others have said this already but today is a good day to think about how being an anti isn't about hating or disliking certain ships or tropes, it's a mentality on how to approach fandom, media, and the people you share those spaces with

there are different ways to be an anti or to support anti logic without calling yourself one, but usually it boils down to a self-centered view of fandom/media where your preferences or discomforts are the objective truth and you have free reign to hurt people who disagree

this is why some antis can ship "problematic" ships and justify it to themselves while calling similar dynamics toxic and unacceptable; to them, this isn't a hypocritical stance because whatever they like is morally ok and the arguments for "why" are interchangeable

anti logic works backwards: instead of developing their pov out of evidence or acknowledging their subjectivity, antis' subjective pov *is* their evidence. they decide on what they feel is true and use whatever logic or "gotcha" works in the moment to win their arguments

this is why antis almost always move the goalposts or fall back on ad hominem attacks like calling people dumb fangirls or telling women to take care of their children, because most antis' goal is just to get the disagreeing pov to *stop existing*, by any means necessary

and imo that's why most discussions with antis fall apart: people who argue with antis think they're disagreeing over a piece of media or fandom and like there's some kind of understanding that can be reached, whether it's accepting one another's pov or agreeing to disagree

antis just want people disagreeing with them to shut up and leave, because the very existence of dissent with their pov is a problem for them. they aren't debating ideas or fandom/media ethics, they just want any voice that pokes a hole in their logic to go away

imo it's also why it's important to address people behaving like antis and stop it whenever it's happening in fandom, because the "you agree with me or you're evil" logic has a way of spreading and driving out any people who disagree, so fandoms can basically become full of antis

this was just really long and ranty but i also want to mention that i'm in not conflating "being an anti" with calling out racism/sexism. some antis do use racism/sexism as one of many "gotchas" to shut down arguments, and that harms good faith discussions of those points

and sometimes someone will makes good points about fandom sexism/racism in one area but use bad faith anti logic in another. the important point is antis coopting discussions of fandom bigotry for trivial nonsense doesn't and shouldn't invalidate all discussions of fandom bigotry