Introduction
The following roundtable is a recorded and edited discussion between four fan studies researchers that took place in March 2022. Having all worked with QAnon and the insurrection in the context of fan studies, our discussion took its departure from the US insurrection on January 6, 2021, as QAnon fans, Trump fans, and other right-wing groups stormed the US Capitol building while live-streaming their endeavor to social media. The insurrection occurred following the 2020 Presidential election. Trump and his supporters consistently argued that Biden had “stolen” the election and that the voting was rigged despite no evidence to support the claims. As tensions built during the winter of 2020, Trump called for Vice-president, Mike Pence, to overturn the election in Congress on January 6th. In a public speech on the day, Trump encouraged his followers to proceed to protest at the Capitol Building where both parties were formalizing President Biden’s victory. In the following hours, thousands of protesters breached the Capitol building bringing zip-ties and weapons in an attempt to stop the democratic process. The insurrection occurred on the back of the growing QAnon conspiracy theory that suggests that a political and Hollywood elite were trafficking, abusing and drinking the blood of children as part of a satanic cabal. In the conspiracy theory, Trump is hailed as the savior, who will eventually liberate the United States from the “deep state.” Both the QAnon conspiracy theory and Donald Trump generated large, and overlapping, fanbases that promoted these ideas on social media. The following discussion draws out some main perspectives that may guide our future thinking in the context of fandom, complicity, and politics and points toward new cultural and social territories for research into fandom and fan practices.
Centrally, as fandom enters into the domain of politics and conspiracy theories, it seems increasingly unfruitful to distinguish between fan practices and participatory culture. Instead, participatory culture’s primary mode seems to be deeply driven by fan practices, that is, textual poaching and enunciative and textual productivity (Jenkins, 2013; Fiske, 1992). QAnon fans take real life events, just as fans take their favorite media text, and transform them into memes that are highly spreadable, they engage in forensic participation by analyzing and speculating about every little “clue” in public statements by President Trump, and they form networked publics where they build a collective “intelligence” of the resources available for their participation. Understanding this amalgamation of fan practices into other social domains can help us make sense of current phenomena in the seeming growth of conspiracy theory communities and right-wing movements alike. Participatory culture is a source of great creativity, playfulness, and mobilization of social and political movements, but, as Jenkins pointed out as early as 2006, “has benefited third parties, revolutionaries, reactionaries, and racists alike” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 221). In some instances, it seems that these online communities are driven by fan practices; in other instances, fan communities are weaponized in order to serve a political agenda.
While research into fandom and politics (see Hinck, 2019; Jenkins et al., 2020, Sandvoss, 2012, etc.) and toxic cultures (Proctor et al., 2018) is certainly not new, it seems that the current transmedial landscapes drive participation and complicity in very specific ways that fan studies would do well to focus on in the coming years. In the following discussion, we take our departure from five key questions to flesh out different perspectives on the topic based on our experience researching QAnon in the light of fan studies and conclude with a brief discussion of the future of fan research.
What can fan studies tell us about the insurrection on January 6th?
CarrieLynn Reinhard: I would like to start with considering what is a fan identity, and just how separate it is from an activist or political identity. I think the January 6th Insurrection demonstrates the importance of fan studies, because I do not believe people have a fan identity that is separate from their political identity. People are both because of their underlying emotions, beliefs, values, orientations, and attitudes. It is not an either/or that we are dealing with: it is a both/and. If we really want to understand the ideologies and events that lead to the Insurrection of January 6th, 2021, we have to take that both/and approach. We have to understand both the fan identities and the political identities at play for how they are interconnected and influencing each other. That both/and approach is an indication of how fan studies can have a wider reaching impact by acknowledging the importance of emotions in traditionally rational realms like politics. Fan studies can illuminate how emotions are involved with larger political issues like the QAnon the conspiracy theories and everything Donald J. Trump was doing that led to the January 6th Insurrection.
Anthony Dannar: When I was watching all the news coverage around the events of the Capitol Insurrection one moment stood out to me the most: I was fascinated by one person who was filmed inside the chamber going through various documents on a Congressmember’s desks. At one moment he turned to another one of his accomplices and said something to the extent, “there’s got to be something in here that we can use against them.” I thought to myself: this is play, what they are doing is fundamentally playful in nature. Now, I don’t want to frame their behavior as harmless, because it is most certainly a very dangerous form of play. This particular person was taking it very seriously and perhaps he truly believed what he was doing was for the greater good. But in many ways, he was playing spy at the Capitol Building. He’s dressed up in tactical gear, looking for clues of corruption in the hopes of proving “the big lie.” I believe framing the Capitol Insurrectionists as fans helps highlight the playful qualities of political engagement in the digital age. There are so many elements to January 6 that remind me of fandom; including the practices and behaviors that we traditionally associate with fandom like emotional investment in a fan object, creating a community, and experimenting with identity performance.
