seemed to circle around a difference of opinion. The fracture apparently revolved around a disagreement over shipping, when she became involved with a fanfiction writer who was producing work others did not approve. According to her view of the situation, this “fandom allowed only people who shipped Mikan and Natsune, and Ruka and Hotaru together to join.” Fans actively worked to exclude people who failed to align with these shippings, thereby policing the boundaries of the community. Hiromi’s experience involved an online discussion forum, where the author she followed, who rejected such strict shipping rules, argued with the forum’s administrators. This power play put Hiromi in a delicate situation because: the flames and criticism going back and forth between the forum admins and her got very serious. My own involvement with the author and the forum admins put me in a very difficult situation where I either had to cut ties with

50

Chapter 2 the author, or with the forum. I struggled with what I should say because rather than coming off as understanding both sides, I came off as on the fence and indecisive.

Hiromi attempted to explain the power struggles, seeing them as somehow necessary to help the fandom: The forum was created out of a frustration of quality translations and discussion involving the story and characters in the fandom, as well as too many fans who were “lazy” or crack shipped a lot. It was a place for quality discussion and sharing of good fanfics and fanart around, so I understood the admins’ position to protect and guard that.

Overall, while her experience may have centered on a difference of opinion, it became exacerbated by the power struggles within the fan collective that had formed in this online space. Madeleine also experienced an issue involving fanfiction, this time in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom. Madeleine’s experience, however, seemed to directly involve communication problems, as she reported being misunderstood, someone acting defensively, and a difference of opinion. At the time, Madeleine was a 28-year-old Caucasian woman living in France, and she sent a private review to a BNF fanfiction writer “who turned out to be a massive drama queen.” Apparently, this fan became defensive when Madeleine expressed a difference of opinion about the BNF’s writing: “I didn’t say I disliked her story, just that it wasn’t fitting my tastes, and suddenly she made me her enemy for life.” Like Hiromi, Madeleine’s situation appears to have started because of a difference of opinion, but then the BNF’s defensive reaction exacerbated the gap—which widened when the BNF apparently refused to listen to Madeleine’s explanations: We kept it mostly private, exchanging emails. I tried to explain myself but there was no real dialog, she just threw shit at me all the time. We stopped talking for a while, and since then she comes back to my mailbox every two months or so, trying new angles. Lately, she “woke up from a nightmare during a panic attack and thought about me.” Yeah, sure . . . I seriously questioned her sanity. I mean, all that fuzz for a bad private review?

Madeleine said that the BNF “threw a tantrum on her Tumblr” and “kept transforming my words even after I published the review,” indicating that she felt misunderstood and that the BNF was intentionally distorting her comments to gain sympathy from her followers. Overall, what should have been just a simple communique became a larger problem for this fan when she was not listened to by another in her fan collective. Susan also felt misunderstood because of a difference of opinion, but underneath that difference of opinion lay a subtle policing of boundaries

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

51

based on American sociocultural values of adulthood. Susan described herself as a white woman and a “struggling artist, writer” who experienced this problem in her late 40s, early 50s. She further labeled herself as “an art historian that writes about both comics and fine art,” but she routinely encountered other academics, and even members of her own family, who did not take comics seriously. Her family members told her that her “collection of original comic art, high end statues, and library of books is childish clutter. More than once, relatives have come over, rolled their eyes at our stuff and said ‘you are never going to grow up.’” This difference of opinion about the value of comic art reflects an American preconception that all comics are cartoonish, and all cartoons are childish. In a sense, her family members appear to draw on this preconception to define what is appropriate behavior for adults, and let this policing boundaries behavior dictate how they engage with their relatives. According to Susan, her relatives’ behavior amounts to not listening to her reason for being a fan of such works: “While many friends are impressed, playful, or ask questions about the art, the relatives are dismissive or completely uninterested. We stopped bringing them into the room. Well, again, we felt misunderstood.” While her friends may be willing to listen to and understand Susan’s perspective, her family members’ actions demonstrate the type of shutting down of communication that can occur when people engage in policing boundaries. Finally, Robert had his own encounter with a BNF over a difference of opinion that left him feeling defensive about the power plays the BNF could pull within the fan collective. Living in Great Britain, Robert described himself as an unemployed, 37-year-old white male, and, according to him, the fracture began with a BNF whose actions had divided the fan community: “One fan made a name for herself by writing really aggressive reviews and harassing people on social media. This made her something of a divisive figure as some people loved her honesty and others hated her tactics.” Yet it was not just that she had divided the fandom—it was the power she could wield as a BNF that made any difference of opinion a problem: “In genre fandom, those with social capital always close ranks with each other and sticking your head above the parapet always carries a cost.” In Robert’s case, what caused the situation to truly fracture was not what the BNF said, but how she presented herself: “I supported most of her tactics because I have used them myself but I have always stood by my words and it irked me that someone seemed to be enjoying the upside of being that type of fan without the downside and so I spoke up.” Robert became defensive when the BNF appeared to gain even more notoriety and power through actions he found disagreeable. In a sense, Robert demonstrates an envious perspective on the situation; it may be that if he had received the same sort of acclaim the BNF did, he might not have experienced this situation as a fracture.

52

Chapter 2

Overall, these stories demonstrate how a difference of opinion can assume a central place in the gaps that cause these fractured fandoms. These stories illustrate that further communication problems and power dynamics can exacerbate a simple disagreement. Indeed, the sheer number of differences of opinion in these self-interviews indicates how a disagreement can become problematic if it is not handled properly by those involved. CONCLUSIONS Nina asked: “Why did this have to happen to me?” In her case, it appears that the boys sought to police the boundaries and control who can or cannot identify as a gamer. Relying on gender stereotypes about traditional gamers, they judged her to be a “fake gamer” and proceeded to harass her based on this judgment. As this chapter demonstrates, Nina was not alone in experiencing such a fracture. Many others experienced something similar; the details might have differed—inauthentic costume, hockey, an affinity for the Star Wars prequels—but the intent for some fans to position other fans as inauthentic links all those experiences. The analysis of these stories demonstrates that fractured fandom is not simply about communication breaking down, as sometimes those breakdowns occur because of power dynamics in the fan collective. Communication breakdowns remain central, but they can be exacerbated by such power issues. Indeed, all seem to involve power dynamics and communication issues. With misunderstood, people do not feel listened to or powerful in a situation. With defensiveness, fans try to gain power in how to respond. With power play, fans use power to silence. With policing boundaries, fans use power to exclude. Even differences of opinion appear to involve positioning one’s opinion as better than others. Power plays, then, seek to control what is said and how, while policing boundaries seeks to control who can speak, and when and where. According to Daniel T. Rodgers, power can be easy to feel but hard to define, categorize, and measure: “It is both a category of domination—the means and institutions through which the will of some overrides the desires of others—and a category of inequality and differences in scale—a measure of the unequal capacities of wealth or influence or organizational resources that make domination possible.” 93 Communities like fan collectives can be maintained through a “balance of competing and countervailing forces whose very tensions kept the system whole.” 94 When people start to feel unequal, they start looking for who has more, for hidden concentrations of power, for who is the power elite; then to wrestle power back, they look to highlight agency and choice through cultural identities and acts. For example, some fans may delineate the parameters for being considered part of that commu-

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

53

nity—boundaries that may include level of devotion, jargon, specific interpretations, and so forth—to maintain a sense of power in their lives. Other fans can either accept these requirements to fit-in with the community, perhaps by sublimating some difference in level of devotion or type of interpretation. However, power issues alone to not explain the fractured fandoms. At the heart of each fracture lies some disagreement that threatens the fans’ relationships and communities. 95 Disagreements can strain relationships, whether within a simple dyad between friends, colleagues, or family members, or within a larger communal group that spans the globe. According to Josina Makau and Debian Marty, differences can make communal members uncomfortable through confusion, anger, and vulnerability. 96 If agreements solidify the relational bonds and cohesiveness of a community, then disagreements can act as forces of entropy, pushing these bonds to their breaking point. While disagreements on their own do not necessarily signal a conflict in a fan collective, 97 apparently disagreements can form the basis for fractures if power issues become involved. “Power is central in inclusionary and exclusionary processes in sports fandom” 98 as well as other fandoms, and with power these issues amplify the communication problems. Each fracture appears to grow out of some disagreement involving communication and power, each with the potential to strain and sever these bonds. In defensiveness, the disagreement appears to tie into the seriousness of the fandom, and thus the identity of the fans themselves. With misunderstood, the disagreement could involve the meaning of an utterance, and a lack of determining the true meaning. Differences of opinion are all about disagreements, from perception to interpretation to preference, and those personal opinions seem highly integrated into a person’s sense of self. Power play involves the disagreement over who deserves the power to dictate the behaviors of a given fandom, whereas policing the boundaries involves disagreements over who should even be considered a fan—both, however, deal with the fan’s developing a sense of self as having some power within the fan collective. While it may seem simplistic to say it all comes down to a disagreement, these disagreements can become increasingly complex as they grow over time and spread throughout a community. Without proper mitigation, a disagreement can turn into harassment, or worse. In fractured fandoms, however, it takes two to tango: multiple factors from each side of a gap can lead to the exacerbation of a disagreement into a fracture. This study only has the perspective from one side of the gap: future studies should examine the actual interaction of fans to understand each participant’s role in creating and furthering the fracture. Even from this limited perspective, it appears many of the disagreements appear to involve people not listening to one another. For misunderstood, people feel that others are not listening to them well enough to understand them. In defensiveness,

54

Chapter 2

the fault of not listening lies more on the individual who reacts poorly to something someone said or did; essentially, they are doing the misinterpreting and not attempting to fix the problem. When they have differences of opinion, neither side is listening to the other and allowing such differences to coexist. If power dynamics come into the situation, then people essentially do not listen by not letting others speak. Power plays involve people with some real or perceived power enforcing silence on others, essentially shutting them down so they do not have to be listened to. Policing boundaries sees such empowered individuals preventing others from interacting with the community at large; by not letting others participate, such individuals are completely shutting down communication. Furthermore, these issues with communication and power seem to range between how advertent or inadvertent the actions were. Advertent actions involve people being mindful of what they are doing and even what could happen due to their actions. Fans engaging in power plays and policing boundaries may be mindful of what their actions entail. Inadvertent actions, however, result from people being less aware of what they are doing. In instances of defensiveness and misunderstood, the fan reacts to another person’s actions, but that person may not be mindful of what their actions entail. Additionally, the fan’s reactions are primarily emotional, kneejerk acts, indicating that they may not fully consider what will happen from their actions. Power plays and policing boundaries can be inadvertent, as people do not realize that the words they choose to use can impact how they are seen and how others react. Rhiannon Bury studied X-Files fans who created the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade and found that their choice of words to describe themselves “necessitates the establishment of practices that set out to create conformity and contain difference. The name David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade, for instance, overtly signals that membership involves an adherence/allegiance to a feminine heterosexual identity.” 99 Whether intentional or unintentional, these discursive practices had the effect of “excluding female fans of The XFiles who may have wanted to join a women-only list but identified as lesbian.” 100 These fans may not have been aware that the terms they used to define their community set the parameters for acceptance into the community, and thereby excluded others seen as inappropriate members. Such exclusion is essentially a side effect of any attempt at organization: “Even when conceptualized as an alignment of ‘loose ends,’ these loose ends are organized along an insider/outsider binary wherein exclusion necessarily goes hand in hand with inclusion.” 101 This inherent aspect of community and communication simply means people need to be more mindful of the words they use, to whom they use them, and the context in which they are used. At the same time, the nature of these fractures indicates the need to not see disagreements as problems. Asymmetry, boundaries, contradictions and

