Fans don't talk like spectators.
They talk like .
We classified 3,012 fan comments by how the commenter is speaking, blind to our thesis. Rendering verdicts runs 1.7–3.6× the control rate in all six communities. Up to 25% of everything a fandom says is a judgment.
Every comment was sorted into one of seven ways of speaking, then compared against two control groups: general TV talk and actual sports fans. A tenth of every sample was labeled twice to check agreement (86–95%). Because we classify how a comment speaks rather than which words it uses, "guilty pleasure" doesn't count as a verdict, and a show about family doesn't count as family talk. What clears that bar is the voice the campaign can actually write in.
One stance separates reality fandom from everyone else
Each row is one way of speaking. The bar is how much of the community's talk it makes up; the white tick is the same number for the controls (general TV talk + actual sports fans). Rendering verdicts is the only way of speaking that is both big and above control in all six communities.
Family saturates these shows as subject matter: custody, sisters, weddings. But fans speaking as kin is rare in every community (0.2%–3.0% of comments). What fans do with all that family drama is judge it. Write the campaign to the jury, not to a fictional extended family.
Against a control pool that includes real sports fans, reality fandoms do less strategy talk (0.39–0.95×) and merely match on taking sides. The league idea works as structure: seasons, allegiances, appointment viewing (Report 05). But the voice to write in is the verdict, not the play-by-play.
Fixed codebook (v: stance-1), multi-label, applied blind in batches of 20. Boundary rules force “guilty pleasure” to spectating and “he was found guilty” (a fact) to recap. Legal words alone can't trigger adjudicating.
10% of every community's sample was independently re-labeled and compared on the verdict stance. Everything downstream of the labels (shares, lifts, confidence intervals) is plain arithmetic.
Hear it in their words
Real comments, filtered by classified stance and ranked by community upvotes, linked to source. A quote only appears under Adjudicating if the commenter is actually rendering a verdict.
Badge = this stance's rate in these communities vs pooled controls (n-weighted). gold ≥ 1.5× · pink ≥ 1.1×
“No lies were told 💅 Can anyone think of a single example where Amanda was a good friend to any of the girls? The ONLY time she could have conceivably been doing a good thing for another girl was when she yelled at West for making out with a girl in front of Ciara, and now we know she was fuming on b”
“Brandon with his mom's hairdo As we all know, Brandon and his mom look a lot alike... But I still needed proof, so I just had to do this. I added Brandon's face to a picture of his mom and decided to share the mind-boggling result. Enjoy.”
“Trish is a natural stunner. This lady is absolutely gorgeous. No makeup, natural hair, genuine personality. She can do a bazillion times better than that jerk Rick. I hope she comes to her senses and sees her worth!! (Yeah I know they split at some point but I hope we get to see her send him packing”
“Austen Kroll was telling the fucking truth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“The ick has become unbearable lately. Im not talking about their physical appearance, but the sheer number of douchey dudes are just too damn high. Has it always been this way or am I just noticing? There are a ton of awful women as well, but the men are just taking the cake this time around.”
“Delayed reaction, but imo Rick having sex with Trisha before telling her he cheated is a form of sexual assault. It’s happened to me before in a relationship, and I would never have consented had I known the facts. This precious young woman deserves so much better.”
“I can't stand Greta Ultimately abandoned her cat. Expected Matthew to be okay with her decision to split after 4 days but bashes him for moving on after HALF A YEAR. Publicly shames him and faults him for their sex life (gangs up with her friends too). Yes, they were not a match. But that does not m”
“Adnan is beardfishing I never knew beardfishing is a thing. Had to hop on Photoshop to prove my point.”
“Amanda fumbled her post divorce SO hard. I’m so disappointed!!”
The words each fandom owns
The terms each community uses far more than controls do, with show titles and proper names filtered out. What's left is raw material for copy that sounds native instead of borrowed.
Log-odds with informative Dirichlet prior (Monroe et al.) versus the pooled controls. Counted in plain code, no model in the loop. Show titles and proper names are filtered out with a capitalization test against the original comments; the names feed the draft board in Report 05.