TY - JOUR AU - Duffy, Brooke Erin AU - Miltner, Kate AU - Wahlstedt, Amanda PY - 2020/10/05 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - POLICING "FAKE" FEMININITY: ANGER AND ACCUSATION IN INFLUENCER "HATEBLOG" COMMUNITIES JF - AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research JA - SPIR VL - 2020 IS - 0 SE - Papers D DO - 10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11204 UR - https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/11204 SP - AB - <p style="font-weight: 400;">While social media influencers are held up in the popular imagination as savvy and self-enterprising&nbsp; cultural&nbsp; tastemakers,&nbsp; their&nbsp; requisite&nbsp; career&nbsp; visibility&nbsp; opens&nbsp; them&nbsp; up&nbsp; to intensified&nbsp; public&nbsp; scrutiny&nbsp; and,&nbsp; in&nbsp; some&nbsp; cases,&nbsp; networked&nbsp; hate&nbsp; and&nbsp; harassment. Key repositories&nbsp; of&nbsp; such&nbsp; critique&nbsp; are&nbsp; influencer&nbsp; “hateblogs,”community-oriented&nbsp; sites&nbsp; that seem&nbsp; to&nbsp; blur&nbsp; the&nbsp; boundaries&nbsp; between&nbsp; critique&nbsp; and&nbsp; cyber-bullying. Crucially,&nbsp; the&nbsp; term “hateblog” is more closely related to the colloquialism “hater” than to the more formal designation of hate speech; “hateblogs” thus provide a space for audience-participants to mock&nbsp; and critique&nbsp; their targets&nbsp; for&nbsp; stated&nbsp; purposes&nbsp; of&nbsp; amusement&nbsp; and&nbsp; satisfaction (Miltner, 2017). As such, the activities of hatebloggers can be situated in the wider context of media anti-fandom (e.g., Click, 2019; Gray, 2005; Harman &amp; Jones, 2013; Marwick, 2013; McRae, 2017).</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Amid the pervasive culture of social media fame, hateblogs have emerged as especially vibrant—and vitriolic—sites for communities of anti-fans to collectively police the activities of highly visible Instagrammers, YouTubers, and the like. It is perhaps not surprising, given the inhospitable treatment of women in digital public spaces (Sobieraj, 2018), that hateblogs overwhelmingly target women and other marginalized groups. Yet, in contrast to the much-publicized hate campaigns waged by male-dominated communities (e.g., the targeting of Leslie Jones by the Gamergate community), sites like Get Off My Internets (GOMI), GossipGuru, and tatlelife are&nbsp; predominantly&nbsp; administered&nbsp; and&nbsp; populated&nbsp; by women. As such, conventional frameworks of misogyny (e.g., Banet-Weiser, 2018) don’t aptly explain their underlying power dynamics.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Instead, the gender-coded nature of hateblogs likens their content to feminized gossip, which&nbsp; has&nbsp; historically functioned&nbsp; to&nbsp; define&nbsp; societal&nbsp; norms through&nbsp; shared&nbsp; intimacy (Meyers, 2010). To this end, Forbes’ (in)famously identified GOMI one of the “Best Sites for&nbsp; Women&nbsp; in&nbsp; 2013,” dubbing&nbsp; it “the&nbsp; antidote&nbsp; to&nbsp; Mommy&nbsp; blogs...[with] endless commentary, criticism and gossip on a web of lifestyle, fashion and mommy bloggers (Casserly,&nbsp; 2013). To&nbsp; critics,&nbsp; however,&nbsp; hateblogs&nbsp; are&nbsp; venues&nbsp; for&nbsp; those&nbsp; with&nbsp; “crazy obsession[s]”&nbsp; (Gross&nbsp; and&nbsp; Chen,&nbsp; 2012) to&nbsp; engage&nbsp; in&nbsp; online&nbsp; abuse&nbsp; and cyber-bullying, which can exact a profound toll on targets (van Syckle, 2016).</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">These totalizing perspectives articulate different aspects of—and perspectives on—the hateblog phenomenon; yet they fail to fully acknowledge their cultural ambivalence within a fraught moment of socially mediated feminine self-enterprise. Indeed, we contend that both the “crazy obsession” of hateblogging participants and the gossipy normativity of the blogs themselves are in service of the same ends, namely to critique the perpetuation of unattainable norms of feminine success in the digital economy. Here we invoke Gray (2005), who suggests that anti-fandom is “a mode of engagement with text and medium that focuses heavily on the moral and the emotional, seeking in some ways to police the public and textual spheres” (p. 841). Hateblogs, we argue, can be understood as “moral texts”&nbsp; (Gray,&nbsp; 2005)&nbsp; that&nbsp; provide&nbsp; insight&nbsp; into&nbsp; contemporary anxieties&nbsp; about fame, femininity, and careerism.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">This project analyzes “hateblog” anti-fan community Get Off My Internets (GOMI) which targets women&nbsp; social&nbsp; media&nbsp; personalities&nbsp; almost&nbsp; exclusively. GOMI&nbsp; was selected because of the size of its community as well as its dominance within the hateblog space. We qualitatively analyzed 150 hateblog posts (also known as “snarks”) across GOMI’s site. Snarks were drawn from 10 forums: five focused on fashion and beauty influencers and their&nbsp; respective&nbsp; brands,&nbsp; while&nbsp; the&nbsp; remaining&nbsp; five&nbsp; were&nbsp; dedicated&nbsp; to&nbsp; lifestyle influencers, whose brand often spanned fashion, travel, design, fitness, etc. These forums were chosen based on their popularity on GOMI, defined by the number of unique snarks each forum contained. This ranged from 3,394 to 861 unique comments in each thread.