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

55

tensions are essential to communication. 102 People communicate with one another to bridge gaps—if everyone were the same, no reason would exist to communicate. Disagreements turn into problems when power disrupts the use of communication to bridge gaps. People can jostle for their meaning to have more weight and how much it “will contribute to a good or bad reputation.” 103 The more power someone has, the more discourse becomes homogenized, possibly silencing others and determining a slant to knowledge. While monologic communication allows the powerful to maintain influence and “constrain the less powerful by exercising their power,” dialogic communication “illuminates the interactional tensions involved in power and powerlessness in a conceptually more interesting way.” 104 The key to remember is that “potentially powerful parties cannot fully exercise power unless the other parties let themselves be dominated and silenced. At the same time, the subordinate parties can position themselves in activity roles in which they cannot respond or from which they refuse to respond and cooperate.” 105 Knowing these situational factors could help understand when, where, and why fractures occur. This chapter considered the nature of the fractures to understand what the fans experienced. In the next chapter, I present analysis that considers what might predict fractures. The next chapter examines if the nature of the fan, the fandom, or the fan activity can in some way explain the fractures. Perhaps women are more likely to experienced fractures than men. Perhaps science fiction fans are more put upon than sports fans. Perhaps those fans who engage in activities that require them to become more highly engaged with a fan collective will experience more fractures, and more significant ones like power plays and policing boundaries. The stories provide some clue about the relationship between fans, fandoms, fan activities, and fractures. NOTES 1. For Zoe Quinn, see Caitlin Dewey, “In the Battle of Internet Mobs Vs. the Law, the Internet Mobs Have Won,” The Washington Post, February 17, 2016, https://www. washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/02/17/in-the-battle-of-internet-mobs-vs-thelaw-the-internet-mobs-have-won. 2. For Anita Sarkeesian, see Sean T. Collins, “Anita Sarkeesian on GamerGate: ‘We have a problem and we’re going to fix this,’” October 17, 2014, http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/ features/anita-sarkeesian-gamergate-interview-20141017. 3. For Leslie Jones, see Elahe Izadi, “‘I always get back up’: Leslie Jones returns to social media after nasty hack,” The Washington Post, September 5, 2016, https://www. washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/09/05/i-always-get-back-up-lesliejones-returns-to-social-media-after-nasty-hack. 4. For Felicia Day, see Alex Hern, “Felicia Day’s Public Details Put Online after She Described Gamergate Fears,” The Guardian, October 23, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2014/oct/23/felicia-days-public-details-online-gamergate. 5. The GamerGate debate emerged with the use of a Twitter hashtag. This hashtag, and the back-and-forth tweets that constitute the foundation of this debate, can be found here: https://

56

Chapter 2

twitter.com/hashtag/gamergate?lang=en. For more, see Adi Robertson, “Trolls Drove Anita Sarkeesian Out of Her House to Prove Misogyny Doesn’t Exist,” The Verge, August 27, 2014, https://www.theverge.com/2014/8/27/6075179/anita-sarkeesian-says-she-was-driven-out-ofhouse-by-threats; Erik Kain, “GamerGate: A closer look at the controversy sweeping video games,” Forbes, September 4, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/ gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/#175b8f0634f8; Jay Hathaway, “What Is Gamergate, and Why? An explainer for non-geeks,” Gawker, October 10, 2014, http://gawker.com/what-is-gamergate-and-why-an-explainer-for-non-geeks1642909080; and lizzyf620, “Repost: #Gamergate through my eyes,” BuzzFeed, January 12, 2015, https://www.buzzfeed.com/lizzyf620/repost-gamergate-through-my-eyes-190rr?utm_ term=.sbwWAK5Qq#.ms5V1nZ7l. 6. For information on the furry fandom, Kathleen Gerbasi, Penny Bernstein, Samuel Conway et al, “Furries from A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism),” Society and Animals 16 (2008). 7. Roisin Kiberd, “Pony Nationalism and the Furred Reich: Inside the Alt-Furry’s online zoo,” Motherboard, January 12, 2017, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4xap8w/ pony-nationalism-and-the-furred-reich-inside-the-alt-furrys-online-zoo; Amelia Tait, “The Furred Reich: The truth about Nazi furries and the Alt-Right,” The New Statesman, February 2, 2017, https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2017/02/furred-reich-truthabout-nazi-furries-and-alt-right. 8. Ibid. 9. William Hicks, “Neo-Nazi Furries Are Trump’s Latest and Most Puzzling Alt-Right Supporters,” Newsweek, November 22, 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/2017/12/01/neonazi-furries-trump-latest-alt-right-supporters-718113.html. 10. For more on the negative stereotyping of fans, see Lincoln Geraghty, Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, fandom and collecting popular culture (New York City: Routledge, 2013). 11. For a discussion of Pierre Bourdieu’s categorization based on class and their applicability to fandom, See Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (New York City: Routledge, 2002), 47–8. 12. These early thoughts are collected at https://playingwithresearch.com/current-projects/ fandom-is-everything/fractured-fandom. 13. This coding used an inductive, thematic approach inspired by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1967). 14. Only 22 situations (21.8 percent) indicated this fracture. 15. Josina M. Makau and Debian L. Marty, Dialogue and Deliberation (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 2013), 227. 16. Ibid., 227–8 (italics in original). 17. Ibid. 18. For an example, see Ria Jenkins, “When Will Gamers Understand That Criticism Isn’t Censorship?” The Guardian, January 30, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ 2015/jan/30/gamers-criticism-censorship. 19. For more on this topic, see Jason Bailey, “What Do DC Fans and Trump Supporters Have in Common?” FlavorWire, August 10, 2016, http://flavorwire.com/586585/what-do-dcfans-and-trump-supporters-have-in-common; and, Lamarco McClendon, “‘Suicide Squad’ Fans Petition to Shut Down Rotten Tomatoes Over Negative Reviews,” Variety, August 3, 2016, http://variety.com/2016/film/news/suicide-squad-fans-petition-rotten-tomatoes-badreviews-shut-down-1201829631. 20. Jimmy Sanderson, “From Loving the Hero to Despising the Villain: Sports fans, Facebook, and social identity threats,” Mass Communication and Society 16 (2013): 496-501. 21. Makau and Marty, Dialogue, 73. 22. Only 18 situations (17.8 percent) involved this fracture. 23. Cornel Sandvoss, Fans: The mirror of consumption (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2005), 33. 24. Andrew Crome, “Religion and the Pathologization of Fandom: Religion, reason, and controversy in My Little Pony fandom,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 27, no. 2 (2015), 132.

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

57

25. Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen, Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, shame and fan/producer relationships (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012), 9. 26. Mark Duffett, Understanding Fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture (New York City: Bloomsbury, 2013), 15–6; Cameron Williams, “The Rise of Toxic Fandom: Why people are ruining the pop culture they love,” Junkee, October 13, 2017, http://junkee. com/rick-and-morty-toxic-fandom/130622. 27. Ibid., 59. 28. Mel Stanfill, “‘They’re losers, but I know better’: Intra-fandom stereotyping and the normalization of the fan subject,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 30, no. 2 (2013), 130. 29. Crome, “Pathologization of Fandom,” 134. 30. Williams, “Rise of Toxic.” 31. See Natalie A. Brown and Andrew C. Billings, “Sports Fans as Crisis Communicators on Social Media Websites,” Public Relations Review 39 (2013), 77–8. 32. For an example, see Dave Schilling, “When Did Nerds Become So Intolerant?” Vice, August 12, 2016, http://www.vice.com/read/when-did-nerds-become-so-intolerant-088. 33. Alyssa Rosenberg, “Geeks Have Become Their Own Worst Enemies,” The Washington Post, September 19, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2014/09/19/ geeks-have-become-their-own-worst-enemies/?utm_term=.85a77258ade6. 34. Arthur Chu, “I’m Not ‘that creepy guy from the Internet’: How Gamergate gave the geek community a bad name,” Salon, October 30, 2014 http://www.salon.com/2014/10/30/ that_creepy_guy_from_the_internet_how_gamergate_shattered_faith_in_the_geek_ community. 35. For an example, see Janelle Asselin, “The ‘Vocal Minority’ and Artistic Integrity in Comics,” Comic Alliance, March 17, 2015 http://comicsalliance.com/the-vocal-minority-andartistic-integrity-in-comics. 36. For an example, see Pete Warden “Why Nerd Culture Must Die,” Pete Warden’s Blog, October 5, 2014, https://petewarden.com/2014/10/05/why-nerd-culture-must-die. 37. Derek Johnson, “Fan-tagonism: Factions, institutions, and constitutive hegemonies of fandom.” In Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York City: NYU Press, 2007), 287. 38. Hills, Fan Cultures, 62. 39. Nancy Baym, “Interpreting Soap Operas and Creating Community Inside a Computermediated Fan Culture,” Journal of Folklore Research 30, no. 2/3 (1993), 171. 40. Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring participatory culture (New York City: NYU Press, 2006), 142. 41. A total of 67 situations (66.3 percent) had this fracture. 42. For an example in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, see Josh Stenger, “The Clothes Make the Fan: Fashion and online fandom when Buffy the Vampire Slayer goes to eBay,” Cinema Journal 45, no. 4 (2006). 43. For research on such disagreements, see: Leora Hadas, “Resisting the Romance: ‘Shipping’ and the discourse of genre uniqueness in Doctor Who fandom,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 3 (2013); Dawn Heinecken, “Fan Readings of Sex and Violence on Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies 11–12, no. 3.34 (2004); Johnson, “Fan-tagonism.” 44. For more information, see Jessica Lachenal, “William Shatner Versus the Outlander Fandom,” The Mary Sue, August 2, 2016, http://www.themarysue.com/william-shatneroutlander-fandom. 45. For an argument on the need to understand sports fandom in relation to other fandoms— that is, as an everyday practice—see Adam Benkwitz and Gyozo Molnar, “Interpreting and Exploring Football Fan Rivalries: An overview,” Soccer & Society 13, no. 4 (2012). 46. Walter Gantz, David Fingerhut and Gayle Nadorff. “The Social Dimension of Sports Fanship,” In Sports Fans, Identity, and Socialization: Exploring the fandemonium, ed. Adam C. Earnheardt, Paul M. Haridakis, and Barbara S. Hugenberg (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 66, 73.

