Toxic YouTubers “hated” by Doctor Who? Animating multiphrenic incarnations of Not My Doctor anti-fandom

This article considers how popular/spreadable misogyny enters into Doctor Who fans’ discourse communities via fan-cultural appropriation, mixing external political and internal fan discourses. This can oppose fannish communal norms such as “convivial evaluation” and “ante-fandom”. The theoretical perspective taken in the article combines work on toxic fandom with anti-fandom to thus understand fan toxicity as “multiphrenic”, i.e. drawing on multiple discourses and self-investments, including responding to its own anti-fans. The article goes on to examine YouTube voiceover-commentary videos from one communally-prominent Whotuber representing Not My Doctor anti-fandom, showing how they use devices such as the acousmetre and “stripped down” subjectivity to open a projective space for toxic fandom and enact a flat affect characterising what is termed “performative rationality”. Crucially, leftwing narratives of toxicity and hate are completely inverted to the extent that Doctor Who and the BBC are presumed, without evidence, to “hate” straight white male conservative fandom.

The Metaphysics of Practical Rationality: Intentional and Deontic Cognition

Despite growing appreciation in recent decades of the importance of shared intentional mental states as a foundation for everything from divergences in primate evolution, to the institution of communal norms, to trends in the development of modernity as a sociopolitical phenomenon, we lack an adequate understanding of the relationship between individual and shared intentionality. At the same time, it is widely appreciated that deontic reasoning concerning what ought, may, and ought not be done is, like reasoning about our intentions, an exercise of practical rationality. Taking advantage of this fact, I use a plan-theoretic semantics for the deontic modalities as a basis for understanding individual and shared intentions. This results in a view that accords well with what we currently have reason to believe about the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of norm psychology and shared intentionality in human beings, and where original intentionality can be understood in terms of the shared intentionality of a community.

Exchange and Communal Strengths’ Associations With Relational Characteristics and Forgiveness

Clark and Mills (2012) proposed that communal norms characterize “healthy marriages,” whereas exchange norms indicate “troubled” ones. Using the actor–partner interdependence model, we consider this proposal. Heterosexual married partners’ exchange and communal strength are examined with several relational features including trust, commitment, relational satisfaction, and control mutuality, as well as partner-specific tendencies toward forgiveness. The findings indicate that one’s communal strength is associated with positive relational features for both oneself and one’s spouse, as well as a greater propensity to forgive and lesser tendencies toward negative forgiveness (retaliation). Exchange strength was generally associated with negative forgiveness. However, the relationship between exchange strength and relational features is more complicated. Lesser communal strength was generally associated with lower levels of the relational characteristics. Yet, exchange and communal strength interacted, indicating exchange may play a protective function by buffering against the ill effects of a lack of communal strength for some relational characteristics.

Coins Are Cold and Cards Are Caring: The Effect of Pregiving Incentives on Charity Perceptions, Relationship Norms, and Donation Behavior

Charities often include low-value monetary (e.g., coins) and nonmonetary (e.g., greeting cards) pregiving incentives (PGIs) in their donation request letters. Yet little is known about how donors respond to this marketing strategy. In seven studies, including two large-scale field experiments, the authors demonstrate that the effectiveness of PGIs depends on the organization’s goals. People are more likely to open and read a letter containing a monetary PGI (vs. a nonmonetary PGI or no PGI). In addition, monetary PGIs increase response rates in donor acquisition campaigns. However, the return on investment for direct mail campaigns drops significantly when PGIs are included. Furthermore, average donations for appeals with a nonmonetary PGI or no PGI are similar, while those with a monetary PGI are actually lower than when a nonmonetary PGI or no PGI is included. This is because monetary PGIs increase exchange norms while decreasing communal norms. This effect remains significant when accounting for alternative explanations such as manipulative intent and the anchoring and adjustment heuristic.

Absence of Evidence or Evidence of Absence? Welsh Extra-Curial Dispute Settlement Revisited

The 'ceffyl pren' ('wooden horse') was a ritual shaming punishment used by neighbours against offenders who were held to have breached communal norms. The use of the practice in the nineteenth century is often presented as a survival of a long-established custom, rooted in rural Welsh life and in decline due to suppression by the instruments of the state. This article argues that the ceffyl pren was not in its origin ancient, nor particularly Welsh, and that its use increased in the nineteenth century. The reasons for the development of the practice at that later time are then considered.

Sites of Controversy: Jews Debating Philosophy between Iberia and Occitania in the Fourteenth Century

The extant sources of the Maimonidean controversies demonstrate that medieval Jewish intellectual culture was sited in actual encounters and interactions. Such interactions often took place around the practices of writing, conveying, receiving, and discussing letters, social activities governed by communal norms. Whether in the course of collaborating with co-writers, seeking signatories in support of a proposition contained in the letter text, or congregating at an established meeting to discuss a newly arrived letter, those involved in the controversies were actively, socially engaged in addressing the problems raised by the incompatibility of the Greco-Islamic rationalist tradition with rabbinic principles. Through a careful examination of the rich letter collection Minḥat Qenaʾot from the Maimonidean controversy of 1304–1306, this paper details the modes of encounter among discussants in the acrimonious cultural debate.