Line Nybro Petersen: A key point is that there seems to be a greater cultural authority ascribed to fan practices and digital fan communities (see also Petersen 2022). For one, fans’ practices seem to be of greater interest in broadcast media and in news coverage. For example, the #freebritney campaign initiated by fans contributed to media attention and an eventual a change in Spears’s conservatorship, seems a pertinent example of fans’ increased cultural authority. I was thinking about the current war in Ukraine, and the way that Twitter and TikTok are engaging with President Zelenskyj as if he was a fan object. The practices that we see unfold on social media in regard to Zelenskyj are no different than what fans of popular entertainment media do with their fan object. His head is photoshopped on Captain America, there’s a @DarthPutinKGB role-playing account on Twitter. There are countless memes helping users digest bits and pieces that come out of Ukraine. So all of these playful practices that fans engage in become embedded in different cultural spheres outside of entertainment culture. January 6th is another example of how fan practices and fans’ ability to play with culture becomes integrated into other social domains. The rioters on January 6th looked like they were playing; some were wearing costumes, filming themselves and posing for the media. It was incredibly serious and consequential, but as I was watching the events unfold in the news, I was also struck by the playful way the rioters engaged with their surroundings. I think one of the reasons why fans have significant cultural authority is precisely because of their ability to engage playfully with culture, through their practices. Fans understand the language of digital media and they have the skills in maintaining and developing cultural moods (Highmore, 2017) for others to be drawn into. In the case of the QAnon conspiracy theory, participants are collectively engaged in practices of collective intelligence in order to solve the puzzle of “the deep state” and a satanic cabal, while enjoying the thrill of being in on “secret knowledge” that mirror the forensic practices we see played out in more classical fan communities.
Natalie Le Clue: People tend to ask why I have an interest in January 6th seeing as we are all the way down here in South Africa. Most often I respond by saying that especially the elements that people identify with, in becoming part of these groups and/or events is no longer contained to one country or one continent. The aspect of play, as Anthony was just saying, now influences just about every interaction that we have in online spaces. There has been so much research and so much opinion about how gaming, which we know to have a global appeal, influences people of which the line between fiction and reality becomes more and more blurred. An event, such as January 6th, takes many of these aspects out of the realm of fantasy/fiction and thrusts them into reality and manifests certain behaviors and experiences.
1
From a global perspective this is relevant as far as the observation of the “how” and “why” of people’s investment and attachment.
When a person is born there are some pre-determined elements that are applied from language spoken, to religious practices, to beliefs, etc. While there does exist, in most scenarios, the freedom for people to choose their own life path there is still an overarching existential societal expectation to “belong” somewhere. It stands to reason then that this inherent need to belong somewhere, or to something, prompts people to seek and become part of cliques based on, perhaps, only minimal recognition and agreement of the elements that dictate the philosophy of the “group.” And by blurring the line between fiction and reality what could, arguably, have been considered a typical rationale is systematically coerced and transformed into full scale entrenchment into, for example, the QAnon belief system (Davis, 2020). A system and assemblage of “believers” who show no sign of shrinking. The Public Religion Research Institute “found that 16 percent of Americans, or roughly 41 million people, believed last year in the three key tenets of the conspiracy theory,”
2
(Hsu, 2022). Therefore, the January 6th insurrection serves as an outstanding prism through which to study not only the behavior of those fixated and ensconced in the event but also to scrutinize what, for example, the role of discourse on social media is regarding the changing of norms.
CarrieLynn: Linda Howell, a member of our QAnon as Fandom research group, has said that the January 6th Insurrection looked like a fan convention, given the carnivalesque nature of this almost successful attempt to subvert the traditional power dynamics of governance in the United States. Using Mikhail Bahktin’s ideas has been a foundational aspect in fan studies, especially going back to Henry Jenkins and textual poaching; this idea of fans able to subvert traditional power dynamics through their recoding of media content. At the same time, fan studies have been focused on celebrating this carnivalesque nature, especially in seeing fans as socially and culturally progressive compared to a dominating mainstream. However, because of the permeability of identities, this carnivalesque perspective needs to be translated into other areas of life, including democratic participation.
Anthony: Perhaps there are two ways in which fandom and play help us have conversations about civic engagement and political discourse in the digital age. When we look at January 6, we can certainly make analogies of the Capitol Insurrection as a type of fan convention; pointing to the fannish nature of dressing up and the festival-like atmosphere of the “Stop the Steal” rally but we can also use play to describe how civic engagement works online. Game scholars have argued that our current media environment has far more playful affordances or playful possibilities (Fuchs, 2012; Raessens, 2006). As Line writes, we can frame the digital practices as a form of mediatized play (Petersen, 2022). Participating in digital spaces is often driven by the desire to keep the “play going” which is so similar to the “always-on” quality of fandom that Matt Hills discusses (Hills, 2017). These reactionary communities continually create their own content and then that content speaks back to them through algorithms or other community members creating this dangerous cycle. And then of course, we can add economics to this as well. Products and commodities, themselves, become codified or politically charged. Because our digital economy is so responsive to spending habits, the act of purchasing tactical gear online, for example, will eventually cause the algorithm to incessantly suggest other similar politically charged products. This, along with other digital practices, creates a personalized transmedia playfield.
