Empty Netters is awful. I got so frustrated when they blew up while watching Heated Rivalry, but they outed themselves immediately by blaming Tate McCray for the Devils losing season.
Anyways, my take on this is not going to be a popular one… sorry in advance. Yes they’re misogynistic and grouping all women together BUT some “fans” have gotten out of control. Unfortunately two things can be true at once.
Will and Mack are so outside of the normal for the hockey world. Social media has turned them, and their relationship, into a global spectacle. There are girls who have found them on the internet and ship them (which is totally fine) but ignore the hockey part of things.
I’m specifically talking about the girls who treat the boys like they’re K-pop idols (for lack of a better comparison). There’s some kind of disconnect to the fact that they don’t actually know Will and Mack. They stalk who they follow on social media and then attack those women. They publicly tag Will and Mack in shipping content and fanfics.
A girl staked out their hotel lobby, interrogated teammates about their whereabouts, followed them into the elevator, and tried to follow them to their rooms. THEN she posted online about how awkward Mack was, there was zero self awareness.
It’s frustrating to see that behavior reflected on women trying to enjoy hockey.
I completely agree that there are fans who have crossed a line and have done insanely disrespectful things. There should be no toleration of stalking or harassing will or mack, or their family and friends.
That being said, I take issue with the way the empty netters podcast (and others) generalize that behaviour to all female fans. When men act like that it's seen as a one off and unrepresentative of the fanbase as a whole. When women act like that suddenly the fanbase is "overrun" by obsessed fangirls.
I'm reminded of when it came out that the nhl follow tracker account on twitter was a man, and no one seemed to bat an eye. Meanwhile, before that, most people seemed to assume it was an obsessed fangirl, and only THEN it would it have been considered parasocial and weird. But because it's a man people don't seem to take as much issue with it, and if they do it's not considered representative of all male hockey fans.
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