Fan Hater

"Final Fantasy VIII sucks and you suck for liking it!"

— Noah "The Spoony One" Antwiler

To some people, there is only one thing worse than anything they consider horrible — people liking it.

In a nutshell, a Fan Hater is someone who hates the fans of a particular work. Often in a Hatedom, but not always.

The thing is that to these people, art is Serious Business and they treat their enjoyment of art the way some people take to competitive gaming. If you like anything not up to their standards, they will either mock you, mock that thing in front of your face, or just go on a diatribe about why you shouldn't like that thing. To make matters worse, they will also stereotype fans (e.g., anybody who likes comic books is an obese loser; anyone who likes anime is some annoying, anti-American, over-obsessive wannabe Japan-fetishizing freak; people who like cartoons are pedophilic Manchildren; boys who watch girls' cartoons are gay; girls who watch boys' cartoons are fake geeks or Yaoi Fangirls; anyone who likes metal/punk is a wannabe tough guy or a pretentious hipster jackass; people who like rap are wangsters; anyone who watches Professional Wrestling is a redneck-homo and thinks it's 100% real; etc.) and not fitting any of these stereotypes will induce either a No True Scotsman or they'll still find at least one thing they find negative and stereotype the fans of the work with said negative thing. Fan Haters tend to refer to the targets of their hatred as the "Lowest Common Denominator" or "unwashed masses".

Note that hating the work in question is not required: there's plenty of Fan Haters who have nothing against the work in question, and are "merely" repulsed by the associated fandom—a common case of the Fan Hater is somebody from a more general fandom finding a subfandom creepy and horrible.

Be warned some may pretend to be fan haters, but are in fact Trolls, which some find to be worse, depending on who you are.

A Sub-Trope of Hate Dumb and Opinion Myopia. The inverse is Complaining About People Not Liking the Show.

Due to past messes, please avoid Take That! statements, flame bait, "This Troper" blurbs, redundancy, and redundancy.

Common forms of this trope:

• Accentuate the Negative, in which the person sees or expresses nothing but negative values in a work and trashes anyone who dares to actually like the work.
• Adaptation Decay, in that they hate anyone who likes an adaptation that isn't the original version.
• Animation Age Ghetto, in that they hate anyone older than 12 who watches anything animated.
• Broken Base, in that the dissenters will hate the loyalists for not giving up on a particular series.
• Comedy Ghetto, in which they hate anyone who likes a work just because it isn't serious.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: In which they attack a work they know little or nothing about.
• Condemned by History: The work they hate has fallen out of fashion years ago, so why should they have to tolerate the few who still like it?
• Dead Horse Genre, in which they hate on people for liking what they deem inferior brands of music.
• Fandom Rivalry: In which one fandom hates another fandom, and vice-versa.
• Fan Dumb, in which they assume all fans of a work to have the same negative stereotypes and viewpoints.
• Girl-Show Ghetto, in that they hate anyone who watches a cartoon not "intended for" their gender.
• Hate Dumb, in which they dislike a work because of trivial reasons.
• Hype Aversion, in which they dislike a work simply because people keep recommending it.
• Hype Backlash: In which they hate a work simply because of the attention it has received or is receiving. A subset hates things that are critically-acclaimed.
• Hypocrite: Many of them may actually like the work they claim to hate.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: In which a work is hated for having mass appeal, selling out and abandoning the "true fans".
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: in which they hate you merely because you like something that they see as the same as something else.
• Jerkass: They just want an excuse to be a jerk.
• Misaimed Fandom: In which they hate you for liking something the "wrong way".
• No True Scotsman: In which they claim you're not a "true" fan for liking a work.
• Nostalgia Filter: They hate a work just because it's new and not something they watched when they were younger.
• Public Medium Ignorance: They are known to complain about works of fiction just because they are in forms of media that they don't normally read, watch or play.
• Psychological Projection: In which they project their own negative & toxic behavior onto the fans of the work, accuse them of having those traits, all while also denying that they themselves are doing that very thing. Essentially, they say: "I'm not the jerk. Those 'fans' of the work are the real jerks, and as such deserve my contempt."
• Sci Fi Ghetto: They assume that science fiction works have no artistic merit whatsoever.
• Scrub: Players of a competitive video game who insist that all players should play their way.
• Serious Business: The MST3K Mantra most certainly does not apply.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: In which a work has a notoriously unpleasant or obnoxious fanbase that results in more level-headed fans turning against the rest of the fandom; when someone says something akin to "I love the work but the fans are too toxic", this is the sentiment at play.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: In which you get hate for playing a game the "wrong way."
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: They dislike an adaptation or reboot just for making a few changes to the source material, even if the change is relatively minor or if the original work would have been difficult to make a completely faithful adaptation to.
• All the True Art pages
• And especially Guilty Pleasures, because they'll try to make you feel guilty for it.