58

Chapter 2

47. For more, see Brandon Stroud, “The Best and Worst of WWE Royal Rumble 2015,” Uproxx, with Spandex, January 26, 2015 http://uproxx.com/prowrestling/the-best-and-worstof-wwe-royal-rumble-2015. 48. For more, see Trevor Courneen, “Woes of WWE Fandom: The rocky road to Wrestlemania,” Paste Magazine, January 29, 2015, https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/01/ woes-of-wwe-fandom-the-rocky-road-to-wrestlemania.html; and, Danielle Matheson, “The Friday Wrestling Conversation: Have you ever given up on WWE?” Uproxx, with Spandex, January 30, 2015, http://uproxx.com/prowrestling/the-friday-wrestling-conversation-have-youever-given-up-on-wwe. 49. For example, see Austin Heiberg, “Best of the Super Juniors: New Japan Pro Wrestling’s craziest tournament, and why it’s dividing wrestling fans,” Uproxx, with Spandex, May 31, 2016, http://uproxx.com/prowrestling/best-of-the-super-juniors-tournament. 50. No one in the study reported being an “anti-fan” or someone who’s fandom is based on hating something or guilty pleasure. The lack of such accounts is likely because fans were asked to think about their fandoms, and not their anti-fandoms. 51. For example, see Devin Faraci, “Will the Internet Melt Down? Sue Storm’s black dad cast in Fantastic Four,” Birth. Movies. Death., May 8, 2014, http://birthmoviesdeath.com/ 2014/05/08/will-the-internet-melt-down-sue-storms-black-dad-cast-in-fantastic-four. 52. For example, see Curtis M. Wong, “Original ‘X-Men’ Character Iceman Comes Out As Gay,” The Huffington Post, February 2, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/21/ iceman-bobbie-drake-gay-_n_7110308.html. 53. For example, see Dominique Mosbergen, “J. K. Rowling Skewers Critics of Black Hermione, Calling Them ‘A bunch of racists,’” The Huffington Post, June 6, 2016, http://www. huffingtonpost.com/entry/jk-rowling-black-hermione-noma-dumezweni_us_ 57551b0ce4b0ed593f14c4f1. 54. For example, see Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, “What Was Up with That Black Widow Scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron?” Hello, Tailor, April 23, 2015, http://hellotailor.blogspot.com/ 2015/04/what-was-up-with-that-black-widow-scene.html. 55. For example, see Maddy Myers, “Yes, There Is a Kilgrave Fandom—and Here’s Why I’m Not Condemning It,” The Mary Sue, December 2, 2015, http://www.themarysue.com/ kilgrave-fandom. 56. See Zubernis and Larsen, Fandom, 122–23, on how BNFs can be positive or negative sources of influence in their communities. 57. Rebecca Williams, “‘It’s about power’: Spoilers and fan hierarchy in on-line Buffy fandom,” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 11/12 (2004). 58. Zubernis and Larsen, Fandom, 30; see also Nathan Hunt, “The Importance of Trivia: Ownership, exclusion and authority in science fiction fandom,” in Defining Cult Movies: The cultural politics of oppositional taste, ed. Mark Jancovich, Antonio Lázaro Reboll, Julian Stringer and Andy Willis (New York City: Manchester University Press, 2003), 198. 59. A reported 26 situations (25.7 percent) dealt with this fracture. 60. Federica Lanzi “The Rights of Criticism: The anti-fans within the fans,” Fan Studies Network (University of East Anglia, 2016), https://fanstudies.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/fsn2016-draft-programme-v2.pdf. 61. Ibid. 62. Sandvoss, Fans, 16, 38–9. 63. For examples of how the misogyny and racism of fans has been described, see Noah Berlatsky, “‘Let’s See How Feminist You Are When You’re Begging For More’: The violence, sexist world of comic website comments,” Salon, May 16, 2014, http://www.salon.com/2014/ 05/16/lets_see_how_feminist_you_are_when_youre_begging_for_more_the_violent_sexist_ world_of_comic_website_comments; K. Tempest Bradford, “On WisCon, and Who Is Allowed To Feel Welcome,” Fluid Artist, June 3, 2016, http://tempest.fluidartist.com/on-wisconand-who-is-allowed-to-feel-welcome: Arthur Chu, “The Plight of the Bitter Nerd: Why so many awkward, shy guys end up hating feminism,” Salon, January 9, 2015, http://www.salon. com/2015/01/10/the_plight_of_the_bitter_nerd_why_so_many_awkward_shy_guys_end_up_ hating_feminism; Arthur Chu, “Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, entitlement, and nerds,” The Daily Beast, May 27, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/

Communication, Power, and Fractured Fandoms

59

your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html; and Priya Alika Elias and Ezekiel Kweku, “The Sexual (and Racial) Politics of Nerd Culture: A dialogue,” The Toast, September 30, 2014, http://the-toast.net/2014/09/30/sexual-racial-politics-nerd-culturedialogue. 64. Sandvoss, Fans, 16. 65. For more, see Jason Coffman, “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: ‘The Witch’ and horror fandom’s gatekeepers,” Medium, February 19, 2016, https://medium.com/ cinenation-show/this-is-why-we-can-t-have-nice-things-the-witch-and-horror-fandom-sgatekeepers-b2c0bb0d8f9a#.cbdpoisov. 66. For more, see Jan Hathaway, “Manbabies Throw Tantrum Over Babymetal Winning ‘Best Metal Band’ Poll,” The Daily Dot, July 28, 2016, http://www.dailydot.com/unclick/ babymetal-wins-poll-haters-cry. 67. For work on this concept, see Kristina Busse, “Geek Hierarchies, Boundary Policing, and the Gendering of the Good Fan,” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 10, no. 1 (2013); Bethan Jones, “My Little Pony, Tolerance is Magic: Gender policing and Brony anti-fandom,” The Journal of Popular Television 3, no. 1 (2015); Rebecca Williams, “‘Anyone who calls Muse a Twilight band will be shot on sight’: Music, distinction, and the ‘interloping fan’ in the Twilight franchise,” Popular Music and Society 36, no. 3 (2013). 68. See Adrienne Massanari, Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from reddit (New York City: Peter Lang, 2015); Aja Romano, “Social Justice, Shipping, and Ideology: When fandom becomes a crusade, things get ugly,” Vox, August 7, 2016, https://www.vox. com/2016/8/7/11950648/fandom-shipping-social-justice-ideological-warfare. 69. Williams, “‘Anyone who calls Muse,’” 336. 70. Fans reported this fracture occurring in 27 situations (26.5 percent). 71. Matthew R. Collins and Danielle M. Stern, “The online community: Fan response of Community’s unlikely fifth season,” In Television, Social Media and Fan Culture, ed. Alison F. Slade, Amber J. Narro and Dedria Givens-Carroll (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 114. 72. Ibid., 120. 73. Matt Hills, “‘Twilight’ Fans Represented in Commercial Paratexts and Inter-Fandoms: Resisting and repurposing negative fan stereotypes,” in Genre, Reception and Adaptation in the “Twilight” Series, ed. Anne Morey (Routledge, 2012), 115. 74. Hadas, “Resisting the Romance,” 336. 75. Ibid., 341. 76. See Jones, “My Little Pony”; Mikko Hautakangas, “It’s OK to Be Joyful? My Little Pony and Brony masculinity,” Journal of Popular Television 3, no. 1 (2015); Venetia Laura Delano Robertson, “Of Ponies and Men: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the brony fandom,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no. 1 (2014). 77. Lisa Miller, “How My Little Pony Became a Cult for Grown Men and Preteen Girls Alike,” The Cut, November 6, 2014, http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/11/understanding-the-cultof-my-little-pony.html?n_play=545c442de4b0e96d001be1fc; Angela Watercutter, “Bronies Are Redefining Fandom—and American Manhood,” Wired, March 11, 2014, https://www. wired.com/2014/03/bronies-online-fandom. 78. For examples, see Aja Romano, “Bronies Attack One of Their Own After a Racy ‘My Little Pony’ Blog Disappears,” The Daily Dot, January 22, 2014, http://www.dailydot.com/ fandom/brony-my-little-pony-princess-molestia-deleted; and, David Moye, “Inflatable Lifesize ‘My Little Pony’ Doll Arousing Controversy with Bronies (NSFW)” The Huffington Post, January 21, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/21/inflatable-lifesize-my-li_n_ 6511712.html. 79. A fracture even occurred in the Brony community over the character Derpy, as discussed by Christopher Bell, “The ballad of Derpy Hooves: Transgressive fandom in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,” Humanities Directory 1, no 1 (2013). 80. Sandvoss, Fans, 56–7. 81. For more, see Andrea Letamendi, “The Psychology of the Fake Geek Girl: Why we’re threatened by falsified fandom,” The Mary Sue, December 21, 2012, http://www.themarysue. com/psychology-of-the-fake-geek-girl.

60

Chapter 2

82. For more, see Rebecca Pahle, “Creators of WonderCon’s ‘I Hate Fangirls’ Shirt Defend It, Double Down on ‘Fake Geek’ Bullcrap,” The Mary Sue, April 23, 2014, http://www. themarysue.com/wondercon-fake-geek-girl-t-shirt-response. 83. For more on hegemonic masculinity, see R. W. Connell and James Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the concept,” Gender and Society 19, no. 6 (2005). 84. For more on hegemonic masculinity and online safe spaces, see Jessica L. Beyer, “Women’s (Dis)embodied Engagement with Male-dominated Online Communities,” In Cyberfeminism 2.0, ed. Radhika Gajjala and Yeon Ju Oh (New York City: Peter Lang, 2012); Lori Kendall, “‘Oh no! I’m a nerd!’: Hegemonic masculinity on an online forum,” Gender and Society 14, no. 2 (2000); and Massanari, Participatory Culture. 85. For examples of critics discussing this idea, see David Futrelle, “Men’s Rights Activisits: Video gaming should be a ‘safe space’ for male nerds,” We Hunted the Mammoth, August 26, 2014, http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/08/26/mens-rights-activists-videogaming-should-be-a-safe-space-for-male-nerds; and, Andrew Todd, “PAX Australia Day Two: Social justice warrior edition,” Birth. Movies. Death., November 3, 2014, http:// birthmoviesdeath.com/2014/11/03/pax-australia-day-two-social-justice-warrior-edition. 86. Andrea MacDonald, “Uncertain Utopia: Science fiction media fandom and computer mediated communication,” In Theorizing Fandom: Fan, subculture, and identity, ed. Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1998), 146. 87. MacDonald, Theorizing Fandom, 148–9. 88. Zubernis and Larsen, Fandom, 71. 89. Another instance got close to significance: misunderstood and defensiveness only had one overlap, which was less than expected (χ2=3.692, p=0.055). 90. A Chi-Square (χ2) tests for whether or not the frequency of some variable occurs more than expected given predicted distribution across categories. In this instance, the statistical test resulted in χ2=10.811, p=0.001. When the p-value is equal to or less than 0.05, the test is significant, indicating the frequency distribution across categories did not occur as expected. To determine what the finding means, the observed frequency count is compared to the expected frequency count. When those counts differed by more or less than 3 points, I included them in the analyses presented in this book. 91. Where χ2=9.364, p=0.002. 92. For more on the different forms of masculinity, see Jack S. Kahn, An Introduction to Masculinities (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). 93. Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fractures (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 78. 94. Ibid., 82. 95. For this theoretical underpinning on disagreements and online fan communities, see Nancy Baym, “Communication, Interpretation, and Relationships: A study of a computermediated fan community” (PhD diss, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994). 96. Makau and Mary, Dialogue, 9. 97. Baym, “Communication, Interpretation.” 98. Katelyn Esmonde, Cheryl Cooky, and David L. Andrews, “‘It’s Supposed to Be About the Love of the Game, Not the Love of Aaron Rodgers’ Eyes’: Challenging the exclusions of women’s sports fans,” Sociology of Sport Journal 32 (2015): 41. 99. Rhiannon Bury, Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female fandoms online (New York City: Peter Lang, 2005): 14–5. 100. Ibid. 101. Ibid., 15. 102. Per Linell, Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically: Interrational and contextual theories of human sense-making (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2009), 214. 103. Ibid., 215. 104. Ibid., 216. 105. Ibid.

