Hey, I love your content! I also think it’s amazing that Jim and Pam have an entire fanfiction site just for them! Are you the only person running this account, or is it a group of people? Have you been here since The Office was airing? If so, was there already this hate towards Pam or Jim and Pam back then? Because I get the feeling that things got worse after the pandemic, like someone influential said something negative about them, and that opinion started spreading... Unfortunately, I was one of those who watched the show after the pandemic, but it feels like things were calmer around here before. It’s so sweet to know you’ve been around for so long!
Hello! This tumblr is pretty much one person, I go by NobleLandMermaid on the MoreThanThat archive. The archive was established the summer between Seasons 2 and 3, and I joined it pretty early on when I started watching the show. After several years I came back to the site and (somewhat accidentally) became the main mod in 2016. At that time, The Office was seeing a massive popularity revival on US Netflix, but the MTT archive was in a state of disrepair and on the verge of shutting down. After many nights basically teaching myself to code I got MTT functional again and set out to find an audience via social media, starting a Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook account.
Instagram was definitely MTTs most successful account, at the peak it had ~24k followers. I found some great fans and fellow Office-account runners there. I also found a lot of hate for Jim and Pam, especially Pam. My JAM memes would get reposted and when I looked at the comments it would be so much animosity against Pam and by extension Jenna. Saw Pam get called a "succubus" more than once.
There's always been JAM hate but it definitely increased exponentially when The Office got so popular again on Netflix in the mid 2010s. I personally feel like the Pam hate was at its apex in 2018-2020. There was a certain popular sports caster who had a very intense hatred of Pam he shared often (to the point that even his fans were getting "you okay bro?" about it) and I credit a lot of Pam-hatred to that. There was an Instagram-famous poster who made an inescapable "Pam: Villain" meme and later some "Roy did nothing wrong" memes that even David Denman was playing up. Chrissy Teigan started some "Jim and Pam are probably divorced" discourse (though that was more Pam-neutral and it did get both John and Jenna to make "nah they're definitely still together" statements). But just generally it was a tough time to be a JAM-lover.
All that said, that may have just been when I was the most active on social media and saw it the most. My initial reaction was to respond, "you're wrong and here's why!" to negative JAM/Pam comments. But eventually I just had to pull back from the comment sections, mute/block accounts or commenters that were excessively JAM-negative and stick mostly to the MTT corner of the Office fandom (and MTT saw a fanfic renaissance with the pandemic, so it was easy to just exist in that bubble).
Now, Tumblr and the semi-private Discord are the only MTT social media I keep active, The Office Ladies podcast accounts are just about the only fandom-accounts I follow and engage with, and I steer clear of JAM discourse most everywhere else because I know it's only going to make me mad. So I can't say if it's worse now. I will say when I do run into JAM disk horse, it's at least more equal in hating on both Jim and Pam, whereas before it felt like for every "Jim sucks" post or comment there were twenty "Pam: worst person in the world ever??" comment. So progress??
I bring this post up almost every time I talk about fandom but it just continues to be true that you gotta curate your own experience, find your kindred fans and block 2/3rd of the rest at minimum.