How can we understand the role of fandom in contemporary political culture?
Line: We’ve touched upon this already in the previous discussion already, but one of the things I wanted to bring into the discussion is this notion of a process of fanization that Gray et al. (2017) introduced in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. I think there’s some value to that concept as a way to explain how other cultural spheres are subsumed to a fan logic, which in brief means that the practices that fans are engaged with are adapted into other cultural spheres. What fanization captures is that we are seeing a mainstreaming of fan practices. These practices have become so fundamental to participatory culture that it becomes difficult to separate and see fandom as separate from other types of participatory practices. The authors point out that politics might be the clearest example of this process taking place in our culture. This is not a new tendency, but it does seem to have intensified in the past decade with the omnipresence of social media, influence of participatory culture and changing conditions between politicians, voters, and social media. I think fanization is a really useful concept that brings attention to the role of fandom in society in a broader sense.
CarrieLynn: Anthony, on the idea of a playful attitude as being not serious: at first, perhaps they were just people who were fed up with traditional power dynamics and they set about creating something fun. The theory that QAnon began as a joke aligns with that perspective; yet, does its beginning matter when it has become something very serious? Perhaps it began as a playful jest, but as more people joined the community and added their own interpretations to the Q-posts, it became serious. Many media and culture critics, myself included, tried to get people to take online trolls, GamerGaters, edgelords, and others seriously, while others saw them as simply joking around and being playful—as if the idea of play cannot be a serious endeavor in and of itself.
When the general public perceives something as playful, at least in the United States, the common assumption is that people are just being immature, childish, and labeling their actions as play reflects an outside perspective and desire to downplay that popular movement by ridiculing it. Such undercutting tactics have been employed against fans for over a century, criticizing their actions as too emotional to be serious. Indeed, could QAnon have always been serious, but people were performing it as not serious, because they knew how it would be looked upon? The idea of online trolls doing it for the lulz and being quick to retort “just kidding” when their jokes cause offense—these trolls can then hide their very serious values and intentions behind this facade of playfulness, and thus askew any need to take responsibility for their actions. If we want to address the issue, then we must rethink the relationships between seriousness and play as much as we do between emotions and politics.
Anthony: If we are going to talk about the Capital Insurrectionists as fans, you almost first have to answer the question, what are they a fan of? We could point to various things that motivate their fandom (Trump, reactionary politics, white supremacy, etc.), or we could frame them as anti-fans. I’m leaning more toward Mel Stanfill’s definition of “reactionary fandom,” or when a fan group’s ideology is centered around reactionary politics (Stanfill 2020). Of course, I completely agree with Line that what we previously defined as “fannish” may just be a popular mode of digital participation. However, if we are going to frame the Insurrectionists as fans, it could be helpful to go beyond defining them as fans simply because they are adopting the behaviors and practices of a fan. I would argue the Insurrectionists are fans of a particular perception of authentic American citizenship. Fandom scholars have long shown how fans resort to drastic measures to defend their fandom. We could easily extend these fannish motivations to contemporary politics.
Natalie: People have always sought something to be a part of, whatever the popular narrative is. Given the rampant dissatisfaction with leaders and governments throughout the world I wonder if this spurs a rejection of the status quo and a need for change, whatever that might look like. A type of rebellion is then born and the line of what is acceptable and “normal” is consistently pushed further and further. Perhaps that is part of the motivation or encouragement of why people join these groups and why they engage and practice a belief system such as the one that underscores QAnon.
Anthony: Political participation is extremely playful and affect-driven, something that is often overlooked. January 6 is an extreme example of what happens when you have a community that is essentially trying to take back something that they felt like they have lost. That is not driven by logic but by fear and anger. Forming online communities and contributing to conspiracy theories allows someone who feels like the world is going in the wrong direction a means to fight back in a personal and pleasurable way.
CarrieLynn: We see through cognitive dissonance and rationalization processes that what is technically logical to any one person helps that person cope with that situation. People will rationalize anything they need to if it helps them get through that situation. And cognitive dissonance is all about negative emotions and affective states. Rationalization in political situations illustrates how the Greco-Roman, Western Civilization approach to democracy has always been about emotions and affectations. European philosophers—mostly white, straight, Christian men—just have not wanted to talk about it that way.
How may we understand the changing norms of discourse on social media?
