This blog post contains my presentation at MPCA/ACA 2019 from our panel on mental health and fandom. This presentation is the first step in a deeper analysis of my fractured fandom work to understand the traumatic experiences fans expressed in their self-interviews. “fear fearfearfearfear feeling hella unsafe”: The Trauma of Fractured Fandoms As a brief…
Tag: harassment
Welcome to the Culture Wars
Note: I will update this post periodically as I see people using terms they may not understand, and appreciate anyone’s help to make certain I am properly translating, defining, and contextualizing terms. EDITED: Here is a great rundown of terms from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/alt-left-alt-right-glossary.html?_r=0 Feature image comes from http://www.full-stop.net/2011/08/29/features/essays/michael-schapira/how-to-master-the-culture-wars-in-two-weeks/ which shows just how long the culture…
The Fractured Fandom Book
My project all started with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. In 2010 a new animated series was released based on the old toy line (I had these toys as a kid). What amazed everyone is that a toy line and series meant for girls started to develop a following of adult men, who took…
On the Issues of Disagreement Becoming Censorship
The conversation I had one night and into the next morning with the GamerGate supporter (i.e. a ProGGer) was long. It started off with my comments on Twitter about the need to not censor texts and instead use them to create dialogue. But the problem is that people too often don’t want to talk about…
The Dark Side of Fandom
Last fall the call went out from the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (aka C2E2) for proposed panels for the 2016 convention. I had just been part of a very successful discussion at an academic conference that considered the problems, tensions, fractures that fans have been facing, online and offline, for years. But that was…
The Pop Culture Lens: Fan Harassment
I have been talking about this idea of fractured fandom on this blog for awhile now, because I have been concerned with the problems and tensions fans are facing in contemporary fan communities and fandoms. Across the Internet and around the world, it seems that hardly a day goes by without another story, another anecdote,…
Advice for Children on Social Media
My first piece of advice is to focus on teaching your children how to be respectful when they communicate and engage with people, online but also in person. This means being aware of not just what you are saying but how you are saying it, and that how is immensely important in social media with…
Conversations of GamerGate and Fractured Fandom
One of the things I have been doing this year (i.e. 2015) is trying to better understand what I mean when I say “fractured fandom” and how it manifests in the world. I’ve been writing about it for a couple years now, I have done an online interview study to gather people’s stories, I have…