Chapter Three

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

Kimi experienced a fractured fandom when venturing online to discuss True Blood with other fans. Unfortunately, these fans dismissed Kimi’s interpretation of the show and positioned them as the wrong type of fan for this fandom. Because Kimi identifies as a Native American two-spirit, I will refer to them using the they/them/theirs pronouns. According to Kimi: I was being attacked for playing a queer character and liking and supporting the queerness in the fandom and the canon work. I myself am queer. So it felt personal. Then when they found out that I was queer. It became personal. At first it was tweets tagged to my character on Twitter or about my character tagged to me being anti-LGBTQA.

Other True Blood fans took issue with their work and sought to remove them from the fandom—especially when their identity became known. Told that it was the worst character in the fandom and I shouldn’t support it and that it was gross and shouldn’t have been in the books and blasphemous against Jesus. Then when it was found out that I was queer they started being tagged to both accounts but directed towards me. I would block one account and another would spring up. I locked and they found my Tumblr, Ask.fm, Facebook, Google+, LiveJournal, Fc.net account, Xanga. There was nowhere online even in messengers that I could hide.

Such online bigotry reflected their past offline experiences. And I couldn’t hide offline while being myself because of the environment in which I live. eventually it even took on a threatening and racist tone. They were going to “track down the faggot squaw and give her the spanking her 61

62

Chapter 3 daddy never did.” Which in real life my parents had engaged in child training. I’d received plenty of physical punishments growing up.

For Kimi, social identity interacted with fan activity—and while the fracture happened online, it still resembled the bigotry they had lived with for years. Sable, a 35-year-old white cisgender female from the United States, attended a fan convention only to run afoul of other fans who sought to exclude her because of her disability. She was physically attacked because some other fans thought “people who can’t move shouldn’t attend cons.” Sable explains: I am a female fan with multiple disabilities. I have experienced thoughtless behavior and deliberate discrimination from other fans on grounds of each and of both in combination. In some cases this has led to injury. In every case, the incidents were sudden. For example, at an anime convention several years back I was pushed down an escalator for “moving too slow, bitch”—I walk with a mobility aid and it is obvious from looking at me that my mobility is impaired.

Like Kimi, these fans interpreted Sable’s identity as problematic and then acted upon this perspective. Beforehand, I was going my merry way, but felt unsafe for the remaining time at the convention, though the staff handled the situation beautifully. I am not accustomed to thinking of myself as fragile. But the fact is, we all are to some degree, and the situation certainly made me feel more vulnerable in large crowd situations since.

Sable and Kimi both experienced policing of boundaries, as other fans decided not to welcome them as part of the fan community. Kimi made it clear that part of their situation involved a disagreement over interpretation of the fandom. Kimi and Sable represent specific intersections of identity and contextual factors. Both identify as fans, demonstrating how fandom is “intrinsically interwoven with our sense of self, with who we are, would like to be, and think we are.” 1 At the same time, people have more than just one identity, each of which becomes expressed in different ways in different situations given different external forces acting upon them. Kimi is a queer person of color talking about a specific fandom while online. Sable is privileged because of her race, but marginalized because of her disability. Both Kimi and Sable experienced fractures that relate to their marginalized identities, and the situations in which they experienced those fractures highlighted their differences with other fans, ultimately leading to the communication and power issues at the heart of their fractures.

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

63

Recognizing the nature of the fractures offers insight into what caused them. The analysis in this chapter does not attempt to pinpoint what led to what: given the cross-sectional nature of the self-interview, assessing causality for what caused the fractures is not possible. Instead, the analysis in this chapter tries to map out the factors to show what is related to what. That is, the analysis considers whether the social identities of the fans relate to the different fractures. Are women more likely to experience problems than men? Do Twilight fans experience more harassment and teasing than Star Wars fans? Does cosplaying lead to accusations of “fake fan girls?” Or is it something about the nature of the situation in which the fracture occurs? This analysis explores the expected and unexpected relationships that exist between the types of fractures and different social identities and situational factors. This chapter expands on the analysis presented in the previous chapter by detailing how these fractures relate to a wide variety of social identities, such as gender, race, age, and type of fandom. Additionally, the analysis considers situational factors like the fan activities people engaged in at the time of the fracture. These issues can occur when fans interact with other fans online or in person. The analysis also considers who is seen as the person experiencing the problem. This chapter examines where and when fractures occur to understand why they occur. The results argue against defining these experiences as entirely a gendered, racial, or youth issue, as a fractured fandom can happen to anyone at anytime and anywhere. SOCIAL IDENTITIES AND FRACTURES As discussed in chapter 1, fan collectives are heterogenous, although fan studies have tended to view them as homogenous, privileging “some identities and power structures, while remaining reluctant to critically engage others.” 2 Lori Hitchcock Morimoto and Bertha Chin argue that the conceptualization of fan collectives as “imagined communities” elides the very real differences between fans. While an imagined community allows fan studies to view fan collectives as overcoming geographic distances, the concept means “we lose sight of the disparities and disjunctures” that can characterize transnational or transcultural fandoms. 3 This conceptualization, then, could ignore the diversity within the fan collective, 4 and potentially silence marginalized fans by focusing on more vocal, gatekeeper fans who reflect a Western-centric approach to fandom and thus fan studies. 5 Because diversity and heterogeneity underline the conceptualization of fractured fandom, this study needed to measure how fans self-identified. This part of the analysis explores the demographics of the fans to understand when the fractures happened and to whom. In addition, the analysis considers the nature of the fandom in which people experienced the fracture,

64

Chapter 3

thereby understanding where the fracture happened. The following section briefly describes the characteristics of the 101 fans who completed the selfinterview. The self-interview included several questions designed to provide fans’ demographic information at the time they experienced the fractured fandoms (see the appendix). Eliciting such information provides a sense of who these people are, and demonstrates that they represent a wide swath of ages, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, and fandoms. Demographics Many of the fans who completed the self-interview came from the United States and Canada, with countries in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, representing the second most common location. 6 Few fans hailed from Asia or Australia, 7 and thus the distribution of nationalities reflects a more Western conceptualization of fandom, which may be more individual-oriented than community-oriented. This conceptualization may help explain the presence of these fractures, as individuals come into conflict with one another within and outside of fan collectives. Conversely, the lack of non-Western fans demonstrates a limitation of this study that hopefully future research can address. Among those who filled out the self-interview, women outnumbered men nearly 2-to-1. 8 Six fans identified as gender nonconforming (i.e., queer, genderfluid, trans, etc.). The high number of women responding is common: studies of online fans have reported on women who engage in such activities (see discussions in chapters 1 and 2). Therefore, given that the study’s distribution focused on approaching online fans, a higher female turnout is to be expected. Additionally, news media have offered more accounts of women experiencing fractured fandom than men; thus, in asking for people to discuss problems and tensions in their experiences of fan collectives overall, this higher turnout also makes sense. Along with gender often being cited as a factor in these fractures, many news accounts also come from non-Caucasian fans reporting problems and tensions. In this study, most respondents identified as Caucasian, far outnumbering other racial or ethnic identities. 9 The next most common ethnicities were Asian and Hispanic or Latinx, although there were less than ten of each of these non-Caucasian groups. When considering gender and ethnicity together, over half the fans self-identified as white women. 10 Thus, the high percentage of Caucasians appears related to the high percentage of women in the study. The average age of the fans when they completed the self-interviews was 30.5 years, indicating a wide range of ages in the study. However, not everyone reported on a current experience with a fracture; thus, their current age is not as informative as the age they reported being when the problems and

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

65

tensions occurred. When taking this information into account, a wider range of ages appears. Many of the fans recounted problems they experienced as teenagers, young adults, and adults, but some said they faced these fractures as children or even elderly adults. 11 I asked for both ages to see how much time had passed between these two points in their lives. Looking at those time spans revealed that one-third talked about something that happened within the past year. 12 From there, the time gap expanded, as another third said that anywhere from one to three years had passed. 13 Thus, two-thirds of the sample described rather recent experiences in their self-interviews. Perhaps more interesting, as well as devastating, are those individuals who reported greater amounts of time having passed. More than thirty people recalled stories that were four to eighteen years old. 14 The gap in time did not end there. One person recalled a 20-yearold story, another a 30-year-old story—and one person recalled a 49-year-old story. While most of the sample recalled recent events, the presence of so many older stories demonstrates how fractures can impact people long after they occur. Fandoms Thus far, only basic demographic information has been considered. The array of fandoms to which the people reported belonging represents the last piece of important descriptive information necessary to understand this sample. When asked what they were fans of, most respondents mentioned more than one fandom; in fact, many fans listed dozens of fandoms, suggesting that their identities were linked to more than one fandom. The participants indicated being fans of sports, 15 music, live-action series, anime series, films, food, celebrities, and even animals. Many common pop culture fandoms made appearances, such as Sherlock, Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Naruto, Sailor Moon, and Gundam Wing. 16 Such a wide reporting of fandoms illustrates how important fandom has become in people’s lives. Given the wide variety of fandoms represented in the sample, it becomes useful to try to understand the specific ones that the fans discussed in their fractures. From that perspective, the self-interviews represent this wide array. When fans clearly indicated an object of affection, then most fractures appear to involve some sports fandom, particularly American football and basketball. 17 Science fiction and music fandoms were the second most commonly mentioned, followed by game fandoms, celebrity fandoms, and fantasy fandoms. Drama and horror fandoms occurred more than comics, romance, and fashion fandoms. The biggest categorizations of fractured fandoms, however, were from fans who never identified a specific fandom. 18 Thus, this wide range includes people who told stories that could not be classified as revolv-