Natalie: An imperative aspect to consider is the concept of co-opting of certain phrases. I have spent time looking at some keywords on various comment threads and one of the trends that began to emerge is this co-opting of certain phrases and words. For example, words like patriotism, freedom, and phrases such as “fighting an enemy,” and “we the people.” Traditionally, these words/phrases inferred unity and inclusivity. However, now it is co-opted into a new type of discourse to represent a specific group, such as QAnon, and the “values” that characterize it. Further consideration of the comment threads also revealed that this discourse that has been created is not only to sustain division between “us” and “them” but is also as a way of asserting a form of superiority. And it is a type of discourse underscored by a form of aggression and violence that we saw evidenced on January 6th. Even the hashtag “Stop the steal” implies that something has been taken from them which infers an injured party and therefore a consequent enemy. This is exactly the type of discourse that is used as a sort of reinforcement of their belief system and the creation of a never-ending echo chamber that ensures the upkeep of the “fight.”
Line: I think that’s a really interesting point, Natalie. It goes even further than that; in the QAnon community there’s a vernacular that participants use to demonstrate that they’re part of that community and it’s a way of saying “we’re in the know,” “we understand what red pilling means.” They understand all of these phrases and where they come from, and that signals to others that “I am one of you” and “I am part of this” as opposed to everyone else. So having this vernacular is a way of defining the community. A collaboratively established vernacular becomes a way to signal community to other QAnon fans and signal that they are part of something that is not understood by people outside of the community. Again, using a common vernacular as community building practices is deeply ingrained in fan communities from fans of Hamilton, The Musical (2015) to Sherlock (2010-17) and helps maintain the magic circle (Huizinga 2016 [1949]) of their playing around and keeps others out of their community.
Natalie: One of the people I came across is a guy called Stew Peters,
3
who has been banned from Twitter. But there are, of course, all of these other platforms that have been created for these groups such as Gab and Gttr, for example. Similarly, someone like Mark Dice
4
uses Twitter to direct people to his YouTube channel, which illustrates that there is no real recourse for choking people’s access to these communities.
What I found especially interesting is that when I was looking at Peters’ website an ad popped up with a picture of Bill Clinton. It had a link to a list of celebrities with underlying health conditions. I thought how interesting that was because I’d spend probably 3 minutes on this website and already the algorithm was working. It was already prompting me down a conspiracy-driven rabbit hole. It reminded me too of the conspiratorial narrative around Hillary Clinton’s ill health throughout the 2016 election. It was that easy to get caught in this web of conspiracy. And Twitter’s ban of 70,000 so-called QAnon profiles from their platforms (Hart, 2021) may create the impression that it is being remedied, it’s not really the case. It will find you! Watch one clip explaining QAnon on YouTube, for example, and it’s going to lead you down a rabbit hole that, after several hours, you will emerge from with an altered perception of what it might or might not be about. This speaks to the “always on” phenomenon too and that there shouldn’t be a misconception that just because it might not be on the mainstream platforms that it is then something that has to be specifically sought. And how easily it can draw anyone into a conspiracy-driven fold.
Anthony: You can certainly make a Venn diagram highlighting the overlap between fandom and far-right ideologies. We have already mentioned the similarities in the types of practices (for example, the use of participatory media). Unfortunately, there are also overlaps in ideology. For example, both have a proclivity to create in-groups and out-groups. In other words, who is an authentic fan, how are they an authentic fan, what do you have to do to prove that you are actually a fan, what investments did you have to make in order to rise to the top of the fan hierarchy? Unfortunately, these boundaries often fall within the lines of gender, sexuality, and race. That certainly resonates with far-right ideologies which are preoccupied with fabricating categories of legitimate and illegitimate citizenship.
Just as cultural diversity and gender equality has historically been framed by reactionaries as corrupting the nation, fan communities have often perceived the mainstreaming of their fandom as tarnishing its authenticity. Gamergate is a prime example of privileged male fans reacting toxically to the perceived feminization of gamer culture (Blodgett 2020, Massanari 2017). The focus on authenticity is so prominent in fandom. The same can be said about the far-right’s framing of productive citizens in relation to those who are supposedly damaging the country. The inherently toxic nature of many fandoms does not seem to fall within the “fandom as resistant” model popular with early fan scholarship, and while fan scholars have long highlighted the toxic nature of fandom (Pande, 2018; Scott, 2019), it can still be disconcerting to link fandom to something as horrendous as far-right violence.
CarrieLynn: I totally see those overlaps between fandom and far-right ideology; that is basically what I am most interested in. Because I come at this from a communication and psychology perspective, and my disciplinary background leads me to apply those theoretical lenses to this phenomenon. For example, we can draw on social identity theory to understand how people will co-opt words or use certain terms, phrases, and activities to distinguish between the in-group and the out-group. Another example, the organizational communication theory symbolic convergence helps illuminate how organizations and their communities will develop and sustain their relationships through shared fantasies and stories that explain how they see themselves and other people. Both of these theories help explain QAnon, like what Natalie was saying in terms of those specific words that QAnon uses to describe themselves and other people. We can easily see how QAnon members see themselves as the people who knew the truth, who are this army fighting to protect people and make things better. They position themselves as the heroes in this story to save the country from the cabal of sex traffickers and deep state politicians. They are definitely positioning themselves and all of these different players in their story and using their communication to build, explain, and maintain these identities.
