Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
  • Register
  • Login
  • Language
    • Čeština
    • Deutsch
    • English
    • Español (España)
    • Français (France)
    • Français (Canada)
    • Italiano
    • Język Polski
    • Srpski
    • Українська
    • Hrvatski
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Current
  • Archives
  • About the Journal
  • Submissions
  • Editorial Team
  • Contact
  • Register
  • Login
  • Language:
  • Čeština
  • Deutsch
  • English
  • Español (España)
  • Français (France)
  • Français (Canada)
  • Italiano
  • Język Polski
  • Srpski
  • Українська
  • Hrvatski

Literatura Ludowa. Journal of Folklore and Popular Culture

Toxic YouTubers “hated” by Doctor Who? Animating multiphrenic incarnations of Not My Doctor anti-fandom
  • Home
  • /
  • Toxic YouTubers “hated” by Doctor Who? Animating multiphrenic incarnations of Not My Doctor anti-fandom
  1. Home /
  2. Archives /
  3. Vol. 65 No. 2 (2021): The dark side of fandom /
  4. Articles

Toxic YouTubers “hated” by Doctor Who? Animating multiphrenic incarnations of Not My Doctor anti-fandom

Authors

  • Matt Hills University of Huddersfield https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8778-6530

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12775/ll.2.2021.005

Keywords

fan studies, toxic fandom, anti-fandom, Doctor Who, Not My Doctor

Abstract

This article considers how popular/spreadable misogyny enters into Doctor Who fans’ discourse communities via fan-cultural appropriation, mixing external political and internal fan discourses. This can oppose fannish communal norms such as “convivial evaluation” and “ante-fandom”. The theoretical perspective taken in the article combines work on toxic fandom with anti-fandom to thus understand fan toxicity as “multiphrenic”, i.e. drawing on multiple discourses and self-investments, including responding to its own anti-fans. The article goes on to examine YouTube voiceover-commentary videos from one communally-prominent Whotuber representing Not My Doctor anti-fandom, showing how they use devices such as the acousmetre and “stripped down” subjectivity to open a projective space for toxic fandom and enact a flat affect characterising what is termed “performative rationality”. Crucially, leftwing narratives of toxicity and hate are completely inverted to the extent that Doctor Who and the BBC are presumed, without evidence, to “hate” straight white male conservative fandom.

References

Abidin, C. (2018). Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online. Bingley: Emerald Publishing.

Arouh, M. (2020). Toxic Fans: Distinctions and Ambivalence. Ex-centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media, 4, 67–82.

Bailey, S. (2005). Media Audiences and Identity: Self-Construction in the Fan Experience. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Banet-Weiser, S. (2018). Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Durham: Duke University Press.

Berry, J. M., & Sobieraj, S. (2014). The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Booth, P., & Jones, C.O. (2020). Watching Doctor Who: Fan Reception and Evaluation. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2018). Youtube: Online Video and Participatory Culture [second edition]. Cambridge: Polity.

Chion, M. (1999). The Voice in Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press.

Condis, M. (2018). Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks & the Gendered Battle for Online Culture. Iowa: University of Iowa Press.

Condis, M., & Stanfill, M. (2021). Debating with Wertham’s ghost: comic books, culture wars, and populist moral panics. Cultural Studies. Advance online publication, 1–28. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2021.1946579

Cunningham, S., & Craig, D. (2019). Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. New York: New York University Press.

De Kosnik, A. (2016). Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. Cambridge: MIT Press.

DiSanza, R. (2020). Half an hour ago I was a white-haired Scotsman: Wibbly wobbly gender in Doctor Who. Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, 5(2-3),191–203.

Doidge, M., Kossakowski R., & Mintert, S. (2020). Ultras: The Passion and Performance of Contemporary Football Fandom. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Duffett, M. (2013). Understanding Fandom. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Eeken, S., & Hermes, J. (2019). Doctor Who, Ma’am: YouTube Reactions to the 2017 Reveal of the New Doctor. Television & New Media. Advance online publication, 1–18. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419893040

Flegel, M., & Leggatt, J. (2021). Superhero Culture Wars: Politics, Marketing, and Social Justice in Marvel Comics. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Gergen, K. J. (1991). The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books.

Gray, J. (2003). New audiences, new textualities: Anti-fans and non-fans. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(1), 64–81.

Gray, J. (2021). Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste. New York: New York University Press.

Hills, M. (2011). Listening from behind the sofa? The (un)earthly roles of sound in BBC Wales’ Doctor Who. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 9(1), 28-41.

Hills, M. (2018). An extended Foreword: From fan doxa to toxic fan practices? Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 15(1), 105–126.

Hills, M. (2019). Anti-Fandom Meets Ante-Fandom: Doctor Who Fans’ Textual Dislike and “Idiorrhythmic” Fan Experiences. In M. A. Click (ed.), Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age (pp. 102–122.). New York: New York University Press.

Jane, E. A. (2019). Hating 3.0: Should Anti-Fan Studies Be Renewed for Another Season? In M. A. Click (ed.), Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age (pp. 42–61). New York: New York University Press.

Jones, B. (2016). “I hate Beyoncé and I don’t care who knows it”: Towards an ethics of studying anti-fandom. Journal of Fandom Studies, 4(3), 283–99.

Jowett, L. (2017). Dancing with the Doctor: Dimensions of Gender in the Doctor Who Universe. London: I.B. Tauris.

Loconto, D. G. (2020). Social Movements and the Collective Identity of the Star Trek Fandom. Lanham: Lexington Books.

