The Anti Dilemma
How Hypocrisy Plays into the Anti Mentality
It’s been kind of a running gag for a little while now that anti-shippers have a little bit of a morality problem. Along with this gag, it’s often giggled about in many fandom circles that antis really don’t have any idea what it is that they want, considering most of them seem to consume the very content they want to destroy. The hypocrisy of anti-shippers is seemingly endless according to “pro-shippers” (as the name suggests: diametrically opposed to anti-shippers) as many of them are present in fandoms where the source material is inherently immoral such as Hannibal, Hazbin Hotel, Game of Thrones, and Elden Ring. How do these antis justify their attacks on fandom readers and creators when they themselves are involved in the consumption and creation of that content? From whence does this entitlement to hypocrisy arise? Are they really out there making “safe” works that alter the original source content enough to purge the immorality from it?
Only just a few days back, on September 16th, 2022, a Twitter user who has since changed their name (Ike) made the statement that “proship” people should block them as their views on rape, incest, and “other horrible shit” were unacceptable. Almost immediately the tweet was Quote ReTweeted (QRT’d) by an ostensibly “proship” account revealing that Ike had public bookmarks on Archive of Our Own (Ao3), a popular fanfiction archive which revealed that they themselves had been reading and consuming fics with, according to antis, questionable morals including no less than eighty fics containing the archive warning “Underage.”
When faced with the reality that their archive bookmarks were public and their taste in fics was out, there was really no come-to-Jesus moment for this poor anti…at least not yet. Their tweet was deleted, their username was changed, and word is that they nuked the whole archive account (or at the very least deleted their bookmarks). Ike’s time in the spotlight was short-lived and no doubt supremely entertaining for those who hold dear to them the Schadenfreude of watching hypocrites get their due. This isn’t the first time it’s happened and it certainly won’t be the last. The amount of antis who rail against pedophilia and then have lolis and feral zoophilia in their Twitter likes is astonishing; the rationales given are sometimes even moreso. But the question remains: why do antis do this?
It comes down to the matter of hypocrisy. Essentially we all have a moral compass by which we live our life…but sometimes that moral compass doesn’t swing perfectly when you turn. Sometimes we have a few extra bucks that could be going toward a friend in need, but we really super wanted to see the new Marvel movie so our excuse to ourselves (and sometimes our friend) is “I just can’t afford it right now.” It’s easy to say that you would never do something like that, but let me tell you something right now: you’re lying. When an anti is put on the spot (and for the sake of this argument, “the spot” is alone in their bedroom reading fanfic) and they find a story they’re interested in reading, who is there to hold them accountable? Themselves! Do they do that? No! Why would they? There’s no personal or rhetorical gain from holding themselves accountable in their room at night! Nobody is going to know! It’s a victimless crime! Nevertheless, when there is the matter of holding themselves to a higher standard than others when there is personal or rhetorical gain to be had then they will make certain that everyone knows that their actions are clearly always going to be more righteous.
This is one of the reasons the rationale for why antis are allowed to consume something while “proships” are not allowed to consume the same media are often so wildly bizarre. They have more to do with the nature of the consumption that is being assumed simply based on whether or not the person belongs to the in-group of “anti” or the out-group of “proship.” When confronted with their reading history or that they’ve made certain content, antis will say things like “I portray it in a bad light” even if the “proship” content portrays it in a bad light as well. Other excuses are “I don’t jerk off to it” (very strange to be theorizing on others’ masturbation habits), “I don’t enjoy it” (why are you reading it?), or “I stopped halfway through” (yes, that’s why you have Will Graham as your profile picture, because you HATED the show and only watched half). I think most of us who grew up in the time of paper magazines have all heard the old adage about Playboy: “I read it for the articles.” The impulse to assign to others immoral justifications while assigning to yourself and your in-group moral ones is extremely human and also extremely frustrating.
This is further compounded when you have miniature coalitions of antis whose moralities don’t actually mesh with each other. While you have antis in the My Hero Academia fandom who believe that shipping Bakugou and Deku (BakuDeku or BKDK) is immoral because Bakugou once told Deku to throw himself off a building (the ship is abusive), you have general antis who believe that shipping anyone from that show who is a student is immoral which would include almost all the ships from that fandom save the characters who started the series as adults. Antis from the Hannibal fandom who ship Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter (Hannigram) are infamous for shipping a notoriously toxic and abusive ship while condemning shippers of other ships in the show (and out of it) for inventive and arbitrary reasoning.
Do antis take the content of these shows and transform it via fanfic into wholesome, cute, adorable coffee shop AUs? Generally the answer to that is: “No.” Actually, in many cases the reverse is true and unfortunately for the general readership base, this results often in untagged fic. Several investigations into anti Ao3 accounts have discovered elements within the fics themselves that should have been tagged but were left without due only to the negative appearances of having the tags attached to their work. Essentially, these antis know at least on some level that what they enjoy in fiction mirrors exactly what they claim to hate but are unwilling to be scrutinized in the same manner in which they scrutinize others. Does this make them self-aware? Hardly. Conversations with ex-antis reveal that though on some level they were aware of their own personal short-falls, the rush of righteousness and the idea that their own rationality was moral were both strong enough to overcome most doubts.
So while it’s unrealistic to assume that antis will, as a whole, see the light based on being shown their blazing hypocrisy, some individual antis do end up on the other side. Most of the time they end up there because when antis run out of proships, they start turning on each other. Such is the life in the snake pit. The only thing antis like better than harassing shameless artists and writers is harassing people who will cow to shame and accept their abuse—people they can exert power over and hold down so they can step on them to feel righteous while they continue to read (and write) the exact things they’re allegedly upset about. It almost seems a competition now for antis to see how much depravity they can get away with while still maintaining position in the purity hierarchy.
In the end, the advice at this juncture is merely to support all ex-antis: there is healing to be done. Though it might be tempting to revel in the Schadenfreude for some, there is a time and a place and when one is reaching out for help, I do hope we might all swallow our pride enough to reach back. They’re lost, they’re hurt, and they need help. Please be kind, even if you are distant.