The “hot rivalry” fanbase is tearing itself apart

when Hot competitionConnor Story and François Arnault walked out of the Grammy Awards together on February 2, X Account Connor Story Updates I’ve been waiting to post about this.

Championship A A truly global phenomenon It propelled the show’s cast to overnight stardom, and countless accounts on X and Instagram track their every appearance, interview, and career move. Story and Arno’s rumored relationship was the talk Social media and gossip over the past month, with thousands of tweets analyzing their recent outings at Paris Fashion Week.

When Jenna and Anna woke up the morning after the Grammys and saw that the photos of Story and Arno arriving at the party were from a paparazzi agency, they decided not to participate until more… Official photos It has been uploaded. The two friends who run Connor Storrie Updates, Jenna and Anna, have a rule book for how to share content with their nearly 85,000 followers on X.

“We don’t like to post anything without knowing where it came from,” read the guidelines, which are not public but were shared with me via direct message. “If there are photos/videos that were taken without consent/without Connor knowing he was being photographed/filmed, we do not publish. This includes paparazzi photos.”

And unlike most of the content shared on their account, the two knew they needed to monitor the responses a little more than usual.

“People will be mean in the comments,” Jenna, 28, says on a video call. She and Ana, 26, live in different Brazilian states and met online before the show aired. Both asked to use pseudonyms to protect their privacy. “We have to be careful. (François) receives a lot of hate, but at the same time, it’s a difficult situation. If we post something, some people are likely to leave hate comments. But if we don’t post it, people will accuse us of bias.”

Recently, Hot competition com. fandom It was a battlefield.

based on Rachel Reid Game changers booksthe series, which premiered on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the US in late November, follows the star-crossed romance between professional hockey competitors Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Storey). The previously unknown lead actors now have fan bases that rival the world’s biggest pop stars. Arno plays the smaller role of fellow gay hockey player Scott Hunter. (None of the actors were available for comment.)

For some, liking the show has turned into full-blown obsession. A month and a half after the finale aired, the bars were shown Watch concerts They’re still going strong, according to Crave, from people rewatching (a phenomenon fans have dubbed “reheating”), 15 percent I’ve watched the episode five or more times. one Reddit thread It begs the question: “Is anyone else emotionally affected by this show?” Commentators admit to obsessing over the show’s scenes to the point that they can’t do their jobs or live their lives. Many concluded that they needed to take a break.

Others have gone further to explore the past digital footprints of Storrie and Williams’ content fame. Story as a teen YouTube videos It quickly went viral. When some viewers claimed to have found Williams’ Letterboxd account, less-than-stellar reviews of Rachel Ziegler and Pedro Pascal’s performances trickled down to those actors’ accounts. king Fan bases, which leads to Stan’s Warring Account And “semi-cancellation” by Williams. It is later open Most of those reviews weren’t even his.

However, the screenshots were enough to make Williams a target of online outragers, who seemed to be looking for a reason to end his career. Rumors of his relationship with a woman led many to accuse him of gay harassment. Anti-Asian insults were hurled at Williams by detractors with relative ease at X. While Williams has not spoken out about racism, during appearance on SiriusXM Radio Indyhosted by Andy Cohen, stated that he only respects the opinions of people with a “developed frontal cortex.”