Which television series has the worst, most abominable fandom you have ever seen?

More like one subset of "Stranger Things" fans was the absolute worst, especially recently.  Although they also had loony actor-shipping fans in the past as well.

What does 'shipping' an actor mean?

I disagree a little. Big example is Derek and Meredith on Greys Anatomy. People have shipped the actors for years, but they’re both in healthy long marriages. It’s a testament to their chemistry

First show I thought of when I read the title of this post. Absolutely unhinged fan base. I just keep thinking about how the former ER showrunners and Noah Wylie wanted to make this cool, well written and acted medical drama that focuses strenuously on the competency of it all and hews closely to accuracy and it’s a spiritual successor to ER, one of the most hailed medical drama shows of all times And here in goddamn 2026 it’s got the viewership of people who act like literal children talking about characters in terms of being good guys and bad guys to root for and shipping and making fan art like it’s a manga or k-drama And everyone is so parasocial about the whole thing it’s a literal war zone of discussion all the time, to the point people have concocted a show in their head out of whole cloth, that is certainly not the show that most other people are seeing on their TVs. And also these people are convinced that there are machinations going on behind the scenes to get certain actors fired because Noah Wylie hates women …or something? I have no idea what the f*** is going on in these people’s heads.

Somehow, The Pitt has sucked in the Tumblr shipping fan-art crowd, and now you're evil if you don't go along with the insane, out-of-character, unethical idea that Dr. Robby and Dr. Whittaker are some sort of secret dom/sub gay romance

Also half of them are drowning in conspiracy theories about the writers.

I just posted a question for it yesterday thinking there was something missing in season 2, and all of my comments and other comments discussing it got downvoted as though the show is perfect without faults, really irked me and I'll likely not post there again.

I like the Pitt's latest episode. F*** this sub.

Speculating about the cast is not and never right. That said, there are a lot of constructive criticism regarding The Pitt that cannot be categorized into toxic fandom.

More Szechuan pls

One time my kid got me a rick n morty shirt from Penny's (Primark) because he saw me watch a few episodes. I wore it, as you do. That lead to the first and only time some random approached me in public and started trying to quiz me on my knowledge of the show. 

Is that still true, feels like that whole thing seems to have died down a lot (thankfully) I agree they definitely were the worst for a while

Clearly you don’t understand Rick and Morty. The show requires a very high intellect that most people don’t have, and so they don’t get it. It’s the smartest show in the history of television and its fans are the smartest men in the world. /s

I used to watch it, but fell off around S4 or 5. After you have seen enough episodes, to me they all felt the same

TBTF you have to be a genius to enjoy that show.

They literally got a fast-food chain bullied into reviving a dipping sauce, that’s some weaponized fandom energy. Best way to enjoy it now is…mute the hashtags.

It definitely used to be, but it feels like they’ve chilled out a bit. Either that, or the problem fans gave up on it because it dropped in quality.

That's died down quite a bit.

Rick and Morty's fandom is so bad people don't admit to being Rick and Morty fans.

Rick and Morty

On this show on Dropout called Crowd Control, 2 of the audience members were talking about how they were like “victims” of that show. I got so embarrassed for them, like I enjoyed the show too but it’s just a show.

This is the true answer

They bullied a child with cancer who had met the show creator through Make-a-Wish because they wanted the kid to leak spoilers to them. They drove a fanart creator to attempted suicide over drawing a character slightly "too thin" (iirc the character also only had one official art at the time, only showing the shoulders and up). One German cosplayer who cosplayed Garnet (alien with dark skin) was bullied just as badly for "blackface", and at least one other cosplayer has been physically attacked for the same reason. A storyboard artist had to delete all her social media and leave the show due to ongoing harassment from "fans" who got pissy about her posting stuff not related to the show to her art channels, and (as the final straw) because they thought she supported a ship they didn't like and attacked her over it.

