LiveJournal Blogging Group Despises Rachael Ray

Posted on November 27, 2006

Rachael Ray gets frequent mentions in the blogosphere -- she receives about 50 too 100 mentions a day according to a Technorati chart. However, not all of the posts about her are positive. That's not unusual for a celebrity to have harsh comments about them in blogs but what is unique about Ray's detractors is that they have organized into a very large group. The Boston Globe reports that a group of LiveJournal bloggers united by their loathing of Rachael Ray have formed a community called the Rachael Ray Sucks Community. Membership to the community has swollen to over 1,000 since it first began about three years ago.

But what about shared dislikes? Can a community form around that? What is the opposite of a fan club? The answer is the Rachael Ray Sucks Community.
Gathering by way of the blogging and social-networking site LiveJournal, this group has more than 1,000 members, who are quite active in posting their latest thoughts and observations about the various shortcomings, flaws, and disagreeable traits of Rachael Ray, the television food personality.
"This community," the official explanation reads, "was created for people that hate the untalented twit known as Rachael Ray." The most important rule for those who wish to join: "You must be anti-Rachael!"
As with any community, the key to attracting members is not just a clear core idea but one that can be fulfilled in a variety of ways. Members of the Rachael Ray Sucks Community certainly do this, criticizing her cooking skills, her over-reliance on chicken stock, her kitchen hygiene, her smile, her voice, her physical mannerisms, her clothes, her penchant for saying "Yum-o," and so on.

It seems odd that people would spend their time in a club dedicated to despising a cooking celebrity but it is true. The Internet is full of niches -- even anti-individual celebrity niches or anti-fan clubs. The anti-Ray group probably doesn't like this much more postive blog about Rachael Ray called Everything Rachael Ray. They probably won't like any of the Yum-O links found there either.