Anthony: A popular rationale for owning a gun is being able to protect you or your family against any hypothetical threat; or “what if” the government collapses and I cannot depend on the state to uphold the rule of law. When you add the “always-on” element of fandom, or the desire to keep the play going, buying a gun might progress into buying tactical gear, then frequent trips to the local gun shop to stock up on ammunition, after that you might start conducting training exercises. What began as “what if” progresses to “possible” and eventually “likely.” When you are continually preparing for violence and conspiracy theories justify the reason for violence, it may only be a matter of time before you resort to violence.
CarrieLynn: Actually, I would say that, too, has possibly a more playful aspect, which may be more insidious. I think about people who are horror fans, and the idea of the zombie apocalypse. Deep down, the majority know it is never going to happen, but maybe, just maybe, and they cannot be completely certain it will not, in some way. We actually see doomsday preppers working on that “what if”—this playful idea of not knowing for certain and operating within that uncertainty, working through the possible outcomes, and preparing for them. When it comes to zombies, sometimes they prepare in a completely playful way, but there are also people profiting from that “what if.” For example, there are legit adult day camps, like Zombie Survival Camp, where people go and learn how to survive any natural disaster, including the zombie apocalypse. Of course, it is meant to all be fun and not taken seriously, but there is also that thought, that little “what if”: what if the fungus that can turn insects into zombies does mutate and become the human version? Like Natalie was discussing, we have this need for connection to other people, and we also have this need for control over our lives. Those are two fundamentally powerful affectations. We engage in “what ifs” to help with the anxiety of not having control, and we can rationalize doing so as just playing around so as to not seem weird to those around us. I am not sure we as humans and fan scholars have wrestled with just how powerful those two needs are.
Line: In The Ambivalent Internet (2017), Ryan Milner and Whitney Phillips emphasize a built-in structure on the Internet that allows for things to be read ambivalently. Statements, jokes, and memes are never just “this” or “that” but can be read as both in different contexts. I think that allows for this constant availability for experiencing doubt online. This ambivalence has played a big role, especially in the early days of QAnon, because of the way the conspiracy theory started out. It wasn’t necessarily a question of users on 4Chan with strongly held political beliefs; it was anonymous users pretending they had secret knowledge and were part of an intelligence agency. They were LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) and as part of their LARP there were many other Anons. LARPing is a term used for both in-person role-playing games and online role-playing. Part of the allure of this practice was the constant ambivalence. Is this part of a LARP or is this real? That ambivalence was built in from the early days of the conspiracy theory. We had this cast of characters playing FBIAnon, WhiteHouseInsiderAnon, MegaAnon, and so on. The thrill of that is obviously you’ll never know, one of them might be the real deal and so ambivalence is built into how this whole conspiracy was constructed from the beginning.
How do playful affordances on digital media contribute to these changes?
Anthony: I believe understanding fans as players (rather than simply viewers or consumers) provides a theoretical lens for analyzing the media experience as a function of codependence. Rather than assuming technology determines particular behaviors, fans actively negotiate with platforms, and in some cases, alter the logic in a dynamic relationship. Certainly, you could make the argument that traditional media have always been playful, but the highly interactive nature of today’s media environment provides for more playful possibilities. If we look at social media, for example, Facebook provides the ability to “play out” particular identities and to connect with others. If we incorporate theories of game studies, particularly in our analysis of user-generated platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube, we can highlight how in many cases it is the actions of fans, not the logic of the platforms themselves, that are perpetuating ideology.
CarrieLynn: It is important to think about the changes and power dynamics that come about because of all these new abilities to communicate with one another. Social media has a much longer history than just the digital platforms that we commonly conflate with the term, but I think, for so long, our various media technologies have either focused on interpersonal or mass communication. Interpersonal communication has a much smaller sphere of influence than mass, but mass communication has been dominated by the individuals with the capital to utilize it. Now, digital social media allows for more of a social communication where anyone and everyone can communicate with potentially anyone and everyone through the vast interconnected global social network that is human civilization. Social media and power dynamics greatly change how we think about power dynamics and that sphere of influence, bringing back that carnivalesque idea and the tremendous changes occurring across society.
Natalie: An important aspect to consider is that mainstream media is no longer the automatic go-to for information. User-generated information and posts are the new sources that ceaselessly provide content. Unfortunately, this content can be saturated with mis- and dis-information. It has become common practice to cite, for example, Facebook as a source of info on everything from epidemiology to Russian foreign policy. Because of this proliferation of information and the amount of time people spend ingesting it, it begins to create a belief in these so-called facts. And this, unfortunately, comes at the expense of requiring that information is verifiable.