They also review bombed a motel because one with the same name appeared in the show. To this day its Google reviews are filled with references to the show.

What do you mean by this? Do you have an example?

House of the Dragon is worse than Got. I used to follow the fandom in ss1, but have to unfollow and block them cuz it just too toxic for me

/r/freefolk is one of the most unhinged places on the Internet. They're still harassing the cast and crew years after the show ended.

In fairness, with the advent of streaming services and growing production values, the narrative of many shows has taken a dive as they simply don't have the screen time necessary to really build up a story and characters. A point I am making because I suspect public discussion used to attract people who wanted to share speculation on where it was all going. And because there was more substance to work with, these discussions could be had plenty enough. Now people spend their time on a show and want to socialize with other people about it and the well runs dry pretty quickly. Even if YOU personally enjoyed the experience, a discussion of "that was neat! That was fun!" isn't contributing to a meaningful public discussion. And so of course these groups really just end up being the most high strung and offended people who could possibly exist over something so petty.

They are filled with people who will hate on you if you have any criticism.

Used to be good, but yeah it's really just yelling back and forth about SFA now... But back when Discovery and Picard aired, that sub was the only place on Listnook to have chill discussions about them. The dedicated subs were basically just hate subs, and the Picard sub mods would literally show up to attack and insult people who reported blatant rule violations from haters. Meanwhile, discussing Star Trek in more general subs at that point in time had a 50%+ risk of Orville fans showing up to be toxic, and rant about how their show portrays Trek values better (while they themselves violated said values).

Star Trek has recently collapsed in on itself after the Academy’s cancellation. With the people who insisted it was good and had a massive fan base (despite never charting on Nielsen) now having to reckon with the reality that it was a failure and the “haters” who were downvoted and had their comments deleted getting to finally say “I told you so”. But overall it’s still a far better fandom than most.

The fans are absolutely nothing compared to irrational hate and weird obsession people have towards it at r/pluribus_sucks

It’s like 7 years later or something and so many of them still spend all day everyday talking about how much they hated the last season, and the showrunners are hacks that fucked it and this and that. And I just wanna be like— at some point you need to move the f*** on. I genuinely can’t understand talking about those two guys like they’re the arch nemesis of your life.

They even had to make a new sub devoted to discussing (well, praising) the show, specifically the final season, in peace and harmony.

It’s a shame what freefolk devolved into. It was great while the show was still airing. The “main” GoT subs (freefolk eventually surpassed them in users) were over moderated and you couldn’t talk about leaks.

I don’t know if I’ve seen weird Arcane fans before aren’t they mostly just league of legends fans? Pretty far removed from the weirdest fan base if that’s the case.

Can you give an example?

The survivor sub is chill.

I've been watching Breaking Bad since 2009. People still misspelling Skyler 17 years later is kind of fascinating.

Skyler

Yeah, I’m already very doubtful that fans will be chill about the child cast. Fans never are. Even if you ignore the Rowling stuff, there’s gonna be a lot of “fans” who’ll be shitting on it for not being the films, for changing anything from the books, for not changing things from the books … it’ll be a mess.

It's basically a given that it's going to be super wild.

Theres gonna be a sizeable minority of transphobes that watch to support Joanne, and a small minority of hate watchers that harass the child actors because the author sucks

I give it 3, maybe 4 seasons until it is canceled

I had to check out of the last of us sublistnooks when season 2 was going on. Shit was a dumpster fire for a while. Same for the episode discussion threads in this sublistnook too, for that matter. I genuinely couldn’t understand what the f*** everyone’s problems with it were. There’s room for discussion of legitimate criticism but I saw almost none of that. Instead it was the same insane nitpicking and ragebaiting for like two months straight.

The Last of Us sublistnook is so depressing to read as a female fan.

Well there are so many to choose from

Which of Rory's boyfriends from ages 16 to 22 are meant to be her life partner until the end of time.

Yeah something like that. The Invincible fandom is a prime example