Every fictional media and its characters have admirers, especially if they are special and just so good. Decades ago, fans of comic books or a certain show or movie needed to find ways how to praise and show their love and admiration to the media, which included specified Cons, panels, and forums where fans could go to one place and make a whole weekend out of living in a bubble of their favorite thing in the world. However, the Internet happened, and massive audiences started being “stans” all over social media which brought on some bad “eggs”. In this article, we will list our picks of the 15 most toxic fandoms in the world.
We will include every media and activity from music to sports and provide our reasoning on why these fandoms ended up on this list. We do not think every single fan of these groups is toxic but sometimes actions speak really loud, and in this case, we will turn them into words. If you are interested, stick with us until the end of the article. Before we start, not all fans are toxic, and mostly, these are actions of the minority. Without further ado, let’s start!
15. Metalheads
As in every fictional media, music is a huge topic of discussion amongst the people. The music became an indicator of people’s nature based on the music they listen to. For example, if a person listens to pop (popular music), they are generic, boring, and do not know anything about what music really is.
Unfortunately, metalheads are part of those “judgy” people who are always overanalyzing and criticizing other genres of music and making points about how metal music is superior to the rest. Do not get us wrong, metal music is so good, but how many times in your life have you met a metal music fan and got rinsed because you liked listening to My Chemical Romance or Green Day back in the day, and they listened to superior Metallica or Black Sabbath?
All in all, the metalheads get up in arms for a lot of trivial things, which is really annoying, and for that, they are on this list.
14. Nostalgic Fans
The difficult everyday present has always caused older folks of complaining about how everything was better back in the day. The same thing goes for fictional media. Here is a great example – New Spider-Man was picked to continue telling the story of Brooklyn’s famous hero in MCU, and comparisons started. Not even comparisons, just negativity towards Tom Holland and praise for Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man.
Holland’s portrayal of the hero calmed a lot of fans down but after the recent Spider-Man movie released, No Way Home, “Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man is better” talk started again. God forbid you like new-style cartoons or anime, because another “back in my day, cartoons were masterpieces” exclamation starts once again. Don’t get us wrong, every older generation criticizes newer generations for every single thing, and it will never stop, but sometimes, it is better for people to calm down and embrace the new content that is offered to us, because who guarantees it will happen again.
13. Supernatural Fans
Supernatural aired on CW for fifteen seasons, and some would think that the fans would leave the show’s fandom premises after a few bad seasons, but Supernatural fans stayed and supported the show until the end. To me personally, it seems that fans that stayed were mostly shippers of the main characters in the show Castiel and Dean, and that is without mentioning people who shipped brothers Sam and Dean, which was really weird, and fans who wanted fan-favorite characters to come back after being killed off.
Supernatural was a really good show but fell victim to being too long and making up the plots to keep the show afloat. That can be blamed on CW since the network realized the benefits of Supernatural fans still watching the show. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even for plot reasons, but for ships like Destiel and some fans even “bullying” writers to bring back characters like Crowley and Chuck. Supernatural ended on a weird note, more specifically, on the fan-accommodating note that made the writers of the show look really silly.
12. League of Legends Fans
Oh boy, League of Legends. Every MOBA or even online game has toxicity, but League of Legends really built up a reputation. Because the game is so popular, and Riot Games actually trying to put a stop to the toxic behavior of LoL fans, League is still really toxic, in solo queue and e-sport. Solo queue became a huge discussion point since the players of different regions started arguing and comparing which server/region is better, harder to climb, and more. In the game, if you die somehow, a player in your team starts “running it down” and ruins the game for everyone. Do not get me started on obscenities hurled in the game chat or lobby after the game. It is really rough.
The e-sport side of LoL is also like this, and competitiveness between the regions is insufferable, especially North America versus Europe and Korea versus China. Go to the post-match threads on Reddit or Twitter during Worlds to see it… or just don’t.
11. Football Fans
Being a football fan today is really cool because the football community is so spread out all over the world. Discussions can be led with anyone, football fan channels can be founded and you can create your own community for football discussions or talks about your favorite club with your fellow fans. However, try to have football discourse on Twitter, trust me, you do not want to go there.
