My logical brain agrees, but my heart can't help but support unethical haterism. To some degree it will always slip, unfortunately...
Being a hater (sharing negative opinions about tropes, ships, characters, and trends in fandom) is fun and often tempting. Being a skilled and ethical hater is even more fun, though difficult to achieve.
(This is pretty HP focused. While all fandoms have an unethical hater problem, HP fandom has a particular dynamic where people are quick to feel guilty about fandom participation due to jkr being awful and then project that guilt onto others by trying to identify other people in fandom as being ‘bad’ so they can feel ‘good’ in comparison.)
Number one question: Are you enjoying yourself? If you’re not, then stop. You cannot be an ethical fandom hater if you yourself are not having fun and are instead making yourself miserable by being a hater. None of these other factors are relevant if you’re not having fun. Take a break from fandom and go outside instead.
The next consideration is space - public vs private and the specifics of social media platforms.
You’re almost always being an ethical hater if you’re bitching and laughing in your friend’s DMs. You’re never being an ethical hater if you’re on Tiktok or another algorithm based platform where people cannot avoid your content showing up on their pages. Discord servers and tumblr posts are where it gets complicated. Make a good faith effort to make sure anyone who wants to avoid your hater content is able to do so via appropriate tagging or sticking to approved channels within the discord server.
Next: humor
If you’re being mean, you better be very funny. If you’re not funny, you probably can’t get away with being mean. Be less mean.
The best of ethical haterism is creative and funny and active. It is about creating and enjoying yourself with friends more than it is about tearing others down – even if you are mocking people and ships and characters!
A useful question to ask: could a reasonable person with a different opinion from you find what you’re doing funny? (This is different from: can the absolute worst, whiniest, most sensitive person in fandom find what you’re doing funny?)
Things that are never ethical haterism:
Making accusations about individual people’s politics, values, and identities based on their preferences for ships and characters. General rule: if you (or the people you surround yourself with) are throwing out the words ‘nazi,’ ‘pedophile,’ ‘freak’ or ‘bigot,’ you’re not being an ethical hater.
Things I have seen that are not ethical haterism and are simply asshole behavior: accusing anyone who doesn’t like femme Sirius of being homophobic or transphobic, accusing anyone who ships any Death Eater/order member ship of being a nazi, accusing Snape stans of being incels, accusing anyone who ships Snarry or any student/teacher ship of being a pedophile etc.
Note: Ethical haterism is separate from critiquing fandom trends and the influence of broader politics on how we engage with fandom. It is asshole behavior to make specific accusations of individual people based on their ships, headcanons, and art, but it is reasonable (and I’d say good!) to examine how white supremacy/patriarchy/capitalism show up in trends in fandom.
Things that are asshole behavior and never ethical haterism: commenting rudely on fics, talking publicly about specific fics you hate, deliberately going into ship tags to start fights, making accusations, generally being unpleasant.
The two fundamental questions of being an ethical hater:
Is what you’re doing making fandom more fun, more creative, more engaging, more lively, more connected?
Are you sensitive to the idea that some people might not enjoy seeing this content and want to make sure it’s possible for them to avoid it?
That’s my theory. Thoughts?