A few months ago, I posted about the term "proshipper" and how it had changed over time from meaning "someone who is in favour of the idea of shipping characters in the media they consume" to meaning "someone who is probably a real life abuser of children."
To say that there has been some definitional drift would be an understatement.
Anyway, I posted basically the same thing on tiktok a few weeks ago and today I got a comment thanking me for sharing and the commentered ended with the statement, "being an 'anti' sounds exhausting."
I've been (over)thinking about why 'antis' are they way they are for a long time now, and this really does hit the nail on the head for me. People who are involved in 'anti' culture probably are exhausted. All the time.
I've never been a part of that area of fandom, but from an outside perspective it seems like it requires:
constant vigilance over your own public behaviours
distrust in your friends because they might turn on you if you ever did something they considered "problematic"
fear that something you enjoy might actually make you a "bad person"
a near-constant state of emotional distress - either anger at what others in fandom are doing, moral outrage that is being harnessed towards harassment, shame over your own thoughts and feelings...
a need to police your own thoughts to ensure you aren't accidentally shipping something "wrong" or liking an "abusive" character etc.
constantly shifting goal posts for what is deemed acceptable or cancellable within your own community
constantly changing definitions of terms to suit the agenda of the loudest person in the room
immense pressure to abandon people you are close to if they are deemed unsuitable by rest of the group
feeling like you're surrounded by literal child abusers with nowhere to turn that's safe
If that doesn't sound physically, emotionally, and mentally draining then I don't know what does. Anger and outrage can be like a burst of adrenaline, but the thing is: anger and outrage, like adrenaline, don't last forever and when they run out you feel empty and burnt out.
So why do people go down this route? That's a great question, and I don't know the answer. There are probably various reasons, depending on who you ask and that person's particular background, but a lot of it seems to centre on the idea of control.
Controlling yourself. Controlling the people around you. Controlling strangers. Controlling the internet. Only one of these is possible, and if you don't know which one then take a second and try again.
It's not entirely shocking that a very controlling thought pattern is gaining in noise, if not popularity, right now. We're still in a global pandemic. There's political and economic uncertainty everywhere. Violence and discrimination are at extremely high levels. It feels like the world is going to shit sometimes, and like everything is out of control. And if you're a teenager, you have even less control over your life than the rest of us do.
I don't like the behaviours of 'antis' and I don't share their beliefs. But I do feel badly for them. I hope they find healthier ways to gain a feeling of control, and I hope they get some rest.
