Surely the Fifty Shades of Grey craze of 2011 owes at least as much to its haters as to its unabashed fans. An entire blog post genre is dedicated to Fifty Shades Hate, and it’s full of much more vibrant writing than the books themselves. One example, from Samantha Vincenty on Bust: “If Anastasia Steele bites her lip one more time, or if her friend José says ‘Dios mio!’ again, or if Christian Grey doesn’t stop running his hands through his copper hair, I am starting a fire and then throwing this book into that fire.” Such internet snark didn’t stop the book series from becoming an equally snark-inducing hit movie in 2015.

Profiting from scorn

By 2012, widespread mockery had become such a common strain of fandom, particularly in the ever-more-crowded realm of television, that it needed a name. New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum is believed to have coined the term “hate-watching” in her 2012 piece about the show Smash, a much-hyped drama that takes place behind the scenes of a Broadway musical. In it, she confesses to watching the show long after figuring out that she loathed it, “huddling with fellow Smash addicts” on Twitter: “I mean, why would I go out of my way to watch a show that makes me so mad? On some level, I’m obviously enjoying it.”