See our Analysis page for more details. noreallife

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In-Universe Examples Only:

Anime & Manga

• Love Lucky has an in-universe example with Erika, the female lead singer of the rock band "M.I.T.", who is a self-professed hater of "normal people". This apparently arose from the way she was treated by the band's fans after she replaced the previous lead.
• Dragon Ball Z has an in-universe case of this. In one of the episodes during the Buu arc before the World Martial Arts Tournament begins, Krillin comments on how he's unsure of who is more annoying: Mr. Satan or his fans.
  • During the Cell saga, Krillin also admitted to cheering for Cell during Cell's "fight" with Satan.

Comic Books

• Deadpool once killed an A.I.M. soldier for daring to prefer the Star Wars prequel trilogy over the originals, and for that matter attempting to praise Hayden Christensen's performance in them. This is Deadpool we're talking about, after all.

Fanfics

• My Immortal is basically set in a world with this as its hat. There are but three sorts of people in My Immortal-land; "goffs", "posers" and "preps". Being a "goff", which entails wearing black clothes from Hot Topic and listening to the emo bands the author likes, is the One True Path and everyone else sucks for existing. "Preps" are the unwashed masses who shop at Abercrombie & Fitch and worship Britney Spears. "Posers" are "preps" who try to be "goffic" but listen to the "wrong" music and are thus evil.
  • The Parody Fic Xtremly Scray - which has its goffic characters beat people up for even remotely liking their preppy bands and movies, films like Top Hat and Die Hard (They declare the only true goffic films to be either Tim Burton (including his less German-Expressionism inspired films, like Pee-wee's Big Adventure) or low budget horror B-Movies like Shark Attack 3: Megalodon).
• In Redaction of the Golden Witch, a considerable fanbase has grown around the mystery of the Rokkenjima Incident. In recent years, somebody has been pulling mean-spirited pranks at the WitchCon gatherings, seemingly trying to drive people away from the fandom. A subset of fans has actually latched onto this, blaming a new 'Golden Witch' for the incidents and declaring themselves their followers. To that end, they attend the Cons just to Troll and harass other Witch Hunters.
• The Pokémon Squad: The plot for the episode "Nobody Cares About the Bears" is kickstarted by RM's refusal to respect that Ash enjoys Johnny Test; MM calls him out on it, saying that he hates the show but doesn't harass people for liking it.

Films — Live-Action

• Rock fans vs. disco fans in Detroit Rock City.
  • This one is based in reality. During the late 1970s there was a very real rivalry between rock fans and disco fans. The rivalry came to a head on July 12, 1979 (sometimes referred to as "the night disco died") during a baseball promotion called Disco Demolition Night, which resulted in thousands of rock fans storming the field at Chicago's Comiskey Park to express their hatred of disco. The event made news worldwide and less than a year later disco was effectively dead in the United States and Canada (although it would remain popular in Europe for another few years).
• Star Wars fans (the protagonists) vs. Trekkies, I mean, Trekkers in Fanboys. This goes both ways, too.
  • Hutch and Windows don't sell any Star Trek stuff at their comic shop. They despise it and its fans along with it. But they do have a tricorder on display just to lure Trekkies inside and then tell them that they don't sell any Star Trek stuff.
  • On the way to Frisco, Hutch decides to take a detour via Riverside, Iowa, future birthplace of one James T. Kirk, to go and troll some Trekkies. They do discover a bunch of Star Trek fans unveiling a statue that's supposed to (but actually doesn't) display the fight between Kirk and Khan. Things quickly heat up almost to the point of a brawl.
  • The meeting-point in Las Vegas turns out to be the location of the annual Star Trek Las Vegas convention. And guess who just happens to be among the attendees, ready and willing to beat our protagonists up.