66

Chapter 3

ing around a specific object of affection—that object was less important to defining the situation than what happened in that situation. Social Identities Relating to the Fractures As mentioned above, the range of demographics and fandoms found in this study suggested that no single fandom or demographic would predict what fractures would be experienced. Indeed, I ran a series of descriptive statistics to see whether fractures occurred more or less often than expected within any single type of fandom or demographic category. If one type of fandom or demographic category contained such an anomaly, it would indicate that the fandom or demographic in some way impacted the presence of the fracture, and thus could potentially cause that fracture. Sports might be expected to have more defensiveness, as people support their preferred team, and younger people might be expected to have experienced more policing of boundaries from an older fan attempting to protect the inviolability of a fan collective. 19 Given the preponderance of women in the study, and how often news stories circulate about women experiencing problems, their experiencing at least one fracture more than men would be expected. Across all the fandoms and categories, such anomalies failed to appear, except for three notable exceptions. If fans said the fracture occurred within the last year, then they discussed less power plays than expected. 20 This finding does not reveal much, because a range of different ages experienced the problem during that period; teenagers, young adults, and middle-aged adults all were less likely to report power plays as the cause of the fracture if it had happened within the last year. Therefore, the relationship appears less due to the age of the fan and more about the situation in which the fracture occurred. Interestingly, fewer 22 year olds reported being misunderstood than expected. 21 This finding is important because this was the most common age of the fans when they completed the study. 22 However, this was not the fan’s age when they experienced this fracture. While there was a significant relationship between their current age and their age during the fracture, 23 there were no unexpected relationships between this age and being a child, teenager, or young adult when the fractured occurred. As with the previous relationship, this one appears due less to the age of the fan and more about the situation in which the fracture occurred. The other significant finding is, well, more significant. If the fan hailed from North America, they reported less being misunderstood as the nature of the fracture than expected, while those from Europe reported more than expected. 24 Such a finding may stem from language differences, as the categorization of Europe included people from across the continent, and they may have been speaking in a language other than their primary one. Howev-

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

67

er, as with the previous finding, this result becomes more interesting, and perhaps easier to explain, when looking at this demographic information in relation to situational factors from the fans’ experiences. Such will be done after considering the situational factors. A big finding is that none of the types of fandoms showed any unexpected relationships with the fractures. Yet these self-interviews asked the respondent to in some way identify the nature of the fandom while answering the questions. The largest number of self-interviews neglected to feature such a discussion, meaning the fans failed to specify the nature of their fandom when discussing the problems and tensions they experienced in it. Thus, the range of fandoms discussed and the high percentage of non-specified fandoms demonstrates how unimportant the nature of the fandom is to understand the fractures. The fractures were not endemic to specific types of fandoms based on their characteristics. Ultimately, neither the nature of the fandom nor the fan’s demographic information appear to be highly influential in determining the nature of the fracture they experienced. SITUATIONAL FACTORS AND FRACTURES Since social identities appeared somewhat unrelated to the fractures, this section considers the situational factors or parameters that define the fan’s experience within that time and space. Such parameters involve examining whether the situation occurred online or offline; considering if it happened to the fan, to others the fan observed, or was caused by the fan; and observing the type of fan activity the fan engaged in when the fracture occurred. These factors provide a better sense as to the nature of the situation in which the fracture occurred, thereby adding more detail to explain the when, where, and why of the fracture. Online Versus Offline A fundamental aspect of the fans’ situations concerned how they experienced the problem as happening online or offline. This basic dichotomous coding provided a key way to categorize the experiences, and revealed that 55 situations took place online, with one situation starting offline but going online (Nina from chapter 2). These online situations occurred around the world. Nicky, a Midwestern white female 24-year-old, had just graduated college and was bouncing between being unemployed and employed; to cope, she recalled trying to reinvigorate her fandom by going online: “After I graduated from college, I rejoined social/performative fandom (i.e., blogging, creating and sharing fanworks, generally cultivating a fandom identity online), which I had put on the back burner while I was working on my degree.”

68

Chapter 3

Madeleine remembered another fan becoming defensive over a difference of opinion: “I sent a review on a fanfic in private to a big name of the TMNT fandom who turned out to be a massive drama queen. I didn’t say I disliked her story, just that it wasn’t fitting my tastes, and suddenly she made me her enemy for life.” Olivia only said one thing online to set off another fan: “I post a tweet. The responder posted 4 tweets one after the other all in capitals. I read the first one only. It shocked me. The rage was out of all proportion to what I had tweeted.” And from the beginning of this chapter, Kimi’s experience was completely online: “I was role playing a character I loved on Twitter, a queer character from southern vampire series/True Blood.” The other 46 fans had negative face-to-face encounters. Bea’s experience at a Liza Minnelli concert shook many in the audience, and the performer herself: “The audience began getting upset, as did I. I also noticed that Liza Minnelli, herself, was a bit shaken by what was going on.” Bea expressed concern that no one in the situation could do anything to help: No one really had power in the situation. Even Liza Minnelli didn’t really have power in the situation. She dealt with the woman in the audience the best she could and continued to perform. Someone on her staff realized that she was [struggling] because of this particular audience member and escorted them out of the theatre.

Bea’s offline experience helped her learn something about herself and others. Another fan recounted how an offline experience involved problems with power that led her to feel more empowered. Xia, a female Asian high school student in Oregon, recalled attending a basketball game when “A fan for the other basketball team started heckling one of the players on my high school team and accusing my school of recruiting players. Our team was beating his team in a tournament game.” A difference of opinion between herself and another fan eventually led to her feeling defensive enough to act: At first I tended to ignore his comments but when they started getting personal toward a specific player it started to offend me. Since I also attended the same school as this player I felt personally attacked as well since he was condemning both that player and my school. At the time my sports teams were very representative of my school and myself since I also played basketball. As he started getting more vocal I decided to speak up and mention that he was not recruited, but his dad was in the military and he had to move to my hometown because of that.

Sharing the same time and space as this person perhaps led to her willingness to take a stand and defend someone who, at that time, could not defend themselves.

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

69

While online spaces allow fans to connect with one another around the world, their “always-on” status means that people can increasingly engage with others at any time—possibly with the impact of bringing into a fan community new members who may refuse to abide by the norms and values of that community. 25 For example, Henry Jenkins theorized that older and younger fans hold different values toward fanfiction, resulting in “a dividing point between older fans committed to traditional norms and the newer online fans who have asserted their rights to redefine fandom on their own terms.” 26 Yet, if being online was necessary for experiencing a fractured fandom, all 101 stories would emerge from such virtual spaces. Instead, less than half occurred offline. This split demonstrates that the location matters less than how people communicate within it, suggesting that computer-mediated communication “is neither a utopia nor a dystopia, but a way of communicating that is vexed, fraught with many of our old ways of negotiating social space.” 27 The discursive space matters less than what happens in it. Person Experiencing Fracture These self-interviews come from the perspective of the reporting fan and how they saw the situation. So, the stories are not objective, and we can only know about what happened from how they made sense of their experiences. However, their discussions reveal how they saw what happened and to whom. Sometimes the fracture happened to the fan, sometimes the fan caused the fracture to happen to someone else. In some cases, the reporting fan was just an observer. This analysis considers if the fracture happened because of the fan, to the fan, or to others the fan observed. Most fans reported the fracture happened to them. 28 Nina’s, Kim’s, and Sable’s stories represent examples of fans reporting that the problem affected them. Nearly a quarter of the fans said they observed others engaging in the behavior that led to the fracture. 29 Cheri, an employed 37-year-old white female from France, discussed seeing “Fans being mean to other fans of the same thing, for seemingly no reason at all, except to fit their Internet personalities.” She said she did not engage in the differences of opinions and disagreements that resulted: “Right from the start, it made me feel ‘old’ in the sense that I was able to see it all from an outside perspective, in a sense. I was glad I never took part in the things I read.” She merely observed the contentious online discourse: Some fans started judging others, mostly because they didn’t enjoy the exact same things in the show. It led to name callings, to people “choosing sides” (as if there was one right and one wrong side . . .), to people being very harsh toward one another, to nit-picking every single word some people were saying and analyzing every single sentence that was written.

70

Chapter 3

Thus, Cheri’s experience was as a lurker, a bystander who removed herself from the situation rather than get involved. Fiona, a white female from Florida, had a similar experience while in high school, only with a physical encounter. At 16 years old, she attended a college American football game when a fight broke out between fans of the rival teams. “I was with a couple high schools including my own with about 8 of my good friends,” she recalled. “We were all just having a good time hanging out and tailgating before the game when a huge fight broke out which resulted in the cops showing up and one of my friends getting knocked down in the process. I do not know or remember how the fight started but it quickly escalated.” The difference of opinion over the quality of the two teams led to physical assault, and Fiona and her friends got swept up in their fight: “I was really scared because so many people got involved that it became very scary, frantic, and dangerous. [. . .] I was annoyed because my friends and I were covered in beer and water and had cuts on our legs from trying to leave the situation.” Like Cheri, Fiona’s experience ended when they extricated themselves from the fight. Finally, ten fans said they did something to another fan or fans that led to the fracture. Sometimes they thought they were doing good, such as Bob, an employed 32-year-old white male living in Beijing, China. He recalled responding to someone’s post on Facebook: “A specific example would be arguing with someone about the general vibe of misogyny and sexism in mainstream superhero comics, on Facebook.” Bob decided to wade in to this difference of opinion being discussed because he felt the need to have an argument: I’d read the story elsewhere, knew what kind of people my FB friend had as his friends and so entered the melee with a feeling of weary resignation, tempered by a desire to argue on the internet, because I may actually be a douchebag after all. I regarded myself as a dude who’s privileged out the wazoo, and so someone who felt the need to counter other privileged dudes’ bullshit.

In a sense, Bob acted as a troll in this situation. Trolling involves responding to someone’s message to lure them into a conversation in which the troll enjoys triggering or causing frustration in the other communication participants. 30 Sometimes the troll simply wants to ridicule the other person, while other times the troll wishes to draw attention to some unequal distribution of power or other perceived injustice. 31 In a way, Bob’s trolling worked more like the latter, as he sought to shut down someone he felt was detrimental to the community. Like Bob, Wade also felt the need to get involved in a difference of opinion. When he was 15 years old, Wade, a white male from Maryland, attended a Baltimore Ravens American football game, and a fan of rival team

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

71

the Cincinnati Bengals shouted at the Raven’s quarterback. “So I repeated exactly what he said but reversed it,” Wade explained. “So if he yelled ‘Flacco isn’t good at football’, I would reply ‘No Flacco is good at football.’ This escalated to the point of him telling me off (use of curse words).” At the time, Wade engaged in this behavior because “[I] thought I was funny.” In a sense, Wade trolled this other fan by mimicking him to cause frustration. By his own admission, Wade seemed more driven by a desire to appear funny than to enact social justice. “But after it escalated I was a little rattled. I was about 15 then and the other guy was probably about 22.” Unlike online trolls, where there is no threat of physical retaliation from the victim, Wade faced the possibility of an actual physical assault. Thus, while both Wade and Bob acted as trolls within their situations, the contexts of those experiences shaped how they acted and reacted. Bob experienced boredom, but Wade experienced fear and stopped his actions as a result. One last example demonstrates how some fans acted on a kneejerk reaction, like Wade, but felt remorse over the fracture they created. Hailing from the United States, Sabrina was a 42-year-old self-employed white female who grew defensive regarding how some members of her fandom acted towards a character: “A trend in the fandom was to infantilize one of the main characters because he was perceived as gay.” Her defensiveness caused her to snap at another fan: “I lost my temper in an argument and said something rude to another fan.” She regretted losing her temper—“I had a lot of shame for being rude to another fan”—especially when she became the focus of online harassment: The only term for it is that I was piled on. Dozens of Tumblr reblogs and negative posts went up about me. I had to turn off anon messages, then finally had to turn off messages in general. I had to stop tracking my own tag, because people were tagging me in posts about what a horrible person I was. Within hours, someone had figured out some things about my RL career and there were discussions about how to sabotage it based on my fannish activities. In the meantime, anything I posted on Tumblr was fair game for mockery.