Being part of the football community myself, the most difficult thing is to express your honest opinion on something, because on one side you have overly positive, borderline delusional fans, who only praise their favorite clubs and defend them to the core, on the other side fans who are just full on negative and hate everything, and on the third side, football fans who say they are fans of the clubs but are actually only fans of a certain player and don’t care about the club at all.
Also, the whole American Football vs Football discourse … it’s really annoying.
10. Marvel Fans & DC Fans
Comic book fans were always passionate about their love of superhero stories. However, that love escalated onto MCU, and sometimes, or most of the time, some Marvel fans are really toxic and annoying. Recently, we saw huge criticism towards Multiverse of Madness and Love and Thunder, which were valid to the point, but harassing everyone around you because of it, it’s just not right.
Captain Marvel came out, and fanboys started trashing movies about everything, to the point of harassment. Captain Marvel was not an amazing movie, but why do not people just criticize normally and not take it to the extremes. The whole Marvel vs DC debate of MCU being superior to DCEU is exhausting by itself and movie adaptations that do not strictly follow the comics being trashed by some fans is just dumb.
On the other hand, DC fanboys/girls are not innocent. The harassment of Candace Patton, Emily Bett Rickards, and even Katie Cassidy in the Arrowverse could’ve easily sent some fans to jail, Patty Jenkins attacked on social media after WW84, and every actor that was cast as Batman. James Gunn was accused of being Marvel’s “spy” after his work on Suicide Squad and Piecemaker… you can’t make this up.
9. Rick and Morty Fans
Rick and Morty are one of the most popular animated TV shows in recent years. Its cool premise, great story, and loveable characters attracted a lot of fans but among sweet people who just love the show, toxic individuals started resurfacing all over the internet. The show is smart and witty and has sometimes complex storylines that “maybe” some viewers would not understand immediately, but boy, are some Rick & Morty fans entitled.
The superiority of Rick & Morty fandom was even memed to death, so you probably remember the copy-pasta: “To Be Fair, You Have To Have a Very High IQ to Understand Rick and Morty.” If you buy Rick & Morty merchandise and god forbid, do not watch the show, you are a fake and a poser. To be fair this instance can be applied to every fandom, but this one is a prime example of it. It seems to me that some of these fans use the show to cover their social dismissive behaviors and use it the cover their insecurities and complexes.
8. Zach Snyder Fans
“#ReleasetheSnyderCut”, “#RevivetheSnyderverse” and more, are a few of dozens of different hashtags that resurfaced on social media over the years. For some reason, Zach Snyder gained a lot of fans that have this tribal, borderline cultist behavior. The fans promoted Snyders movies to the point that some used their beloved director’s deceased daughter, which was on another level of insensitivity and delusion.
The whole “war” against MCU and their fans saying Snyderverse was better and even some boycotting Matt Reeves Batman movie with Robert Pattinson because it was not Snyder directing it? Even Snyder came out saying his fans are not toxic and are just being “passionate”. Honestly, the amount of fuss around this director is unbelievably odd, because let’s be real, Snyder’s movies were not that good at all. So, why are fans sticking up to him so much? No one knows and no one will ever know.
7. Smash Ultimate Fans
The Smash community went through a lot in the last decade or so. One of the first professional competitive games ever, the Smash community build-up a loyal following over the years but its community became one of the most toxic fandoms ever. Since Smash is a competitive game that you need to grind hours and hours to actually master, older fans and the ones who spent their time doing nothing but grinding all day, regularly attack the new and less experienced players.
Imagine being attacked in PvP nonstop and told that your skills are abysmal with other obscene words, and not taking into account that servers have issues and that is why you are lagging all the time and playing badly? Yeah, it is really hard. This is all without mentioning scandals in the professional scene where sexual misconduct allegations resurfaced in 2020, and more than 125 members of the Super Smash Bros. community were “caught”.
6. Harry Potter Fans
Harry Potter is cool, one of the best children’s book franchises in history, and has fans all over the world. However, the word children’s is a key word here. Loving the Harry Potter universe and gushing about it to other people is totally fine but starting harassing every person about Harry and Hermione pairing is just too much. Wishing death on certain characters and abusing others because they like some other character more… shows that the person’s personality is based on the fandom they are in.