Anthony: One thing that fascinates me as I review the countless FBI affidavits and news reports on the Insurrectionists, is how many of them were documenting their actions blatantly on Facebook. They were using their real names, live-streaming what they were doing, and seemingly unconcerned of the consequences. We typically think of digital technologies as determining these types of harmful behaviors or at least assuming that the anonymous nature of particular websites and platforms encourages toxic discourse, but in many ways the spread of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and hate speech is happening in broad daylight. Considering these platforms are often unregulated in the name of freedom of speech, they are enabling these darker impulses. This hands-off approach to censorship allows the “always-on” nature of digital participation to spiral out of control and can even manifest in the real world as acts of violence.
Line: I think there’s real value in considering play studies as part of fan studies research and in integrating some of those ideas. Play studies brings us a lot of insights into the everyday practices of fans that aren’t necessarily textual poaching in the classical sense or that aren’t textual production that is preservable in an archive, but everyday participation and fleeting conversations. Play helps us understand the ephemeral nature of participation in a fan community and being part of an online fandom. The playful aspects allow us to see those practices that are more fleeting in character more clearly, I think. And, it is these playful practices in particular that’s dominating on social media platforms currently. But play doesn’t just happen as a result of fans’ practices; social media platforms promote and afford play and playfulness. As a consequence, the contemporary mode of participation online is incredibly playful. An example of that is in the context of the war in Ukraine. I don’t know if you’ve seen it on Twitter, but the official Twitter account for the Ukraine government, @Ukraine, is posting memes as part of a communicative strategy on the war. They post a lot of anti-Russian memes; they make fun of Russian leaders and their supporters. There’s this underlying understanding that in order to be seen and noticed and be part of the way in which the conversation online takes place, you have to “play along.” You have to play along with the mode of participation in order to capture people’s attention.
Anthony: I think what Line just mentioned is so very important. Play, itself, is very ambiguous. The boundary of the magic circle, or the fantasy realm that one escapes into when in play (Huizinga 2016 [1949]), is always blurry. Game scholars often describe the hybrid state between the virtual world and the actual world (Keogh 2018). Play is really about augmenting reality rather than completely escaping it. The hybrid quality of play really resonates with the ambivalent nature of online discourse (Phillips and Milner, 2017). When one decides to share a conspiracy theory meme, for example, to what extent do they actually believe the conspiracy to be true or are they similar “playing along.” Maybe it doesn’t matter, because the outcome is still the same. It’s still perpetuating the harmful rhetoric associated with the meme. Creating and sharing memes might very well be the most popular mode of political engagement today. It makes sense why. Memes are not only very spreadable, but they are a highly playful type of discourse. They are easy and fun. Not to mention fannish. Meme creation is a quintessential expression of textual poaching, taking a popular cultural image and putting a political spin on it to create your own interpretation of current events. This does create a problem, though. If memes are truly the most popular form of political engagement, what does that say about the current state of political discourse? How much easier is it now for someone to cross a line into a “true believer?”
CarrieLynn: We’re seeing, of course, a lot of playfulness in how people are essentially able to engage the traditional ideas as to what is worthy, true, real, and so forth. I think this playfulness drives home this idea that there is more than one reality. There is an objective reality that we all physically embody and interact with, but then, given our subjective stance, there are all of these other realities at the same time. For some people, their own headcanon, their own interpretation of objective reality, is what matters the most, and in their playful archiving, they are essentially gathering the information that would support that specific reality.
Anthony: Archiving is such an important ingredient in the spread of conspiracy theories. Conspiracies have always existed, but 30 years ago they were allowed to dissipate. You might have had a conversation with your neighbor that you believe the election was stolen, but that conversation would go nowhere. In the digital age, the internet provides a space for these sorts of things to not only stick around but snowball out of control.
Line: In the context of QAnon there are several archives made by followers of the conspiracy theories, such as qanon.pub that is dedicated to collecting QAnon “drops” from 4Chan and 8Chan/8kun. Because posts are archived and disappear on 4Chan people have set out to establish these huge archives where they analyze the Q-drops more or less contextualized. I found a different archive which was an excel document on Google docs that listed many of the Q-drops and then suggested different interpretations for any particular drop. The “drops” were then sorted into a hierarchy in order of how verifiable they were. It was an ongoing collaborative practice in order to prove the truth of the conspiracy theory. Mittel’s concept of forensic fandom (2012) comes to mind. The constant going back over original content and analyzing it in a new light is also a very typical mode of engaging in fandom as well. Fans will watch a show over and over again, live-tweet about it over and over again and re-interpret its meaning over and over again. But it’s broader than that, I think, it’s become a general practice of forensic participation. It is a mode of playfully curating online content, which encourages constant participation and a constant going back and reviewing things.