Literature

• There's a line in American Psycho where Patrick mentions that no one should feel sympathy for the woman he's forcing into getting an abortion due to the fact that her favorite movie is Pretty in Pink and "she thinks Sting is cool."
• Rob Fleming from High Fidelity (Rob Gordon in The Movie) questions how one can be friends with people whose favorite band is Simple Minds. One of the reasons why he dislikes Ian is because of that weird ethno music he listens to. And Barry chases a potential customer out of Rob's record store because he wanted to acquire "I Just Called To Say I Love You," a song from Stevie Wonder's 80s pop period.
• This is the Grinch's signature characteristic. He dislikes the people of Whoville in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! because they love celebrating Christmas and cannot stand seeing them enjoy it. It's revealed in The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat! that he does these things not wholly out of malice, though—he believes he's supposed to behave this way.
• Web serial Barkwire occasionally breaks format to show us the personal blog of BiGDOG, in which he explains why the other characters are idiots for being fans of certain stray dogs. He then provides a list of stray dogs that a sensible reviewer would admire.

Live-Action TV

• In Friends, it's mentioned that Chandler once broke up with a girl because she didn't hate Yanni.
• Big Brother:
  • In the 11th American Season, four previous players were invited as "guests" to give their insight on the current game being played. Danielle stated that she wanted Natalie to win, and held up her hand to silence the audience, who begun to boo.
  • Players have taken potshots at the fans of other players (or even previous seasons) but these have never made the feeds. There was also controversy in Season 13 where Jeff had gone off on a rant, not only insulting the premise of Harry Potter but also taking a few potshots at the fans.
• In one episode of Community, Abed calls Shirley a terrible person for liking Brett Ratner's movies — and even worse, comparing him favourably to Steven Spielberg.
• On The Mighty Boosh, Vince Noir is the self-styled "King of the Mods". When he meets his friend's mentor, the mentor bursts out screaming "A mod?! I am a Rocker! He is a Mod! We are mortal enemies!" This doubles as a Historical In-Joke which references the two sub-cultures clashing in 1960's England.
• In one episode of Psych, Shawn and Gus take on a client who's dying from polonium poisoning. Shawn repeatedly berates the poor guy for proudly stating that his favorite band is Duran Duran.

Music

• The lyrics to Sloan's "Coax Me" include the line, "it's not the band I hate: it's their fans".
• The guy in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Close But No Cigar", who breaks up with women over minor flaws, once broke up with a woman because she owns a copy of Joe Dirt.
• Sloppy Seconds' song "You've Got A Great Body, But Your Record Collection Sucks" is all about this trope.

Professional Wrestling

• This was Michael Cole's gimmick when he became a heel on WWE NXT and commentary. If the fans and the IWC loved it he would hate it (such as Daniel Bryan,) and if they hated wrestling characters like Vickie Guerrero, he would absolutely love them, to piss off the fans.
• This is the gimmick of The Shield. If the fans want something and they have the opportunity to ruin it, they will every time, and call it "justice".
• Jim Cornette often refers to fans of wrestling he finds unacceptable as scum or idiots. When discussing fans of deathmatch wrestling he used the term "scum" repeatedly to show his disdain for them.

Video Games

• The Krunch radio station from the Saints Row series is a hard rock and metal station that will frequently air this between songs:
  [pop music playing] Do you like pop music? [music cuts out] Go fuck yourself! [heavy metal guitar riff playing] The Krunch: 106.66!
  • That parodies the fan-pandering promos many radio stations use:
    We only have the [music genre] you [Target Demographic] like, and everyone else can go to hell!
• The premise of No Straight Roads is a rock band attempting to destroy electronic dance music (it's more complicated than that, but numerous characters in-universe boil it down to this). The crux of said rock band's Character Development is coming to realize that there's a place for music they don't personally like.

