Antis: How Online Fan Spaces Are Repurposing Conservative Religious Rhetoric

Abstract

One can learn a lot about a person based on their social media of choice. No one considered ‘young' uses Facebook anymore—but where have they moved? Despite being considered “dead” by many after its infamous adult content ban in December of 2018, the social media website Tumblr, founded in 2007, is still a viable option—it's even (re)branded itself as a friendlier (albeit less user intuitive) alternative to X, formerly Twitter. While Tumblr is not a new website, it is host to all sorts of discourse—not the strictly academic kind, but rather that which is produced by a specific group of people who most would call “chronically online.” This paper explores one aspect of this online discourse, specifically as it relates to antis, who can be seen reiterating conservative/right-wing religious rhetoric in their crusade against darker aspects of fiction.