In her view, the response was disproportionate to her kneejerk response: “In my own defense, my rudeness was mild compared to the rudeness that had gone before, and I apologized quickly.” Her apology was apparently not enough, given the online harassment she received, and the experience had a detrimental impact on her participation in the fandom. Types of Fan Activities Thus far, the analysis has considered how social identities related to the fractures. The analysis has also looked at the situational factors of being online or offline and to whom the fracture happened. One last key situational

72

Chapter 3

factor requires understanding what the fans were doing at the time the fracture occurred. Thus, the last piece of analysis considers how the type of fan activity defined the situation. The five types of activities analyzed here were derived from grouping the practices and performances fans typically use to express their fandom. 32 These activities are: identifying, discussing, attending, producing, and performing. “Identifying” involves the basic consumption of a fandom that led a person to identify as a fan. For example, if fans mentioned watching a televised sporting event or wearing fandom-related merchandise, then this activity occurred. If the fans simply announced to others what their fan identity was, without necessarily discussing the merits of their fandom, then they identified as a fan. Of the five activities, identifying was the third most numerous. 33 Nina’s story is an example of this, as her presence in the video game store identifies her as a gamer—or a “fake gamer” to the boys who accosted her. Caitlyn, a 21-year-old white female college student from Chicago, identified herself as a Breaking Bad fan in her discussion with non-fans: “They didn’t like the show. I was a little saddened and in shock, for I was in love with the show and had nothing but great things to say about it.” Susan repeatedly identified herself as a comics fan to her colleagues: “As an art historian that writes about both comics and fine art, I find that many academics still don’t take comics seriously.” Sean, a 21-year-old white male college student from California, identified his fandom by who he rooted for: “We were all sitting down watching the super bowl. Me a Seahawks fan, the other a Patriots fan.” For all these fans, simply communicating to others that they were a fan of some object of affection proved problematic. “Discussing” involves engaging in a conversation with others on some fandom-related topic; this discussion could be online or in person. For example, this activity occurs when fans engage in a Twitter debate on the merits of a television show or debate their fandom with non-fans or anti-fans. Discussing is a basic form of social interaction through which fans can discursively identify themselves and position themselves in relation to others. Of the five activities, discussing was the most numerous. 34 Tracy, a 28-year-old white woman from the United States, recalled how her online discussions caused problems: “I run a group to get children into comics, gaming and tech, and I tweet online about women in comics and gaming. I attracted enough negative attention from GamerGate to garner low-level harassment . . .” Shaundra, a 36-year-old white woman from the United States, also recalled a problem with online discussion: Part of being a prominent member in one fandom, I’m part of one of the biggest fan sites and at that time was the only female member. We banned one of the fans who liked to hang around the site because of his behavior toward

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

73

other posters on the website (I didn’t ban him, one of the other writers did) and the person responded by targeting me for harassment.

Finally, Jiao also saw a problem when talking to other fans online: “I posted a private message publicly in which the user claimed nothing had happened and that my friend was all making it up.” Their attempt to help their friend backfired. In each instance, the fans engaged in some form of communication with others, and doing so led to the problem. “Attending” involves being physically present at some fandom-related event. For example, fans attending a comic book convention, musical concert or sporting event, or engaging in fan tourism would all be demonstrating their fan identity in a physical space for others to witness. This activity was the second most numerous, 35 largely because stories involving sports almost always meant the fan attended a sporting event at the time of the fracture. Fiona’s and Wade’s stories represent this activity. Other fans recalled an incident at a convention, such as Sable’s story at the beginning of this chapter. Danielle provides another example: “The first SF convention that I attended in 1986, one of the author ‘guests’ was very grabby in the pool and would not take ‘NO’ for an answer.” In each instance, their presence at the event was either directly related to the problem, or led them to witness something they would have otherwise missed. “Producing” involves the creation and publication of a piece of fandomrelated work. For example, fan communities commonly engage in practices to produce a database for an anime, draw fanart, or write fanfiction, and such activities routinely serve as the focus of academic scrutiny that seeks to understand how fans negotiate with the text and demonstrate their own empowerment. Despite such academic scrutiny, this activity was the least numerous. 36 For example, Nicky found some solace in her fanfiction: “I started writing a fanfic for a small fandom that didn’t have much fic available for the kinds of stories I wanted to read.” Hiromi also discussed an issue involving fanfiction: “The fandom allowed only people who shipped Mikan and Natsume, and Ruka and Hotaru together to join. The same shipping rules applied also around fanfiction that could be shared, or written and posted on the forum.” For these fans, communicating their fandom through their productions related to a problem. “Performing” involves some type of embodiment of a fandom-related entity; for example, cosplaying as a favorite character at a convention or roleplaying such characters in an online setting. The most intensive activity of the five, it was also the fourth most mentioned. 37 In this definition, performing differs from performance. Performance involves the communication of an identity in a situation with the understanding that others will attend to and appraise the performance and thus the person. 38 Performing involves specific activities meant to indicate that the fan has adopted and is immersed in an

74

Chapter 3

identity related to the fandom. 39 Kimi’s story from the beginning of this chapter is an example. While Kimi’s role-play occurred online, other fans discussed how their costume play, or cosplaying, led to a problem. For instance, Illeana recalled a problem at a convention from when she was 22: “Bullied, costume ripped by idiot ‘über-fans.’ Went dressed as a female version of the 5th Doctor from Doctor Who. It was a quick put-together, hardly perfect, but made with love. After the incident, I left and I’ve never been back.” Akio, a 26-year-old female Asian college student from Los Angeles, had a similar reaction to her cosplay from a different fandom: “I attended a Star Wars convention and dressed up as an Ewok (a fictional Star Wars species). I made the costume myself, so it was not an exact replica of an Ewok. Some fans took photos of me in the costume and posted it on a Star Wars fan website.” These fans recalled how the act of communicating their love through performing led to tensions with other fans. Situational Factors Relating to Fractures The first situational factor to consider is whether the experience happened online or offline. If the experience happened online, then fans reported more defensiveness than expected. 40 Additionally, being online meant the situation involved more discussing than expected. 41 Discussing being an important fan activity in online situations makes sense, given that social interactions online are highly dependent on discussions. These discussions, however, involve higher anonymity and asynchronicity. It may be that people feel more defensive in these online discussions because they do not know with whom they are engaging and cannot quickly clarify the situation to know that they are not being attacked by the anonymous stranger. However, as a fan activity, discussing involved less defensiveness than expected. 42 Thus, it seems the online nature of the situation was more likely to cause feelings of defensiveness than the actual activity occurring. Analyzing the presence of fractures in situations involving specific fan activities revealed several unexpected relationships. When the situation focused just on discussion among fans, the situation also involved misunderstanding more than expected as a reason for the fracture. 43 This finding makes sense, given that misunderstandings arise due to communication problems, and discussing is a communication-based fan activity. Attending also related to the misunderstood fracture, as it occurred less than expected. 44 Additionally, attending also involved less defensiveness than expected. 45 The reason for these findings is not immediately clear when comparing the definitions of the fractures and the fan activity; nevertheless, a later analysis will demonstrate a mediating factor that helps to explain this relationship. The most unexpected relationships emerged when considering who the situation impacted. Fans who reported that the fracture happened to them

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

75

also reported more misunderstanding 46 but less difference of opinion 47 than expected. Thus, the fans seemed more likely to think that the problem centered around being misunderstood if it happened to them, while being involved in a disagreement with others proved less of an issue. Meanwhile, fans who reported that they observed other people’s problems reported more difference of opinion than expected; 48 they also reported less policing boundaries than expected. 49 Thus, fans considered others disagreeing a problem within the fan collective, but did not consider the policing of others an equivalent issue. Interestingly, it appears fans assume others disagreeing constitutes more of a problem than when they themselves disagree with others, suggesting that they see themselves as better equipped to handle disagreements than others. Situational factors, then, show more unexpected relationships with the fractures than social identities, indicating more potential explanations for what led to the fractures. If the fractures occur in unexpected ways in relation to specific factors, then something about that factor could explain the fracture. Thus, the nature of the situation appears to relate more to the nature of the fracture than the nature of the individual. In other words, it is not who you are but what situation you are in. At the same time, these relationships prove even more complex, and thus more informative, when considering the individual within the situation and considering how the nature of the individual interacts with the nature of the situation. One complex portrait comes from examining why attending would relate to less than expected amounts of misunderstood and defensiveness fractures. The reason may be due to the relationship between attending, being offline, and sports fandoms. Naturally, when the fandom reported involves sports, the fracture occurred more offline 50 and involved more attending 51 and less discussing as a fan activity. 52 Since being online related more to defensiveness, and discussing related more to misunderstood, it seems that sports fandom and attending a sporting event helped prevent these types of fractures from taking a central role in the fans’ experience. Interestingly, more teenagers than expected reported their fractured fandom as involving sports 53 and occurring offline. 54 Many of the fans reported being a teenager when they attended some sporting event in which a fractured fandom occurred, which runs counter to the stereotype about teenagers having problems with one another online. Another complex portrait emerges when considering the fans’ location with the misunderstood fracture. As discussed earlier, North American fans reported less misunderstanding than expected, while Europeans reported more. This relationship becomes clearer when considering discussing as a mediating factor. North American fans reported less discussing than expected while Europeans reported this fan activity more than expected. 55 Discussing was also found to relate more to misunderstanding as well if the fans

76

Chapter 3

saw the fracture happening to them. Thus, it may be that the Europeans who spoke something other than their primary language felt more misunderstood, and this misunderstanding could have been further exacerbated because the discussion occurred online, which removes context that may have helped them be understood. They were also more likely to be middle aged, since those fans reported more online situations 56 and more discussing fan activities 57 than expected, and generational differences may have occurred. Thus, to truly understand what led to the fractures, the best approach is to understand the complex interactions between individual and situational factors, and not to reduce the reason to one thing or another. Considering the fans’ full stories helps to illustrate such complexity. Representing the largest demographic in the study (white females from the United States), Nicky’s experience involved producing fanfiction online; these situational characteristics included feeling like the fracture was done to them. In their situation, they discussed experiencing difference of opinion, misunderstood, and power play. Their experience with a difference of opinion over whom to ship was related to a power play in the community: This fandom was/is dominated by a juggernaut pairing that I don’t ship. [. . .] My fics were generally well-received by anons, lurkers, and other people on the periphery of the fandom but were mostly ignored by everyone who was very active in the fandom and formed its “core” clique—all of whom ship the juggernaut pairing that I don’t ship.

