Acafans and power in fandom

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The main thing that seem to piss people off about acafans is the use of theory to bludgeon people in ship wars. They take the Tumblr wank style – in which social justice terms (misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, fetishization, objectification) get used to attack other fans for shipping things wrong, instead of being aimed at the media producers – and use their professional credentials to try to silence opposition.

Other objections seem to be about anyone who is perceived as pulling rank (using either fandom-specific or real world authority). Though this objection is impossible to resolve, since in any social media situation, some people will have more power than others.

Also, I personally think that forums like Tumblr and Twitter are pretty toxic. Certain people become internet famous (so called Big Name Fans) and then people in the fandom start to think of them as celebrities that need to be taken down a peg. And since celebrities are not real people, but superhuman archetypes that exist only in the collective unconscious, they cannot hear you when you bitch about them. Except that most Big Name Fans are underemployed women scraping together the time and money to go to conferences, and not actually the equivalent of Lady Gaga.