An ex-friend of mine is like this. We started out in the same fandoms, but over the course of two years everything became about what is and isnât problematic to her. She started seeing the bad in everything. All those movies we used to talk about on the phone, the video games weâd text each other about in all caps, the ships we made playlists for and joked about, all of it slowly became Problematic ⢠to her. Everything that used to make her smile turned into something she couldnât admit to liking without her friends online and off telling her she was bad. She was an abuse supporter because she liked Steve/Tony and the MCU had them fight each other and even if you write an AU where Civil War didnât happen, youâre bad. She was normalizing abuse by liking Invader Zim, a wacky dark comedy. She was racist for liking Avatar the Last Airbender and The Legend Of Korra since those shows donât have a one-to-one representation of Asian cultures. (I, a mixed Asian person, spent an hour soothing her as she sobbed over the phone about not wanting to be a bad person. She isnât. Her liking the show didnât hurt me.)
Nobody wants to be racist. Nobody wants to think theyâre into something bad or promoting something bad. She gave up what she enjoyed bit by bit because she didnât want to be bad or do bad things. She didnât want to hurt people. She didnât want to hurt me, her queer mixed POC friend, by watching Voltron if that had bad POC representation or Steven Universe if that had bad queer representation. So she dropped show after show, game after game, book after book, until she had a handful of things left that she allowed herself to enjoy - if she pointed out every little problem in it.
Like an Evangelical Christian, she tried to save me from Being Problematic ⢠after a while. Give up your bad queer rep cartoons and abuse apologist superhero movies and sexist books and racist video games and youâll be better! People will stop harassing you! Everyone will be nice to you if you just change everything you like overnight and use the right words and get offended by all the right things! She could not understand that I was okay with myself. I have flaws, but Iâm a good person, I do good things, I work regularly with a wonderful charity, I treat my friends well. I do not think all of that goes out the window because I laugh at Invader Zim or think Tom Hiddlestonâs performance as Loki is the best part of the first Thor movie. The distance between us got worse the more I refused to give things up and the more her friends convinced her to give everything up because her blog posts, texts and phone calls werenât happy anymore. We werenât making jokes and sending each other fic and art like before. We werenât creating playlists for crackships or coming up with Star Wars AUs where Ben Solo became a lounge singer.
We werenât doing anything. She was screaming at all times about all the things she hated about all the shows, games, movies and more that her friends also hated. She was finding problematic elements in the first episodes of shows as they went live. She was proclaiming that movie trailers normalized abusive tropes. Her content was radically different from mine and our friendship didnât die in an explosive blowout, it died when she blocked me for reblogging a Rapunzel/Flynn gifset because they have an age gap so thatâs pedophilia normalization. That used to be her ultimate Disney OTP; she loved them, loved Rapunzel, loved Disney.
She hates Rapunzel, Rapunzel/Flynn, and Disney now. She hates the MCU, hates Star Wars, hates superhero movies, hates Avatar and Korra, hates fanfic, hates ships, hates, hates, hates, hates.
But sheâs right that people leave her alone now. People donât harass her over ships now. People donât send her inbox hate anymore.
Because no one really talks to her about anything.
A lot of antis see being an anti as protection. Itâs an insulation against being hated, a shield against pushback, a way of insuring your own safety. Itâs a balm that soothes over your conscience and tells you that youâre a good person. Youâre not racist, youâre not into abuse, youâre not part of the problem, you are not bad because people are saying you arenât. But on some level, you donât believe them. The paranoia these groups create informs your own self-worthâs fragility. You may be good now, but you know one wrong reblog could bring all your hard work crumbling down. So you canât get out. You have to keep hating, banning, âcancelingâ, calling out, decrying, burning bridges, forever.
They canât stop screaming or theyâll be dogpiled. They canât enjoy something with even the tiniest flaw or theyâll be hated, banned, cancelled, called out, decried.
Itâs not about the fandom. That is not the point. Fuck the fandom.
Itâs about protecting yourself from the cult mob group youâve accidentally, gradually joined. That is the point. Not a point, the point, the only thing that matters.
And fuck your friends if they donât understand.
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