This sense that people were silencing discussion outside of a particular ship also led Nicky to feel misunderstood when people did not pay attention to them: “I did not make any friends in the fandom despite continuing to write fic, maintain an active blog, and attend convention meetups. People were willing to talk about their fanworks or headcanons, but no one asked me about mine. Gradually I became discouraged and sent fewer and fewer messages.” The online context perhaps made it easier for people to silence Nicky’s ship and ignore their work. Madeleine also had an issue online, but hers emerged from discussing a difference of opinion over a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fanfiction. Though French and a couple years older, Madeleine shared both gender and racial identities with Nicky. Madeleine also felt part of the problem dealt with being misunderstood, but she partly blamed the misunderstanding on the other fan’s defensiveness: I was honest with her and with myself, she made a big deal out of something really stupid. [. . .] She threw a tantrum on her Tumblr, I had to face a massive shitstorm from her fans who didn’t know all the story. My review was private so she said what she wanted about it, and kept transforming my words even after I published the review.

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

77

Madeleine’s experience was similar in identity and situational aspects to Nicky’s, but had just enough of a difference in how the other fan was viewed as causing the problem. Robert also shared an online experience that involved a difference of opinion when he clashed with a BNF: “This made her something of a divisive figure as some people loved her honesty and others hated her tactics.” He also experienced defensiveness, but unlike Madeleine, he struggled with his own: “I supported most of her tactics because I have used them myself BUT I have always stood by my words and it irked me that someone seemed to be enjoying the upside of being that type of fan without the downside and so I spoke up.” The other fan’s power and position in the fandom did not sit well with him: “In genre fandom, those with social capital always close ranks with each other and sticking your head above the parapet always carries a cost.” Robert’s gender and racial identities did not cause the fracture, and neither did the situational factors—just as those factors did not cause the problems for Nicky and Madeleine. Each situation revolved around a unique confluence of events. Unfortunately, that was not always the case. Kimi’s and Sable’s stories at the beginning of this chapter demonstrate that sometimes a fan’s identity can interact with the situation in a way that causes fractures. Kimi’s presence online interacted with their sexual identity to cause problems—not because those factors are inherently problematic, but because of how people interpreted and reacted to them. The same happened for Sable when uncaring individuals used her identity as a cudgel against her. At the same time, the relative anonymity of Sable’s and Kimi’s situations most likely contributed to how other fans responded to their social identities. Thus, the when, where, and why of fractured fandom appear to result from interactions between fans’ social identities and the situations in which they find themselves. IDENTITIES AND SITUATIONS Sometimes the fans cause the problems because of how they communicate— or fail to communicate—with other fans. Sometimes the fans experience the problems because of communication and power issues. Sometimes the issues relate more to power, and the communication problems simply serve as the conduits through which those power dynamics become expressed. No one thing causes fractures except for the main issue: communication has gone wrong in some way. Yet that answer is unsatisfactory, because the question then turns to why the communication goes wrong. From chapter 2, power dynamics appear to influence communication at times, as people seek to gain power in a situation or use power against others. A disagreement may activate the process, but

78

Chapter 3

power dynamics appear to extend, exacerbate, and devolve that situation. Fractures, then, emerge from a combination of communication problems and power dynamics. Still, that explanation lacks explanatory power, because the question then becomes why these power dynamics exist and interact with communication problems in this way. The analyses in this chapter suggest no single identity or situational factor appears to cause a fracture. Indeed, the analysis suggests the interaction of identity and situational factors offers insight into the conditions that cause fractures. While social and fandom identities are not directly related to fractures, they did appear indirectly related when considering their relationships with situational factors. In certain situations, how the fan sees both their own and others’ identities could lead the fan to desire power or act out of a (possibly perceived) position of power. The nature of the situation could heighten a person’s social identity and lead them to act in a way specific to that situation. For example, consider the positioning of the “true fan.” In stories like those told by Nina or Illeana, certain fans perceive themselves as a “true fan.” At a basic level, the true fan concept helps distinguish fans from nonfans; both rely on an imaginary boundary, based on some type and level of activity, to differentiate themselves. 58 Within a fandom, fans accrue cultural and social capital, perhaps because they have a high level of detailed knowledge related to their object of affection (such as encyclopedic memory of trivia related to the television show, celebrity, sport, etc.). 59 Such fans then position themselves in a hierarchy, and a true fan sits at the top because of how well they know this fandom. Yet true fans could become anti-fans to those they perceive as beneath or unlike them. 60 This fan identity causes problems in a situation in which fans feel the need to prove themselves, such as when they discuss what makes something good or bad, resulting in a defensiveness or misunderstood fracture intersecting with a difference of opinion fracture. Having such a discussion online could increase the likelihood of such fractures, as people may not see the impact their comments have on others, and the anonymity of the exchange removes the fear of reprisal for negative communication behaviors like trolling. This true fan identity becomes more problematic when considering how it aligns with the (incorrect) stereotype of the fanboy as a white, heterosexual, male individual in the West 61 or otaku in Japan or anime/manga fandom. 62 This fan identity becomes conflated with gendered, sexual, and racial identities, allowing for a fan, who sees themselves as the true fan, to see women, people of color, and the non-heteronormative as “fake” fans. 63 Furthermore, Mel Stanfill argues that the media only represents white male fans as able to regain power within a society or culture, thereby suggesting that only that type of fan should be emulated. 64 If the true fans hold real power in a fan collective—perhaps because they moderate an online forum or because they

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

79

are a BNF with a cadre of followers—that fan could then use their power to silence and oppress dissenting views, including views based on a political perspective that challenges the dominance of the white, heterosexual, male individual. If such a true fan perceives themselves as endowed with such power due to the confluence of their identities, then they may act out their privilege when they encounter fans who fail to align with their conception of what a fan is or should be. In those situations, such fans may police the boundaries of their fan collective by enacting power plays to prevent others from communicating or even being recognized as belonging. Nina, Kimi, Sable and others experienced some version of this, as did Illeana and Akio. In each situation, some fan perceived themselves as a true fan, and this perceived power informed their communication, sometimes turning disagreements into fractures, and worse. If the true fan constructs a fandom-related space—whether online or offline—as belonging only to a specific type of person—as determined by fan activity or social identity— then communication becomes difficult if not impossible. For example, the online disagreements and harassments associated with GamerGate suggest that some gamers discursively constructed the spaces associated with “gaming” as a “male space,” suggesting that women are not allowed within that space or its related gamer identity. 65 Such was Nina’s experience. The disagreements over the relaunch of the Ghostbusters franchise in 2016, with an all-female cast directed by Paul Feig, 66 demonstrates another example of this phenomenon, in which a social identity (male) became conflated with a fan identity (true fans of the original series), resulting in a new identity, the “Ghostbro.” 67 The fact that these disagreements took place largely online only exacerbated the communication problems, as the Ghostbros felt more powerful when acting against others from a distance and at times with anonymity to shield them from repercussions. Ghostbros and GamerGaters can feel empowered because of their perceived privilege as true fans, and the situational factors of engaging online can result in communication problems that may not otherwise exist. In such instances, privilege consists of both identity and situational factors that impact communication because of perceived power. 68 Instead of seeking dialogic engagement, individuals may engage instead in trolling or “doing it for the lulz.” 69 Wade’s and Sable’s experiences demonstrate that such actions also occur offline. Wade and the men who pushed Sable might have found their actions funny, and the interaction of their identities and the situation may have encouraged that perception. Such instigators may have felt empowered given their social and fan identities, as well as the relative anonymity of the situation—both occurred in large crowds, meaning they could have disappeared into the background if distance proved necessary to avoid repercussion. In any situation, anonymity can lead to disinhibition, which can cause a person to feel they possess more power than

80

Chapter 3

they do, and this in turn can lead to people either not communicating well or not caring if they do or do not. If such anonymity exists, a lack of dialogue makes sense given how difficult it is to determine authenticity. Without authenticity, the entire dialogic process falls apart. Whether the situation involves online discussion, heated moments, or large crowds, anonymity leads individuals to feel they do not have to care about others. If a person feels they have power, or is jockeying to gain power, they perhaps are not interested in understanding; instead, they operate from the assumptions of argument culture, trying instead to win in that moment, regardless of how their winning impacts others. In addition, the more a person feels their identity (or identities) provides them with privilege, and thus power, in that situation, then the less inclined they are to relinquish their position, as engaging in dialogue could be considered losing. With such gamesmanship in mind, a fractured fandom emerges. CONCLUSION Fractured fandoms appear to result from the interaction between fans’ situations and their social identities. The evidence presented here does not suggest that all women are affected the same way, or that all teenagers experience the same problem, or that one fandom is more afflicted than another. Those factors seem to matter little on their own; anyone can wander into a gap at any time and find themselves in conflict with another fan. One fandom can fracture for a variety of demographic and social identity issues. For example, the Star Wars fandom met the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017, Rian Johnson) with mixed reactions, and some fans actively campaigned against it, flooding Rotten Tomatoes with negative reviews 70 and even reediting the film to remove all the female characters. 71 Critics sought to understand this backlash, arguing for a multifold reason that included reactionary conservativism and generational differences. 72 Communication gaps and problems with power dynamics can happen to anyone regardless of demographic, social, or fan identity. 73 Fractured fandom exists because of psychological, social, cultural and situational forces that impact communication and power dynamics. In other words, it is not who you are but how you respond to some situation that causes the problem. 74 This conceptualization of fractured fandom aligns with Brenda Dervin’s ideas on sense-making, which sees difference “not according to demographics or other static categories but rather according to how people attend to phenomena differently.” 75 Instead of focusing on some aspect of the individual causing the fracture, or some aspect of the situation resulting in the problem, the focus should be on the individual-in-situation to understand how identities interact with situational factors to

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

81

cause or bridge gaps. Identity manifests and even changes through communication in response to some situational factor(s). Identity is communication. To know one’s self, a person needs to interact with others, to see themselves in relation to others because “a human being, a person, is interdependent with others’ experiences, actions, thoughts, and utterances; a person is not an autonomous individual who can decide everything” 76 for themselves. Without communication, a person’s life cannot develop. Being a “social animal,” a person exists because of their relationships with others and what those relationship mean to them. 77 Needing companionship, people reach out to others through communication, online and offline, and through fandoms; people recognize the need to be together and bond with others. Yet this choice comes with consequences. Since fans exist in relation to other fans, to non-fans, and even to antifans, as discussed in chapter 1, fans continually position these “others” based on “an imagined sense of who and what other audiences were doing and thinking,” resulting in problems that could be “impressionistic and phantasmagorical, directed towards imprints of imagined allies and economies in structures that one could not entirely see or make sense of.” 78 Thus, fans may rely on shortcuts and heuristics to make judgements about those with whom they interact in a communication situation, and to use stereotypes based on class, gender, age, and so forth to predict that situation’s process and outcome. In other words, rather than focus on the actual communication participants, people may rely on their perceptions of those participants to structure how they communicate. If a fan exists outside the race, class, gender, or sexual orientation thought to constitute the “archetypal” fan, then that fan can encounter racism, sexism, classism and homophobia within that fan collective. 79 Relying on identity-based stereotypes could then lead to fractures. That problem of identity, situation, and communication becomes compounded when considering the importance of a fan identity to the communication participants. Judith Butler argued that while “the customary model” of subjectivation, or how people come to be subjects to some ideology, involves power imposing upon people who are unable to resist, it should be remembered that “‘we’ who accept such terms are fundamentally dependent on those terms for ‘our’ existence.” 80 Butler’s argument implies a level of agency for the person being subjectivated. 81 If the person knows beforehand the conditions of the subjectivation, then the person may choose to act “in anticipation of the law” 82 by accepting the conditions that will then be applied to reassure themselves that they are someone. This role of conscious choice was not lost on Louis Althusser, whom Butler critiques. Althusser rests his social theory upon the person’s acceptance of the belief that they must perform the rituals of a community to identify themselves as a member of that community; that is, to be a part of the collective, people must willingly accept the collective’s ideologies and the rituals that embody those beliefs. 83 By engag-