McKee, A. (2004). Is Doctor Who political? European Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(2), 201–217.

Miller, C. (2020). Cult TV Heroines: Angels, Aliens and Amazons. Lodnon: Bloomsbury Academic.

Phillips, I. (2020). Once Upon a Time Lord: The Myths and Stories of Doctor Who. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Phillips, W. (2015). This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Postigo, H. (2021). Video Gameplay Commentary: Immersive Research in Participatory Culture. In S. Cunningham, & D. Craig (eds.), Creator Culture: An Introduction to Global Social Media Entertainment (pp. 117–134). New York: New York University Press.

Proctor, W. (2017). “Bitches ain’t gonna hunt no ghosts”: Totemic nostalgia, toxic fandom and the Ghostbusters platonic. Palabra Clave, 20(4), 1105-1141.

Sender, K. (2012). The Makeover: Reality Television and Reflexive Audiences. New York: New York University Press.

Scott, S. (2019). Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender and the Convergence Culture Industry. New York: New York University Press.

Silvio, T. (2019). Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Stack, M. (2021). Did the Doctor Change Sex or Change Gender? Navigating the Sex and Gender Divide in Doctor Who. In M. K. Harmes & L. A. Orthia (eds.), Doctor Who and Science (pp. 94–109). Jefferson: McFarland.

Tulloch, J., & Jenkins, H. (1995). Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek. London: Routledge.

Whiteman, N. (2018). ”What If They’re Bastards?”: Ethics and the Imagining of the Other in the Study of Online Fan Cultures. In R. Iphofen & M. Tolich (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics (pp. 510–525). London: Sage.

Wray, R. (2020). #NotMyFandom: The gendered nature of a misogynistic backlash in science fiction fandom. Psychology of Women and Equalities Review, 3(1–2), 78–81.

Yodovich, N. (2020). “Finally, we get to play the Doctor”: Feminist female fans’ reactions to the first female Doctor Who. Feminist Media Studies, 20(8), 1243–1258.

Literatura Ludowa. Journal of Folklore and Popular Culture

Downloads

  • PDF

The publisher's shop:

Go to shop

Published

2021-11-22

How to Cite

1.
HILLS, Matt. Toxic YouTubers “hated” by Doctor Who? Animating multiphrenic incarnations of Not My Doctor anti-fandom. Literatura Ludowa. Journal of Folklore and Popular Culture. Online. 22 November 2021. Vol. 65, no. 2. [Accessed 1 July 2025]. DOI 10.12775/ll.2.2021.005.
  • ISO 690
  • ACM
  • ACS
  • APA
  • ABNT
  • Chicago
  • Harvard
  • IEEE
  • MLA
  • Turabian
  • Vancouver
Download Citation
  • Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS)
  • BibTeX

Issue

Vol. 65 No. 2 (2021): The dark side of fandom

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Matt Hills

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

1. The authors give the publisher (Polish Ethnological Society) non-exclusive license to use the work in the following fields:

a) recording of a Work / subject of a related copyright;

b) reproduction (multiplication) Work / subject of a related copyright in print and digital technique (ebook, audiobook);

c) marketing of units of reproduced Work / subject of a related copyright;

d) introduction of Work / object of related copyright to computer memory;

e) dissemination of the work in an electronic version in the formula of open access under the Creative Commons license (CC BY - ND 3.0).

2. The authors give the publisher the license free of charge.

3. The use of the work by publisher in the above mentioned aspects is not limited in time, quantitatively nor territorially.

Stats

Number of views and downloads: 795
Number of citations: 0

Search

Search

Browse

  • Browse Author Index
  • Issue archive

User

User

Current Issue

  • Atom logo
  • RSS2 logo
  • RSS1 logo

Information

  • For Readers
  • For Authors
  • For Librarians

Newsletter

Subscribe Unsubscribe

Language

  • Čeština
  • Deutsch
  • English
  • Español (España)
  • Français (France)
  • Français (Canada)
  • Italiano
  • Język Polski
  • Srpski
  • Українська
  • Hrvatski

Tags

Search using one of provided tags:

fan studies, toxic fandom, anti-fandom, Doctor Who, Not My Doctor
Up

Akademicka Platforma Czasopism

Najlepsze czasopisma naukowe i akademickie w jednym miejscu

apcz.umk.pl

Partners

  • Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
  • Akademickie Towarzystwo Andragogiczne
  • Fundacja Copernicus na rzecz Rozwoju Badań Naukowych
  • Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk
  • Instytut Kultur Śródziemnomorskich i Orientalnych PAN
  • Instytut Tomistyczny
  • Karmelitański Instytut Duchowości w Krakowie
  • Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego
  • Państwowa Akademia Nauk Stosowanych w Krośnie
  • Państwowa Akademia Nauk Stosowanych we Włocławku
  • Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa im. Stanisława Pigonia w Krośnie
  • Polska Fundacja Przemysłu Kosmicznego
  • Polskie Towarzystwo Ekonomiczne
  • Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze
  • Towarzystwo Miłośników Torunia
  • Towarzystwo Naukowe w Toruniu
  • Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
  • Uniwersytet Komisji Edukacji Narodowej w Krakowie
  • Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika
  • Uniwersytet w Białymstoku
  • Uniwersytet Warszawski
  • Wojewódzka Biblioteka Publiczna - Książnica Kopernikańska
  • Wyższe Seminarium Duchowne w Pelplinie / Wydawnictwo Diecezjalne „Bernardinum" w Pelplinie

© 2021- Nicolaus Copernicus University Accessibility statement Shop