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">The&nbsp; critiques&nbsp; of&nbsp; influencers&nbsp; that&nbsp; circulate&nbsp; on&nbsp; hateblogs,&nbsp; while&nbsp; numerous,&nbsp; center&nbsp; on influencers’ perceived duplicity or “fakery'' in regards to their career, relationships, and personal appearance. Together, these accusations cast specific influencers as deceitful, avaricious, and lazy charlatans who unfairly profit off of ersatz performances of perfection. As moral discourses, these critiques aim at scrutinizing and dismantling the tropes of entrepreneurial femininity (Duffy and Hund, 2015). More broadly, we argue that the anger expressed through hateblogging may be understood as a form of displaced feminine rage. Indeed, while such expressions may be deployed in discussions of individual influencers and&nbsp; their&nbsp; performances&nbsp; of&nbsp; specific&nbsp; feminine&nbsp; ideals,&nbsp; it&nbsp; is ostensibly rooted&nbsp; in&nbsp; broader sociocultural critiques connected to gendered expectations relating to authenticity, labor, and privilege. In other words, the influencers who are targeted by hateblogs act as stand-ins&nbsp; for&nbsp; structural&nbsp; critiques&nbsp; of&nbsp; seemingly&nbsp; “new”&nbsp; venues&nbsp; for&nbsp; women’s&nbsp; employment&nbsp; that reproduce problematic, limiting ideals of femininity, domestic life, and the possibility of “having it all.”</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">But while hatebloggers’ purport to disillusion us by exposing the artifice of social media, their expressions do little for progressive gender politics, enacted as they are as a form of horizontal misogyny (McKenna et al., 2003) that can cause genuine distress among its creator-targets. We thus conclude by highlighting the limitations of this expressive act—one&nbsp; that seeks to&nbsp; liberate&nbsp; women&nbsp; from&nbsp; gendered&nbsp; constraints&nbsp; while&nbsp; simultaneously engaging in gendered forms of symbolic violence.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">References</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Banet-Weiser, S. (2018). Empowered: Popular feminism and popular misogyny. Duke University Press.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Casserly, M. (2013). The 100 Best Websites For Women, 2013. Forbes. Retrieved from:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/08/20/the-100-best-websites-for-women-2013/#5fcf5e8057c8" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/08/20/the-100-best-websites-for-women-2013/%235fcf5e8057c8&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604570605579000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHsoYmQeVKGMJx0MzBNfi-lJH-jIw">https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/08/20/the-100-best-websites-for-women-2013/#5fcf5e8057c8</a></p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Click, M. (Ed.). (2019). Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age. NYU Press.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Duffy, B. E., &amp; Hund, E. (2015). “Having it all” on social media: Entrepreneurial femininity and self-branding among fashion bloggers. Social Media+ Society, 1(2), 2056305115604337.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Grose, J.and Chen, A. (2012). The terrible, fascinating world of hate blogs. The Awl.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theawl.com/2012/10/the-terrible-fascinating-world-of-hate-blogs/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theawl.com/2012/10/the-terrible-fascinating-world-of-hate-blogs/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604570605579000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGsX8s3N8UGGrLCMAdzAn0jUYu6Xg">https://www.theawl.com/2012/10/the-terrible-fascinating-world-of-hate-blogs/</a></p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Gray, J. (2003). New audiences, new textualities: Anti-fans and non-fans. International journal of cultural studies, 6(1), 64-81.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Marwick, A. E. (2013). Status update: Celebrity, publicity, and branding in the social media age. Yale University Press.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">McKenna, B. G., Smith, N. A., Poole, S. J., &amp; Coverdale, J. H. (2003). Horizontal violence: experiences of registered nurses in their first year of practice. Journal of advanced nursing,42(1), 90-96.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">McRae, S. (2017). “Get Off My Internets”: How Anti-Fans Deconstruct Lifestyle Bloggers’ Authenticity Work. Persona Studies, 3(1), 13-27</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Meyers, E. A. "Women, gossip, and celebrity online: celebrity gossip blogs as feminized popular culture." Cupcakes, pinterest and ladyporn: feminized popular culture in the early twenty-first century(2015): 71-92</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Miltner, K. (2017). "Is Hateblogging Harassment? Examining the Boundaries of Online Antagonism". International Communication Association, 68th Annual Conference. San Diego, CA. June2017.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Sobieraj, S. (2018). Bitch, slut, skank, cunt: Patterned resistance to women’s visibility in digital publics. Information, Communication &amp; Society, 21(11), 1700-1714.</p><p style="font-weight: 400;">Van Syckle, K. (2016, January 21 ). 'It put me on antidepressants': welcome to GOMI, the cruel site for female snark. The Guardian.<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/21/gomi-blog-internet-comments-women" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/21/gomi-blog-internet-comments-women&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1604570605579000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE7ji0VNzL6PZdfNwiHL3qbTyWaKw">https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/21/gomi-blog-internet-comments-women</a></p><p style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp;</p> ER -