82

Chapter 3

ing in the rituals required by the ideology, the person becomes the subject, and the ideology reproduces itself through the subject. If the person does not consciously accept those beliefs, then the person would be able to resist the ideology and choose to disregard the “law” of the community—at their own risk. Fans willingly become identified with the thing they love, choosing “to become a part of a self-identified fandom (or not)” by enacting specific behaviors. 84 Fans have the choice to become associated with that thing they care about, and they willingly become subjects of and thus subject to the fandom. As such, they can be influenced by that thing. If people willingly become subjects of something, to become fans of that thing, then they are more willing to spend time, money, and social capital (i.e. risk hurting relationships) on it. Studies have shown that fans who more closely identify with their fan collective are both more likely to express happiness with their collective and aggression towards those outside of their collective—especially in moments of heightened arousal and agitation (think of a heated online disagreement or sporting event). 85 Furthermore, aggression may be expected and accepted as a signifier of one’s fandom, especially in relation to sports fandoms. 86 Subjectivation can create such ardent fans. Fans are not forced to do these things; they choose to do them by choosing to become fans and engaging in the rituals that identify them as such. The selection of an object of affection and the decision to self-identify as a fan implies agency. However, upon this acceptance, the person becomes a subject of that fandom. The fan chooses to become a fan—but then to be a fan, the person becomes subject to the requirements of that fandom, which in turn allows them to self-identify as a fan. Per Matt Hills: “Being socialized into a fan community means being policed in relation to communal norms,” and failure to embody those norms could result in the label of “fake” fan. 87 Each fandom has its own ideology surrounding the accepted and expected rituals one must enact to be considered a “true fan.” A fan is expected to know a certain amount of text-specific information, to respond to certain words in certain ways, and to not be afraid of exhibiting this identity. The more one accepts this identity, as Butler would say, the more one subjects themselves to the ideology of the fandom. One cannot be a fan without being subject to the ideological boundaries of that fandom. At the same time, a person may have several such subject positions because they have numerous fandom and social identities: to a sports team, to a media text, to a religion, and so forth. A person can see one identity as more or less important than another in thinking about their core self, and the “hierarchical relations” among the different identities can change over time. 88 Each subject position requires different rituals to reiterate their subjectivation, but underneath is perhaps the same process: the willingness or the conscious choice to be a subject to that fandom or social membership. If

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

83

one is willing to be a fan, then one should abide by the ideological boundaries or “rules” of that fandom; communicating oneself as a fan, to other fans and non-fans, means a “forced choice” has been made to articulate an identity in alignment with the tastes and habits of the community. 89 Stepping over those boundaries or breaking those rules would undo this subjectivation and thus relinquish one’s identity as a “true fan.” Perhaps it is a fear that if one refuses to be a subject, one’s place in the world is less assured. For social creatures like humans, not belonging can be scary. Maybe this fear truly keeps some fans subject to a fandom even when they reject such subjectivation and strain against the fandom’s ideological boundaries. It can be hard to say “no” to the fandom when one has for so long been subject to it and identified as a “true fan.” To handle stigmatization, fans may engage in “stigma-management strategies” like bonding with other stigmatized people or distancing themselves from perceived others— such as non-fans, fake fans, or even rabid fans—through policing boundaries. 90 Fear of not belonging can make people accept many unacceptable things. Fandom occupying a central place in a person’s life and identity can make it harder for the fan to accept any criticism of the fandom, because it can be hard to look at one’s self objectively. Fandom helps people make sense of and cope with their lives, but also holds power over the person. 91 Fans identify with their object of affection; evaluations of good/bad attached to the object become internalized as reflecting on the fan. 92 Internalizing the criticism others have for the object can result in defensiveness and lashing out. Such defensiveness, as discussed in chapter 2, can manifest even within the supposed safe space of the fan collective, simply because within the larger sociocultural framework, being a fan means adopting a contested identity, one based on what a society or culture views as trivial. 93 If the fandom involves some level of internalized shame, then even a slight from another fan in any situation can trigger a negative response. “In short, we feel more confident about our perspective when others validate it. When a person encounters someone ‘who has an entirely different way of viewing and experiencing the world’ [. . .] it ‘unsettles my sense of security with regard to my own worldview.’” 94 The fan can become defensive and feel misunderstood when faced with a difference of opinion, or they may enact some power over others because of how they see themselves, the world, and others. For example, fans may position themselves as different from perceived rivals, differentiating themselves “from the anti-fans through stereotypes about themselves and negatively constructed and exaggerated difference about the rivals.” 95 While discrimination is done “[t]o save face or to defend a position, we may use judgment and blame to distort the meaning of others’ perspectives. At times, too, people may react with prejudice or bias out of a fear of the unknown.” 96 If people feel threatened in a situation—

84

Chapter 3

either because of a real or perceived threat, including a threat to privilege— they may react with communication behavior intended to shut down the communication and thereby alleviate the threat. Communication constructs identities, but that sometimes occurs through a process of deconstruction— and individuals who want to ignore such threats will cease to communicate. To exist is to communicate, but it all depends on genuine communication. If people recognize they perform a fan identity in each situation, and how that identity requires certain activities, 97 then communication can occur with the understanding of the requirements of performance. Yet congruence between situation and performance is needed: if the situation calls for a certain performance, and the fans fail to enact it, this disconnect can lead to misunderstanding. That is, if the situation calls for playful trash talking or information-based dialogue, but the fans engage in angry name-calling and trolling, then situation, identity, and performance separate. If the situation allows people to be false, perhaps because it allows for anonymity or because emotions have been heightened due to wounded pride, then people can perform in a way that may run counter to what they truly feel and think. If a person feels threatened, they will be less inclined to engage in an open and honest repertoire with others and thereby understand the differences between them that are causing the perceived threat. In these situations, dialogue cannot occur. Dialogue “is a reciprocal process in which a person is more able to respect others because he has begun to respect himself,” 98 and a rigid identity under threat or allowed to be performance only hinders dialogue. Being dialogic requires a willingness to question the rigidity of one’s beliefs. 99 People must recognize the role they play in the problem, take responsibility for it, and acknowledge that they are part of the problem. 100 When fans accept that not everything is about them, and that their sense of self and self-worth need not be intrinsically connected to their fandom, they can more likely work through issues of privilege and power, helping to improve communication within specific situations and across any situation. NOTES 1. Cornel Sandvoss, Fans: The mirror of consumption (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2005), 96. 2. Suzanne Scott, “The Powers that Squee: Orlando Jones and intersectional fan studies,” in Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York City: NYU Press, 2017), 387. 3. Lori Hitchcock Morimoto and Bertha Chin, “Reimagining the Imagined Community: Online media fandoms in the age of global convergence,” in Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York City: NYU Press, 2017), 174. 4. For more discussion on the need to account for diverse identities in a fan collective, see also Rukmini Pande, “Squee from the Margins: Racial/cultural/ethnic identity in global media

Identity, Situationality, and the Fractures

85

fandom,” in Seeing Fans: Representations of Fandom in Media and Popular Culture, ed. Lucy Bennett and Paul Booth (Bloomsbury, 2016). 5. Morimoto and Chin, “Reimagining the Imagined,” 174–7. 6. Eighty people (79 percent) reported being from North America and 16 Europeans (16 percent) completed the study, coming from Greece, Sweden, France and Spain. 7. Three fans said they were from Asia, with 2 specifying China, while the last 2 fans indicated Australia as their location. 8. Seventy-seven fans (76 percent) considered themselves to be “women,” “female,” “cis female” and so forth. Only 18 fans (18 percent) reported themselves as men. 9. At 77 fans (77 percent), Caucasians far outnumbered the other self-reported ethnicities. Eight individuals (8 percent) considered themselves of Asian descent, while another 8 reported as being Latino/a or Hispanic descent. Only 1 person reported as being ethnically African, while 2 indicated Native American and 2 indicated being of mixed ethnicities. The remaining 3 fans declined to provide their ethnicity. 10. 61 fans (60 percent) reported being Caucasian females. 11. Four fans (4 percent) reported being just children (ages 0–12) when they had their experience; 2 were older adults (ages 51–65) and 1 was a senior citizen (ages 66 and above). Most fans reported being between 13 and 50 years old during their experiences: 28 fans (28 percent) were teenagers (ages 13–19); 48 fans (48 percent) were young adults (ages 20–35); and 18 fans (18 percent) were middle age adults (ages 36–50). 12. 32 fans (32 percent) indicated that the experience had been so recent that there was no difference between their ages. 13. Another 20 fans (20 percent) suggested that a year had passed since the experience, while 15 fans (15 percent) said 2 to 3 years had passed. 14. Thirteen fans (13 percent) said 4 to 6 years had gone by, and 9 fans (9 percent) had recalled stories from 7 to 8 years ago. Another 9 fans completed the self-interviews based on experiences that were anywhere from 10 to 18 years old. This coding used an inductive, thematic approach inspired by grounded theory. 15. 10 people said they were fans of football, and all but 1 meant it to be American football; 7 people reported being fans of basketball, while only 3 people were fans of baseball or hockey. 16. For example, 24 fans reported Sherlock or Sherlock Holmes, 18 people said Star Trek, 13 respondents were fans of Star Wars, 14 peopled said Doctor Who, 8 fans mentioned Supernatural, and 8 indicated being fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Twenty fans said their fandoms included anime and/or manga in general, while specific fandoms were given as Naruto (3 fans), Sailor Moon (3 fans), and Gundam Wing (3 fans). 17. Eighteen fans (18%) reported on fractures involving some sports fandom, with football and basketball being dominant. This fandom was the most numerous of those identified, with science fiction and music at second as both types had 11 fans (11% each) discussing them, followed then by games with 10 fans (10%). Seven fans (7%) discussed a celebrity at the center of their fractured fandom while 6 people (6%) discussed some fantasy fandom. Drama and horror fandoms each had 4 fans (4% each), comics had 3 fans (3%), and romance and fashion each at 2 fans (2%). 18. 23 fans (23%). 19. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, “How the Growing Generation Gap Is Changing the Face of Fandom,” The Daily Dot, August 25, 2014, http://www.dailydot.com/via/growing-generationgap-changing-face-fandom. 20. A Chi-Square (χ2) tests for if the frequency of some variable occurs more than expected given predicted distribution across categories. In this instance, the statistical test resulted in χ2=28.281, p=0.029. When the p-value is equal to or less than 0.05, the test is significant, indicating the frequency distribution across categories did not occur as expected. To determine what the finding means, the observed frequency count is compared to the expected frequency count. When those counts differed by more or less than 3 points, I included them in the analyses presented in this book. 21. χ2=51.418, p=0.036. 22. 14 fans (14%). 23. χ2=376.192, p