{"title":"Death to Chad and Stacy: Incels and anti-fandom as group identity","authors":"Matthew L. Meier, Kellen Sharp","doi":"10.1177/13678779231220056","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Anti-fan research has traditionally focused on audiences' engaged dislike as media consumers more than as media producers, often ignoring their capacity to inflict harm. Building from this while drawing empirical support from incels, the manosphere's most violent faction, this article reconceptualizes the anti-fandom as a networked community organized around textual productions of hate or dislike. We explicate this first at the level of the text, comparing centrifugal anti-fandoms, which grow outward from an originating text, to centripetal anti-fandoms, which engage a variety of texts pulled into an organized, self-perpetuating structure. We then consider anti-fandom as performing both as and for an audience: although situated within the manosphere and the online anti-public sphere, incels rely on articulations of hate, apathy, and misanthropy as a means of distinguishing themselves as a stable, impermeable social identity, a process that we suggest potentially contributes to their radicalization.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"9 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231220056","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Anti-fan research has traditionally focused on audiences' engaged dislike as media consumers more than as media producers, often ignoring their capacity to inflict harm. Building from this while drawing empirical support from incels, the manosphere's most violent faction, this article reconceptualizes the anti-fandom as a networked community organized around textual productions of hate or dislike. We explicate this first at the level of the text, comparing centrifugal anti-fandoms, which grow outward from an originating text, to centripetal anti-fandoms, which engage a variety of texts pulled into an organized, self-perpetuating structure. We then consider anti-fandom as performing both as and for an audience: although situated within the manosphere and the online anti-public sphere, incels rely on articulations of hate, apathy, and misanthropy as a means of distinguishing themselves as a stable, impermeable social identity, a process that we suggest potentially contributes to their radicalization.
期刊介绍:
International Journal of Cultural Studies is committed to rethinking cultural practices, processes, texts and infrastructures beyond traditional national frameworks and regional biases. The journal publishes theoretical, empirical and historical analyses that interrogate what culture means, and what culture does, across global and local scales of power and action, diverse technologies and forms of mediation, and multiple dimensions of performance, experience and identity. Dedicated to theoretical and methodological innovation in cultural research, the journal is multidisciplinary in outlook, publishing relevant contributions that integrate approaches from the social sciences, humanities, information sciences and more. International Journal of Cultural Studies publishes original research articles. The journal gives preference to papers that extend existing theory or generate new theory through interpretive engagement with empirical cases. Papers based on single country case-studies should clearly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses for an international readership. The journal does not publish close readings of single texts; but it does consider critical, contextualised readings that similarly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses to the field. International Journal of Cultural Studies regularly publishes special issues on urgent questions in the field as well as on specific regions, industries and practices.