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What exactly are antis when it comes to shipping and what is their link to tumblr?

DragonSJG

DragonSJG

Banned
Mar 4, 2019
14,338
I saw someone mention this anti stuff on the Zuko x Katara and was curious. What exactly is the deal with antis and why are they linked to tumbl?
 
BDS

BDS

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,845
Oh man you had to post this right before I went to bed huh

Anyway this was the description I posted in that thread last week:

BDS said:
I won't go into extreme detail since this was supposed to be the subject of a thread I intended to write but basically...

An antishipper, or "anti," is a person who is viciously and vigorously opposed to the depiction and promotion of a fictional relationship on the grounds that it supports and promotes real-world moral values that are dangerous to society. The most common ships targeted by antis are those involving sibling incest, teenagers and adults, or anything perceived as "abusive" (female hero/male villain ships, etc), but they have a habit of targeting even ordinary, consenting adult relationships through warped logic and puritanical sexual values. They go a step further than traditional "ship wars" in that instead of just disliking a ship, they actively attempt to have it erased from existence, supporting the banning of all fanart, fanfiction, and discussion around the ship because it might corrupt or demoralize society and the people viewing it. Antis skew young and are often associated with the burgeoning Generation Z fandoms, people in their teens and early 20s, who have a very different perspective on sexuality and authoritarianism than their older peers do. Because antis lack the moderation ability to actually ban the content they don't like on platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, they are forced to resort to harassment, doxxing, and stalking to silence people. If you've heard of any "crazy shipper" incidents in the last 4-5 years, there's about a 90% chance an anti group was involved.

tl;dr antis are kids who mix complex IRL social justice politics that they don't fully understand with black-and-white fictional character relationships to justify the harassment and abuse of real-life people for the fictional ships they like.
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Fiction

Fiction

Fanthropologist
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,727
Elf Tower, New Mexico
Would those crazy J2 shippers from Supernatural who flip their shit on any mention of Destiel count?

Or are they just your typical crazy shippers?

(Look guys I'm asking a fandom question)
 
Septimus Prime

Septimus Prime

EA
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
8,500
Fiction said:
Would those crazy J2 shippers from Supernatural who flip their shit on any mention of Destiel count?

Or are they just your typical crazy shippers?

(Look guys I'm asking a fandom question)
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BDS

BDS

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,845
DragonSJG said:
What's this link to tumblr and twitter?
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Tumblr and Twitter are unmoderated websites. They force you to interact with content you don't like and if you feel it's unethical or immoral, there's nothing you can do about it.

Ergo, if you see people shipping something you consider immoral and wrong, you have only three options:

1. Engage them in civil debate
2. Ignore them
3. Harass and abuse them until they go silent

This problem used to not exist because fandom was centered around moderated communities like forums or Livejournal.
 

Deleted member 8861

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
10,564
It depends on who you ask. To some, it's people who stand against shippers condoning and normalizing abusive situations and relationships, to others they are prudes who want to police others' self expression.

I don't know where I stand with relation to them because I think fetishization of abuse in fandom/sexual online spaces is a complicated subject.
 
Wulfric

Wulfric

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,963
Antis - haters (ex. SNSD antis, haters of Girls' Generation)

Tumblr is where fanfic writers congregated after Livejournal, Archive of our own, and Fanfic.net became less popular.
 
Darkspellmaster

Darkspellmaster

Member
Jun 17, 2019
2,182
I'll also add that in addition to this, Antis really started because of certain series. I'm not sure if it was Korra or before then, but the reason why a lot of them ended up on Tumblr and Twitter is because unlike places that have sections, say forums, tumblr is a constant stream that shows all sorts of things based on a fandom. So they see things they disagree with and end up becoming more upset by what they perceived as unethical or immoral on the site, and choose to complain because it's the only way they can show their dislike of something.

Another thing is the fact some shippers become obsessed with a series. So they want their ship to become cannon so will fight with others though the percieved idea that they are justifying their actions as protection for victims.
 
Teuthex

Teuthex

Member
May 31, 2019
448
Darkspellmaster said:
I'll also add that in addition to this, Antis really started because of certain series. I'm not sure if it was Korra or before then, but the reason why a lot of them ended up on Tumblr and Twitter is because unlike places that have sections, say forums, tumblr is a constant stream that shows all sorts of things based on a fandom. So they see things they disagree with and end up becoming more upset by what they perceived as unethical or immoral on the site, and choose to complain because it's the only way they can show their dislike of something.

Another thing is the fact some shippers become obsessed with a series. So they want their ship to become cannon so will fight with others though the percieved idea that they are justifying their actions as protection for victims.
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And because the platforms are unmoderated, there are some pretty morally (and fictionally) questionable ships, stuff like Guts/Griffith post-eclipse and plenty of other hero/villain or victim/abuser ships where the shipper seems to come dangerously close to not only shipping something that they know is #problematic, but also endorsing and rationalising it as being acceptable within the universe of the given work, and not simply the crack ship that it is.

I think there is a difference between that kind of deeply messed-up ship and pretty standard stuff like Reylo which I feel is well supported by the cannon itself. I have seen "Antis" pile on people for both kinds. While I can understand being legitimately upset with the former, too often people appropriate the language of social justice as ammo for their shipping wars: slash ships, no matter how tenuous = LGBTQ representation, and therefore morally superior. Hot-and-troubled-badboy x anyone in a configuration other than their OTP = supporting toxic relationships etc.

The "virality" of both of these platforms helps foster this too: you can reblog or retweet a post that you disagree with to an audience it would never usually reach and wasn't really intended for, and the original poster is generally powerless to stop this.
 
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