Eddie Munson & The Power of the Algorithim
If Paul Johnson’s essay is any indicator, fangirls have historically been belittled and made fun of. The rise of TikTok and other social media platforms has resulted in a large uptick in this hatred as well.
Previously, fandom spaces have thrived on platforms such as Tumblr. This allowed for the development of internet spaces made by and for fans of certain titles. Since Tumblr created such an individualized experience for its users, it was extremely difficult to happen across these communities by chance. There was still the standard internet amount of cyberbullying, but for the most part these communities thrived in the privacy that Tumblr provided them.
On the other hand, Tiktok’s algorithm prioritizes content with a lot of interaction, especially if that interaction consists of inflammatory language that promotes continued engagement. All it takes is one person who decides to comment something negative, and then people start to dog pile on top of this. Suddenly, it’s the hot new thing to bully a niche group of people- a niche group that was never meant for global consumption.
There is a recent example of this in the response to Stranger Things Season 4, or one character in particular, Eddie Munson. If you existed on any form of social media over the summer of 2022, you would be familiar with the internet’s love for the character. Though, this love quickly turned sinister. The internet is beautiful because it allows for people of all sorts of varying, niche interests to come together and connect with people who share their passions. This turns very sour very quickly when people who aren't a part of these circles discover these niche spaces.
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Now, if you type “Eddie Munson” into Tik Tok, the search engine automatically suggests “Eddie Munson fans cringey” and “Eddie Munson cringe”. Clicking on one of those then recommends alternate searches that suggest, you guessed it, “fangirl”.
It became something of a trend to create cringe compilations or parodies of these fans. Usually the fans weren’t doing anything particularly offensive- they were mostly dressed in cosplay and/or using sound bites from the show to re-enact their favorite scenes. But people who were not interested in this content saw it, thought it was maybe a little “odd” or considered it socially out-of-touch, and figured the appropriate course of action was to leave a hate comment.
All of the comments that I’m displaying here took me maybe five minutes to dig up, and there are hundreds of thousands more where that came from. There’s several here that talk about the show itself, and how they feel that the fans are “ruining it”. And then there are many, many more that dive into misogynistic language. These are actually the tame ones, believe it or not.
Many of these are centered around the physical attractiveness of the fans. There’s also the classic “she’s not like other girls” comment, and this one that’s just flat-out wishing harm to the woman in the video. A lot of these comments use “girl” to describe the fans. While “girl” isn’t an outright harmful term, these commenters are using “girl” to highlight the femininity and the youth of the people in the videos, and are insinuating that these are unfavorable traits to have.
You might be tempted to argue that the problem lies in Stranger Things. Maybe it’s just bad, maybe the character himself is unlikable. But very few, if not none of them, are actually taking down Stranger Things itself- or even Eddie Munson.
In fact, the commenters tend to preface it with “I love this show BUT” or in this case, there’s a lot of chatter regarding the infamous “Hellfire Club” shirt and how the commenters previously considered buying the shirt, clearly to show their support for the show. So, it’s not that these people hate the SHOWS- it’s that they hate the people who like them. And they’re perceiving those people as young women, or as “fangirls”.