--I could go on about this for so long, but short version, I have a theory that a lot of the appeal of anti's and weaponizing social justice to defend a ship is because we do feel so very, very personal about our fandoms but then it's hard to...justify how we feel? Unlike sport teams in which you can go overboard but feeling loyalty is expected, when you fall in love with a fandom or an OTP or whatever, it can be wildly intense but it's not something that's easily explained; it seems irrational because it's not the norm. So it's really satisfying to be given excuses, to be able to say "I like this because it's Healthy and Positive Representation" or "I hate this because it's Harmful for Children"...when really it's simpler than that; it's just fannish love.
(This isn't to say that some people don't genuinely like or hate things in fandom for those reasons; but I think the reasons are more commonly just good old-fashioned Fanning...)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterfish
no subject
Date: 2019-11-18 11:15 am (UTC)(This isn't to say that some people don't genuinely like or hate things in fandom for those reasons; but I think the reasons are more commonly just good old-fashioned Fanning...)