The Snape/James Potter analysis and comparing the franchise to other huge franchises like Lord of the Rings and others, and saying Harry Potter is superior. To be fair, these are not comparable at all since franchises are not the same genre at all. All in all, huge fandoms bring out toxic people and Harry Potter is not excluded from that. Also, have you heard of Snapewives? Google it, you will be shocked.
5. Homestuck Fans
Homestuck and the next entry on the list have something in common, and that’s Toby Fox the creator of both entries. Homestuck is an internet fiction series that ran between 2009 and 2016. It gained a lot of loyal fans, and some of them became really toxic. The cosplayers really don’t like Homestuck fans because they are usually elitist, rude, and just overall crazy. One story included a girl almost killing herself in a bathtub full of vodka and sharpie so she would get grey skin like the character of Homestuck.
That incident is one of the dozen other incidents of fans screaming, screeching, and just destroying everything around them. “Let me tell you about Homestuck” was memed to the death and their presence on the Internet at one point bothered everyone around them.
4. Undertale Fans
Undertale is a cool role-playing game that was released in 2015, by an indie American company and since then attracted a lot of fans. However, fans themselves became a huge problem, after a heartwarming and loveable start of the Undertale journey. YouTubers like Markiplier felt the abuse on his skin because he played the game like he wanted to. That was the only reason why Undertale fans criticized him because he did not play the game as the Undertale fans demanded of him.
Markiplier decided to stop the playthrough because, in his words, it wasn’t fun anymore. Other YouTubers were flooded with similar comments under their videos which made them really frustrating. If you kill the monsters in the game, you will not get the real ending which is why fans demanded of people to play the game in the friendliest way possible. One user said that some Undertale fans legitimately said if players go the Genocide route and kill everyone in the game, that they are real-life psychopaths and child abusers. This is only the drop in the ocean of things that happened with Undertale fandom and if you are interested, check out this article for more details.
3. Naruto Fans
Being part of the fandom uprising on the Internet from around 2010, Naruto fans were dominating the forums. Facebook, Tumblr, and specialized Naruto sites were bustling with hundreds of fans commentating on the Naruto series. Let me just say, they are really toxic. Shipping wars and hating on female characters because Masashi Kishimoto did not know how to write female characters was just overwhelming, and it escalated when a Sasuke/Sakura shipper sent death threats to the series creator.
Discussing and comparing the Naruto series with other anime fans mostly ends up with toxicity and Naruto fans become annoying saying it is the best manga/anime ever. Well, it’s not. We could’ve easily put other anime fandoms here like Dragon Ball, Demon Slayer, and more, but I’ve chosen Naruto because I lived through it… and it wasn’t pleasant at all.
2. Star Wars Fans
Who hates Star Wars movies more than Star Wars fans? Noone. This fandom has been valid for a really long time, and with the Internet becoming the main platform for discussions and communications, the notorious reputation of the fandom resurfaced for everyone to see. Star Wars fans do not like anything they get.
They do not like sequels trilogy, are just blatantly rude to people who do not watch the franchise, and harass everyone involved in Star Wars projects. Jar Jar Binks actor Ahmed Best considered suicide after the Star Wars prequels backlash, they harassed young Jake Lloyd who played young Anakin Skywalker in the prequels to the point of him quitting acting, and Daisy Ridley deleted all of her social media due to harassment from the fans.
Kelly Marie Tran who played Rose Tico in the sequels was subject to sexist and racist attacks from the fans which propelled her to delete everything from social media. Some of these fans are not fans, they are just bullies and for that deserve a place as one of the most toxic fandoms on the planet.
1. K-Pop Fans
First place on this list will go to K-Pop fans. Most of K-Pop fans are really nice, and campaigns and social awareness movements are something they do a lot. However, when their fave gets into the spotlight, you can’t hide from some of these people. They are acting like a hive of bees who are posting on anyone’s posts their fanmade videos of their faves and harass everyone into voting for their groups.
Most toxic K-Pop fandoms include ARMY (BTS), EXO (EXOTIC), Twice (Once), and more. They post in the most inappropriate moments, for example, a tragedy happened, and all of a sudden a K-Pop post pops up in the replies – not once but many, many times. Harassment of other fandoms, individuals who express dislike of the K-Pop genre, and so many more instances, make K-Pop fandom on top of the list of most toxic fandoms in the world.