How can we understand the relationship between Trump fandom and conspiracy theories?
Anthony: This goes back to the original question: If the Capitol Insurrectionists are fans, what are they a fan of? You could certainly make the argument that they are Trump fans. However, I think Trump is more of a symbol that galvanizes and connects these reactionary communities. By framing these individuals and communities as fans, I think we are better equipped to explain what connects an ecosystem of seemingly disconnected internet subcultures, communities, and political factions. Consider, for example, these three extremist communities: the alt-right, The Proud Boys, and QAnon followers. While there may be a great deal of demographic overlap with these groups, they also possess unique differences worth acknowledging. I believe the fan object is not Trump himself, but what he represents. I see their fandom less centered around Trump and more of a particular body politic or a perception of authentic American citizenship. Of course, all these groups direct their animosity towards multiculturalism, feminism, and progressive politics (so you could label them as anti-fans), but those are more threats to their fan object. Mel Stanfill implies that communities like these might just be fans of white supremacy (Stanfill 2020). That fits, because, to many of the Capitol Insurrectionists, whiteness is integral to their definition of authentic citizenship.
Natalie: Another example of that [about how it is maybe not the person they’re following] is seen here in South Africa. Through how people identify with those elements of QAnon and/or Trumpism.
5
Because they don’t necessarily look at the person but rather, as you said Anthony, at what is being said and latching on to that which they identify.
Line: One of the things that, for me, is different, or at least different from what I’ve seen in other types of conspiracy communities, is that being part of the QAnon community becomes heavily integrated with the identity of the person. Believing in the QAnon conspiracy theory is something followers perform through wearing merch such as clothes, flags and mobile covers. Fans are even producing their own merch in a similar way as in fans of popular culture objects. This is where there might be a shift in people’s engagement with conspiracy theories that now your sense of belonging to this community is performed in a far more explicit way that brings being part of conspiracy theory community closer to being part of a fan community, or at least there seems to be an amalgamation of those two realms and the types of practices they engage in.
CarrieLynn: I also think about the concept of the empty signifier. There is never, of course, a sign that completely does not signify something, but I think again, we might have to take a more individual interpretive perspective. Because any one sign can be used to signify a lot of different things to different people. For me, Trump signified obscene wealth and then that conspiratorial mindset that Anthony was talking about when discussing the ideal American body and so forth. But other people see him as the Messiah, this superhero, or this great conquer that’s going to fix everything. Their interpretation depends on their individual experiences and attitudes, leading to Trump’s signification having more or less religious overtones. Such differences in interpretation are common in fandoms, but they are not necessarily problematic unless the fans highlight and concentrate on those differences to further their power in the situation. Differences can be used as justification for gatekeeping and appropriation to either keep undesirables out or indoctrinate others. For example, the Punisher logo from the Marvel antihero has been appropriated by right wing and QAnon folks, so that now, if I ever see the Punisher logo, especially one with the American flag interposed on it, I am like “oh, okay, I have an idea as to who you are.” Again, from a communication perspective, anxiety/uncertainty management and expectancy violations theories help me understand that I use those symbols to determine how to interact with individuals identifying themselves via those symbols.
Anthony: Variability is key in describing the politics of the Capitol Insurrectionists. There are very important nuances between QAnon followers and the Proud Boys. However, there’s obviously a great deal of overlap in these communities, including a distrust of mainstream media and established politicians, concerns toward globalization and multiculturalism, and contempt towards social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter. What is the connective tissue? It can be challenging to pinpoint an exact political philosophy. Could it simply be white supremacy? That would explain why you have “Freedom Convey” protesters in Canada carrying confederate or “Make America Great Again” flags.
6
On the surface, a Canadian carrying a confederate flag does not make sense. However, these symbols carry connotations, and we can read between the lines.
CarrieLynn: And it is something that, again, we need to think about more in terms of the fan studies. I think fan studies has more of a predilection to do an observational form of study as there is more focus on the performance of fandom and fan identity rather than internal behaviors like emotions and interpretations. Fan studies tend to focus on external behaviors, as people’s actions are observational. So, observational research helps identify the QAnon Shaman with his buffalo hat and appropriation of indigenous people and describe his performance as contrasting the militaristic Proud Boys. However, inferring the attitudes that led him to such performances is necessary, to both objectively connect these aspects and also understand how he makes sense of his version of reality. And that is not necessarily a very easy task, especially when engaging with a potentially dangerous individual. Not just in terms of the actual research study, but the scholar must mentally and emotionally prepare themself to do so, which is why, Natalie, I applaud you so much for being willing to spend that much time down the rabbit hole. I think I like the sunlight too much.
