Cover Photo: Photographs from VH1 and deviantArt; photo illustration by Matt Ortile
Photographs from VH1 and deviantArt; photo illustration by Matt Ortile

What Does It Mean to Be a Bad Fan on Social Media?

We foster passionate spaces that are beholden to identities in formation and reworking. So, naturally, these spaces can get tense AF.

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All this reinforces the intense emotions of fans, stoking the fire of users that have an interest in feeling like they’re doing something, anything of value.

And even worse, none of these platforms know what to do about the problems they helped to create. “On Twitter and Tumblr, not only is there no clear sign of what it means to be a good community member there,” Minkel said, “safety and moderation on both platforms feels inconsistently defined, communicated, and enforced, and actual UX and design choices heighten the potential for conflict, like Tumblr’s decontextualized reblog.” 

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Jake Pitre is a freelance writer and academic based in Ottawa, Ontario. His work has appeared in Pitchfork, Real Life,  Buzzfeed News, the Globe and Mail, Lapham's Quarterly, the Outline, and Hazlitt.