Stranger Fans

Every year since 2021 during the Road to WrestleMania, and shortly after, Tonya has contributed some thoughts about WWE. (To sample some of her previous work, check here.) You can find her at @TheWitchMilitia on Twitter.

The final episode of Stranger Things season 5 was the long awaited finale of Netflix’s scifi horror series set in the 1980s, which follows the residents of the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana as they uncover supernatural mysteries involving secret government experiments. The creators and writers, the Duffer Brothers, took heavy influence from Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, and John Carpenter. Now, dear reader, you did not click the wrong link. This is NOT a Stranger Things review. I am a fan of the show. I am also a fan of professional wrestling. This article is about the parallels I personally observed between the Internet Wrestling Community, IWC, and the Stranger Things fandom.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or have a normal online experience) you have seen the discourse surrounding the final season of what had become Netflix’s flagship show. Many fans expressed disappointment in the final season. As someone who mostly enjoyed the last season, I began to recognize a familiar energy coming from the Stranger Things fandom as I have experienced throughout over a decade of being involved with the IWC: entitlement.

In wrestling, fans tend to “fantasy book” feuds and wrestler’s storylines, insisting that what they thought of is far, far superior than what the booker has put out. ST fans don’t fantasy book but they do write fan fiction. Usually, this fanfic is about “shipping” or putting two characters in a relationship when it is not true in the actual canon of the series. There are several “ships” in the ST fandom; most are canon. But the ship that dominated the discourse in the fandom for ST5 was Byler, the imagined relationship between openly gay Will Byers and his childhood best friend Mike Wheeler. 

Bylers, as fans of the ship like to refer to themselves, reminded me heavily of the fans who hate everything WWE does but refuse to stop watching WWE because “my fave works there”. They insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary, that a relationship between Mike and Will was “endgame”, meaning the writers intended for them to end up together at the end of the series. The problem with this is the writers clearly were aware that the Byler fandom existed and went out of their way in the final season to emphasize that Will had an unrequited crush on Mike and Mike was deeply madly in love with Eleven, or El.

Wrestling fans have a tendency to need things spelled out for them at times. They will misread cues all the time and then swear the company pulled a bait and switch. Ironically, they did so very recently, on the first RAW of the year, which was Stranger Things themed since both properties are aired on Netflix. All night, some fans at home and in the arena were expecting Chris Jericho to return. When he did not, even though he was never advertised, it counted against the quality of the episode. 

Stranger Things fans did the exact same thing on Christmas with Will’s coming out episode. Both fandoms relied on “easter eggs” that only they could decipher and online gossip sites that exploit these fandoms’ gullibility for clicks. Byler fans were so upset that they joined in with homophobes to downgrade the episode Rotten Tomatoes and similar platforms, earning the episode its lowest audience rating ever. 

But these fandoms do not stop at just rating episodes low or ranting about the quality nonstop online. They also take to harassing the actors/wrestlers. The vitriol that has been shown towards actors Millie Bobbie Brown and Finn Wolfhard, ESPECIALLY the latter, reminds me of how the IWC hated the ground Roman Reigns walked on for a solid half a decade. Misrepresenting storylines to the point where they are just blatantly lying about what is presented is common. Personally attacking the performer’s personal lives and appearance is routine. Going so far as to misrepresent who they are to make them seem bigoted. All fair game.

Thinly veiled racism is another attribute that these fandoms have in common. Whereas in wrestling, these sentiments are usually phrased as certain wrestlers just not “being good enough” to be champion or featured more on TV, the sole lead Black actor on Stranger Things, Caleb McLaughlin, is often discarded or insulted when it is clear he is one of the best actors (especially in his age range) on the show. Caleb has less followers. Memes of him being abusive to his white female love interest float around online. Fans even went so far as to purposely misconstrue a joke he made on SNL recently to insist he was making a rape joke about his co-star.

But that is not a big shock as the ST fandom regularly uses social justice language to villainize those they dislike, despite showing signs of homophobia and racism themselves. This is also true of wrestling fans. Very recently, the AEW fandom was in disarray over a picture of Hangman Adam Page, their supposedly woke king, with alleged pedophile Marty Scurll. And the main reason why they cared about that picture is because they regularly call WWE a “sex trafficking wrestling company” and now the “other side” had dirt on them. 

This piece is not to talk down on the entirety of the ST fandom. As with wrestling, there are tons of regular fans who enjoy the show and speak about the cast in a respectful manner. I would dare to say a “normal” Stranger Things fan is more normal than a normal wrestling fan in regards to online discourse. The IWC is, at times, an absolute toxic cesspool where no one has anything nice to say about anything or anyone and you really start to wonder why people watch it if they hate it so much. It is a bit jarring to see the attitudes of a niche genre like wrestling spread out to a more mainstream fandom.

Toxic fandoms are draining for all involved. It actively makes participating in fandom circles worse for all involved. Fans have become more parasocial than ever before, to the point where those paid to work in the mediums actively start to dislike the fans. And, if they show their disdain for all the negativity, fans will call them ungrateful. But who would be grateful to people who behave like this? The environment it cultivates devalues the very media they obsess over. It makes things less fun. 

Stranger Things is over now. One has to wonder if those behind the show, especially the actors, would be so eager to revisit the media with fans like these attached to it. And the sad part of it all is those fans who behaved so atrociously have learned no lesson and will take this attitude to other fandoms, if they haven’t already. Trust me, no fandom should want to be compared to wrestling fans. On the list of problematic fandoms, we are down there with the Barbs, the Bey Hive, and OVOs. My suggestion for Bylers is the same for wrestling fans: calm down, take a deep breath, and get over it.

After all, it’s just a damn TV show!