Natalie: Something that might be worth considering as well is if people like us, who approach this type of research with an open mind, and from an objective point of view can still fall down that rabbit hole it shouldn’t be so easy to dismiss people who believe in these things as either crazy or ridiculous. If you get stuck in and look at these things, you can begin to see the power of it. Considering the prolific amount of data at the tip of anyone’s fingers, it becomes not as difficult to understand why/how people get sucked into these theories. Because through archiving and upkeep of pages and threads and sites, it posits the adage of “if it’s written down, it must be true.” And it is as easy as a keyword search to find information that will support a conspiratorial talking point that could begin to, perhaps, sway even the most clear-minded people. The point I want to make here is that if it can create doubt in our minds, which we consciously try to prime toward objectivity, then it becomes ever more understandable why/how people succumb and/or become further entrenched in these, sometimes harmful and dangerous, conspiracy theories.
Line: Another thing I noticed, as I was on 4Chan, there is that there is a group of people who are very dedicated in different ways to unravel the entire QAnon conspiracy theory and they are in a sense, themselves an anti-fan community that are playing a forensic game where they’re trying to sort through the clues for the purpose of laying it bare for what it is. But both for us as scholars trying to understand the QAnon community, and for this group trying to reveal the truth about who is posting as Q it becomes this endless spiral of diving deeper. There is no cumulative narrative, because the conspiracy theory is the result of collaborative practices, a collective intelligence of sorts that happens on many platforms and through many individuals and through a range of media texts. I, in my capacity as researcher, will not get to a point where I can have a hundred percent understanding of this phenomenon, because it is so ambiguous, there are so many different interpretations, there are so many different narratives that are going on and so many different intentions. And so that’s another question, how do we research these things through research questions that can actually be answered.
What’s in store for the future of fan studies?
Anthony: There is one thing I want to mention. Obviously, this roundtable was designed to discuss QAnon, Trump fans, and the Capitol Insurrection. It is important to mention that there is an array of fannish communities and subcultures that are influenced and even centered on reactionarism. Not to bring up my dissertation again (but I am currently a PhD-student, and it is ingrained in my psyche), but I am currently examining a fan identity that I am calling the white masculine crusader. This fan identity is centered around a particular body ideology and defined by the challenge to prepare the body. Not only do these fans accept this body ideology and the challenge of preparedness but perform this identity through the playful affordances of digital technologies. I would argue that the Capitol Insurrectionists were playing out some version of this fan identity on January 6. However, we could take the same playful and fannish framework and apply it to something like fitness culture. Unfortunately, fitness or healthiness is often conflated with normative standards of beauty, including thinness and whiteness. It is also very popular for fitness trends to have a religious component, pairing an imperative to prepare the body with the spiritual imperative to prepare the soul. That resonates pretty nicely with the far-right’s obsession with defining appropriate and deviant bodies. Oftentimes we point to these extreme examples of white supremacy, but you do not have to be a Capital Insurrectionist to perpetuate reactionary politics.
Line: One of the tasks for fan scholars going forward is considering the role of fan practices as they become integrated into other cultural spheres and into other areas of everyday practices. These processes of fanization, especially through the playfulness that often characterizes fans mode of engagement, seems to play an increasingly significant role in networked communities and that is a development, which certainly makes fan studies increasingly important in a broader media studies context as well. There’ll be plenty of plenty for us to do, going forward.
CarrieLynn: Right now, my research group is really interested in that conversion, like what you were saying, Anthony: the indoctrination and the proselytizing of the propaganda that explains how a fandom starts, expands, changes, adapts and even dies. I think understanding those practices, processes, and pathways would help us to understand how fandom has become integrated into more than what we would consider the traditional locations or spheres of influence of fandom.
Natalie: Another interesting aspect to this relates to how people are exhibiting their fandom and through that showing their identities. It’s becoming more and more of a surprise, sometimes when you see how widespread fanization really is and how it oozes into just about every aspect of life, whether people know it or not. And I suppose what it comes down to is that there shouldn’t be a singular definition of what a fan community is or what typifies or characterizes a fan or, in fact, who might become part of it.
In conclusion, the year 2022 brought with it the January 6 committee hearings. They were broadcast for the public in an attempt to flesh out the responsibilities for what can only be described as a coup attempt amongst those in government and for the president. Part of the hearings focussed on how Trump communicated with his fans and incited the violent insurrection by telling them that their country was under attack from the rigged election and they “had to show strength” in order to “take back their country.” Despite promising the protesters on the day, Trump did not show up at the Capitol building to protest with them. Meanwhile, the FBI asked the public to help identify participants at the insurrection and shared their photos on social media. Some participants in the insurrection used go-pro cameras or smart phones to live-stream their attendance or post their presence in real-time to social media making them less difficult to track down. But it demonstrates a central point for this article: participants in the insurrection were, to a large degree, taking part in digital practices as part of networked publics, both in the years leading up to the insurrection and on the day itself. These practices deserve our investigation and attention going forward and, we suggest, fan studies have a responsibility and potential to bring a deeper understanding to how these phenomena come to be.