Web Animation

• GoAnimators hate "baby shows" in spades. Most grounded videos made by GoAnimators involve baby show characters, especially Dora the Explorer and Caillou.

Webcomics

• The bug of Bug Martini has a Grinch persona that is a fan hater.
• As part of its increasing meta-ness, Act 6 of Homestuck introduces Caliborn, who is basically a personification of the comic's fan haters. This includes the people who complain about their friends talking about Homestuck and trying to get them interested in it.
  • This character is revealed to be a younger version of Lord English, who in the second intermission of Act 6 murdered Homestuck author Andrew Hussie.

Web Original

• Animat is this when it comes to the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies saying that they are films that not only he hates that everyone else like but films he hates but can't understand why anybody would like it, saying people only like it for the food animation and the fact that it has Phil Lord & Chris Miller involved with it. He would outright say in his video essay on Rotten Tomatoes that he knows "for a fact is bad".
  • Just watching it for a second in the animation montage at the Oscars made him go on a short rant, comparing the Academy acknowledging its existence to an American Heroes slideshow featuring Charles Manson, and wanting the guy who showed Cloudy in the montage to get a slap in the face.
• See this article from The Onion: Man Who Enjoys Thing Informed He Is Wrong
• The Spoony One made a series of videos talking about his hatred for Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy X-2. This has caused Noah Antwiler (who plays Spoony) to take some real backlash, with him having to point out that Spoony is a character and not everything "he" says is Noah's real opinion.
  • Then things got a little worse when Noah (not Spoony) disparaged Nintendo^note Saying they needs to shut the doors on all of their primary franchises, especially Zelda, which he calls an unchanging series and TRON: Legacy^note Calling the movie crap and one of the worst films of 2010 and insulting anyone who liked it by saying they have low standards and are easily entertained.
  • He also said that if you like Final Fantasy XIII, you are lying to yourself.
    • Same with Battlestar Galactica.
• Random DCE was known for this, especially in his early years. While he softened up in recent years, he still thinks liking anime is beneath him.
  • Though he has admitted to liking some anime, such as Azumanga Daioh, Megaman NT Warrior, Blood: The Last Vampire, and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. Maybe he just doesn't like the more well-known ones like Naruto?
• Yahtzee is prone to doing this when in character, and he doesn't just hate one kind of gamer — he's hated on people who like Eastern RPGs, Western RPGs, Silent Hill fans, people who like Halo, people who played Psychonauts, people who didn't play Psychonauts, console gamers, PC gamers, fans of point and click adventure games, people who own a Wii, fans of MMORPGs, Korean gamers, fans of sprite comics, fans of Ctrl+Alt+Del, fans of The Sims, Retro gamers, Indie gamers, people who hate retro, people who hate indies, Joss Whedon, anyone who likes Joss Whedon, etc. Most it is hyperbolic though, and plays into the Misanthrope Supreme Hates Everyone Equally persona he adopts for the reviews, and he frequently drops Hypocrisy Nods as he is a self-admitted fan of quite a few things from the preceding list. Somewhat less defensibly, he's also made numerous extremely vicious statements about Americans and their preferences out-of-character.
• MovieBob heaps criticism on some movies and games, but has also cast disdain on anyone who enjoys them, sometimes suggesting these works are so bad that the only explanation for their popularity must be that Viewers Are Morons. He has articulated this rage in economic terms: the worst part isn't that people enjoy the bad film, it's that they're giving money to the bad filmmaker thus ensuring that more crap will be produced and that better work may be crowded out. Movie Bob has amassed his own Hate Dom, perhaps in part because of this antagonistic attitude and those who feel slighted by it. And in recent years he has changed his mind and considers fan-hate an Old Shame, recognizing that it doesn't improve a work but only inflates the Hate Dumb surrounding it.
• Mario Teh Plumber absolutely despises modern Sonic games as well as anybody who likes them. He has a similar attitude to modern Nintendo games and their fans.
• The Distressed Watcher made nine videos complaining about the Star Wars prequels; he often called the fans stupid.
  • He also proclaimed that anyone who enjoyed Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, even as a Guilty Pleasure, should be hauled into a concentration camp and killed. Keep in mind that Channel Awesome, the website he posted this review on, has a respectable number of Jewish contributors, and Doug Walker, the face of the site, called the movie "enjoyably adequate." Probably not the best choice of words.
• Ghost does NOT like bronies.
  • Neither much do the Hijacker Trolls; although they hate beliebers a lot more.
• Black Pawn Movement is made up of a group of fans and anti-fans of the series Twilight, dealing with the most obnoxious fans on Youtube. Since the Twilight hype has died down, they have been switching to music, such as Lady Gaga, Insane Clown Posse, and Justin Bieber.
• What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?: Nash has quite the beef with Bronies.
• In the Plinkett Reviews of the Star Wars Prequels he says that if you thought the prequels were "betterer" or were less "boringer" than the original then you're wrong.
