In snark forums, fans are haters and haters are friends
Carly Riordan knows that thousands of people hate her because they have been banding together to badmouth her on forums for over a decade.
Riordan published her Lifestyle Blog continuously since 2008. Back then, she was an overzealous Georgetown student sharing her preppy OOTDs (outfits of the day) and study tips. The blog, originally called The College Prepster, evolved with her as she graduated college, moved to New York City, and worked at a startup. After a few years, she dedicated herself to the blog full-time and has been doing so ever since. She moved to New Jersey, got married, and now has two kids. In 2021, she published Business-Focused: A Guide to Setting Your Mind, Body and Business Up for Success. Her life is completely different than it was sixteen years ago, but the blog remains. And so do the haters.
“I regularly checked my Google Analytics data to track where traffic was coming from,” says Riordan. “One day I saw a website name I’d never heard of that was driving traffic to my site, and I clicked on the link. Someone had posted a link to my site in a comment at the time that was about another blogger, and I was pretty horrified.”
The link had taken them to a so-called snark forum, where readers meet anonymously to make fun of bloggers and influencers. Communities like Lipstick Alley and Get Off My Internets were early influencer snark forums, but much of the snark has since migrated to Reddit. There are subreddits dedicated to specific influencers, but also larger communities based on geographic areas or niches. Here, snarkers can Keep an eye on influencers and discuss the intricacies of their intolerable behavior and lack of accessibility.
In some ways, snark culture is a symptom of people being online way too much: it’s a toxic reaction to the toxic 21st century phenomenon that is influencers. The old internet adage “don’t read the comments” is sorely applicable here. I’ve seen posts criticizing influencers’ looks, the way they decorate their homes, and even sharing links to the homes they live in. That’s a lot, and it’s often ugly.
But influencers are just a newer form of celebrity, and likewise, these snark communities are a newer expression of a fundamental fan impulse, namely the desire to criticize and be heard by celebrities. This is less a quirk of modern celebrity culture than a phenomenon as old as celebrity itself, adapting to a new format.
In her book The drama of celebritySharon Marcus argues that three entities—the public, media producers, and the stars themselves—work simultaneously to create and perpetuate celebrity in our culture. These three entities compete with each other for dominance, but also support each other in Marcus’s celebrity ecosystem.
For as long as there have been celebrities, there have been fans who build their identities on proximity to those celebrities. Collecting, criticizing, and redressing information is central to fan performance. Analyzing scrapbooks and diaries compiled by fans of actors in the 1860s, Marcus finds that “theatregoers not only held a wide range of opinions about how actors should move, speak, and wear their hair, but were willing to go to great lengths to express them.”
Marcus notes that when technology made it possible to keep theaters dark with a spotlight on the stage, audiences adopted a more critical attitude than had previously been the case when they had spent the entire show discussing the performance: “Far from being passive and compliant, audiences… saw the theater visit as an opportunity to test their acumen, and did not hesitate to offer advice to a celebrated young actor on how to improve his performance,” Marcus wrote.
Marcus quotes from a collection of fan letters found in the home of actor Edwin Booth: “Some correspondents represented themselves as experts who could teach Booth a thing or two about acting. One advised Booth to read lines from Hamlet; another noted that the actor’s disguise as an aged Richelieu might seem more realistic if he put on ‘spectacles, or what served as spectacles at the time.'”
Regular people who give Booth, one of the most famous and successful actors of the 19th century, performance tips expect strangers to anonymously pick apart influencers’ outfits on Reddit. That’s because they arise from the same impulse: the desire to connect with the projected reality of fame.
Envy and class discrimination are certainly one reason for this. Influencers can absurd amounts of money from brand deals and collaborations, and the majority of their work revolves around monetizing and portraying their own authenticity. This is a job that combines acting with marketing and editorial creation and curation, and that reality contradicts the stereotype of influencers as unskilled and famous-for-being-famous. Still, it’s not manual labor. It’s glamorous. They get free stuff from companies. They go on trips with brands. They post on Instagram as a profession while their followers – whose engagement is responsible for their wealth – hate their videos from comparatively less glamorous jobs and lives. There is frustration with how the market values the work of these influencers – work that, if done well, is by its nature not see like work at all, but more like extravagant payment for being attractive and happy and having constant vacations – in a society that is otherwise designed to make workers feel maximally stressed and aware of their fungibility at all times. But even in outraged anger, viewers cannot look away.
Riordan said she no longer reads the sarcastic comments, but with rising economic inequality, awareness of social issues and post-pandemic boredom, the mood in communities seems louder these days: “Honestly, I can understand that sitting at home and being unhappy with your life (be it relationship problems, financial problems, workplace problems) and watching others live the lives you want (travel, families, happy marriages, financial freedom) can make you hate them.”
The other explanation for this behavior, however, could be something like genuine commitment. The life of a devoted hater is oddly similar to that of a fan. The snarkers meet daily, sometimes multiple times a day, to analyze and criticize every move of the object of their ire. They watch every Instagram story, YouTube video, and TikTok, they listen to every podcast episode, and they closely analyze the influencer’s interactions with friends. They buy merchandise – to complain about the quality versus price. They go to live shows – and report back to the groups on how bad they are. With their extensive knowledge of the influencers and their eagle-eyed devotion to following their content, the snarkers are often the first viewers to find out if there’s been a breakup, if someone is pregnant, or whether they have undergone cosmetic surgeryIf you look like a fan, move like a fan and talk like a fan – at what point are you just a fan?
A moderator of an influencer subreddit spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, telling me only that she is a woman in her early thirties who lives in the northeastern United States. She said that many of the snarkers start out as genuine fans, but then distort their opinion of the influencer: “Most snarkers start by snarking when they see something odd or insincere about an influencer they follow,” she wrote. “Often, this involves criticism of the influencers’ privilege, the way they promote beauty ideals to a vulnerable following, and their blatant consumerism.”
Sometimes the communities Centers for the discussion of dubious sponsorship contracts the influencers do not disclose clearly or not at all. More often they are filled with Screenshots of Instagram stories And long discussions that influencers do not deserve the fame, money or opportunities they have.
Snark communities develop rules, schedules, inside jokes, and norms. Moderators of a subreddit I followed while researching this story discovered and deleted a post in which someone had provided the influencer’s New York address. The thread was filled with comments from members condemning doxing. The moderator I chatted with said she spends a few hours a week moderating and has become text-friends with someone she met on the subreddit: “We know each other’s identities and Reddit handles, and there is trust,” she wrote.
For many influencers, a community that spies on snarks is proof that you’ve made it on the internet. Riordan has struck a delicate balance with her haters: “Do I wish these pages would stop existing? Yes. Do I think that means you’re doing something right as an influencer? Honestly, yes,” she said. “If people are interested, they’re interested. Period. Even if someone is a ‘hate follower,’ they really are some of the most engaged followers, which helps my account in the algorithm and increases my viewership, which is a metric that brands use.”
The snarkers, on the other hand, claim that their activities don’t really have much to do with the influencers they organize around: “Now we have a community, we have our inside jokes and we like to joke with each other,” the moderator told me. “It’s not just about them, but also about the online friendships we’ve made.”
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