• Game Show Garbage, a WrestleCrap-type site that focuses on Game Shows, once featured the Price is Right fan site Golden-Road.net as one of their inductions. In the article, Robert Seidelman collectively dismisses the members of the community as Fan Dumb, accusing them of having overactive Nostalgia Filters and being too quick to cry They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. He also takes a milder swipe at the GSN message boards. The article eventually was toned down to be a little less harsh and remove attacks on specific members.
  • Encyclopedia Dramatica also has an article bashing Golden-Road.net.
• It's pretty clear in his Turn Up The Music review that Todd in the Shadows hates Chris Brown's "Team Breezy" fans as much as (or possibly even worse than) Chris Brown himself, citing all the instances in which they wrote off the Rihanna scandal (or even worse, accused her of instigating it) and even admit that they'd let Chris Brown beat them (though he admits that at least some of the latter posts/tweets/etc are more than likely Trolls.)
  • He does clearly distinguish between people who like his music and people who like him as a person. Todd finds Brown as a person to be absolutely repulsive and can't understand why anyone would like him, but doesn't care if you like his music, admitting to liking a few of Brown's songs himself as well as pointing out that he himself is a fan of the music of morally suspect people like Phil Spector.
• Subverted by Doug Walker, who says that he actually wants to meet someone who liked The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (cited by him as the worst movie he's ever seen) just so he can hear why they'd like it. He also has valiantly tried to get it into fandom's heads that this trope is awful.
  • Despite that though, he has mocked fans of TMZ and Happy Madison for being unintelligent, and The Nostalgia Critic being much worse with this in reboot despite coming round to Doug's POV in his Series Fauxnale was called out by Sage.
  • Rob Walker, Doug's brother and co-writer, however, is not by any means above this trope, especially towards fans of Man of Steel. He even insulted Angry Joe because he defended it, and attacking fans on Facebook who commented on the fact they enjoyed it, in one case even insulting one for "not being able to accept other people's opinions" when the fan called him out on insulting fans for liking it, without any sense of irony. It didn't help that he kept ranting about the film more than a year after it was released, even frustrating people who also hated it.
• Confused Matthew also seems to fit this trope. He seems to be unable to understand how anyone can like the certain movies that he absolutely despises (The Lion King and 2001: A Space Odyssey in particular). And sometimes can (probably unintentionally) insult the fans of the movie that he's reviewing.
• In 20 Haunting Halloween Facts by Matt Santoro, Matt says that people who play World of Warcraft have unibrows, have hairy palms, and leave the dead only in search of food.
• Rocked averts this trope. Often when he's harshly criticizing a song or band, he will admit that he doesn't have a problem with his viewers actually liking what he doesn't. Though according to himself, he's still gotten death threats from Limp Bizkit fans.
• Radiodrome host Josh Hadley is notorious for this, especially towards fans of Quentin Tarantino, Joss Whedon, and lately, Zack Snyder.
• JesuOtaku, formerly of Channel Awesome, was known for his exceptionally harsh reviewing style, attacking not only shows but also whole fandoms. By far his harshest moment was describing MLP:FiM fans as a bunch of whiny, misogynistic, borderline-paedophilic Psychopathic Manchildren (this goes into more detail). He also once upset RWBY fans by saying the show was "an anime brought to you by TVTropes" and anyone who liked it was stupid and had absolutely no standards, and has also voiced similar sentiments towards fans of Doctor Who, the new Star Trek movies by JJ Abrams, and every single series created by Joss Whedon, among others.
• Strongly defied in the last couple of years by Geek Juice Media, who have kicked out former contributors such as Josh Hadley and Tom Badguy for this kind of behavior.
• Don East of Anime Abomination usually avoids this, but he had a particularly sour spot towards Blue Exorcist. When the show was airing on Toonami, he would get annoyed that the series got better ratings than One Piece. At one point, he said that if Blue Exorcist got better ratings than One Piece, he said he hoped for the fan's sake he would never meet them at a convention he was going to, which sound like a threat.
• The Rageaholic falls into this A LOT. Especially towards fans of the Metal Gear Franchise and Hideo Kojima in general. But this extends to pretty much anyone who enjoys things he doesn't like, the list of which is extensive.
• Quite a few people thought that The Blockbuster Buster fell into this with his review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice wherein he had a sycophantic fanboy blind to the flaws of the film appear on screen during his review of the film, and earlier in the review insisted that "True Fans" of the DCU shouldn't like the movie or the DC Extended Universe.
• I Hate Everything, despite the title being an exageration, is also pretty notorious for this with a short list of fandoms he hates (to the point of making a Top 5 Worst Fandoms list) including: Anime fans, Bronies, Five Nights at Freddy's, and (most recently) Rick and Morty, though generally he directs his vitriol at the more extreme subsects who take things too far.
• In episode 2 of Every Faggot Ever, the titular faggot flies into a rage and starts insulting a little girl who admits to liking Justin Bieber, since that episode was about bashing his Hate Dumb.

Western Animation

• In Beavis And Butthead, they were watching a Bon Jovi video. Beavis didn't think it was that bad, and Butthead kept smacking him for not thinking it sucked. Finally Beavis got fed up and kicked Butthead in the nuts. In the 2021 relaunch, Butthead throws Beavis out of his own house for dancing to BTS.
• In an episode of South Park, the boys play The Lord of the Rings and stumble across another group of boys playing Harry Potter. Cartman scoffs, "Fags!"
• Family Guy:
  • in "The King is Dead", Lois is outraged that the people of Quahog liked Peter's rewriting of The King and I and lambasts them for approving the "mind-numbing schlock".
  • In another episode, Peter is watching a public access show devoted entirely to talking about how awesome KISS is. They get a caller who says "KISS sucks!", prompting Peter to angrily declare "Trace the call!". The host recognizes the voice as Styx's lead singer Dennis DeYoung, and proceeds to insult him and his band.
  • In "Brian's Play", Stewie criticizes Brian's hackneyed-but-successful play A Passing Fancy and denounces the audience as "braying hyenas".
• Dethklok of Metalocalypse hates their own fans, downright having written a song to express their disgust. Helps the fans are often mentally unstable, disturbed or just stupid, often to violent/lethal levels.
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode Nerds of a Feather, the boys attend a convention where a literal civil war is breaking out between nerds over which genre is better; fantasy or science fiction. Phineas and Ferb themselves seem to be the only ones who acknowledge you can like different genres.
• The titular Rick of Rick and Morty utterly hates heist movies and the people who like them. When he's being savagely booed by a crowd of heist fans, he has this to say:
  Rick: Your boos mean nothing! I've seen what makes you cheer!
• The Simpsons: Multiple episodes like "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge", "Bart After Dark" and "The Great Wife Hope" make it perfectly clear that Marge will go after any kind of entertainment she considers unwholesome with zeal in a relentless hunt to shut it down, even if (and at least once directly said especially if) it's something she cannot herself see enjoying because she is an incredibly boring woman and her beliefs of what's "fun" are equally annoying.

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