My TL;DR response pt 1
I'm not sure what I should be classified. I am fairly sure the non and anti-acafan will classify me as acafan because I have a graduate degree. I'm actually sure that the acafan will classify me as non-acafan because that degree is not in literary criticism or any related field. I've certainly never been successful in holding a prolonged discussion with any of them, as I lack the vocabulary. For instance, I'm not at all sure what you mean by specifying the pattern as a meme rather than a population bloc.
Nevertheless, I'm going to hazard an observation here, that there is an awful lot more bundled up in the anti-acafan posts I've read over the last two days. The initial post I read seemed to be reacting more to the behavior of some acafan- a behavior pattern I have seen in more than that fan camp for sure. Specifically the idea that proponents of any specific approach can tell another fan that their thoughts or feelings are wrong, or less valuable. Especially when they are pulling something like telling the author that they don't understand their own motivations and intents when writing a story. And again, I've seen that specific behavior in non-criticism contexts.
Somehow the objection to a type of behavior has been carried over to a whole class of people: acafan- which seems to be a very organic, natural language type of class which varies in meaning between posters. In some of the anti-acafan posts I've read, acafan is more or less equated with all analytical debate (not arguments, which by their nature involve emotions and value judgments). In some of the posts, even the pro-acafan posts, the term acafan is restricted to post-modernist, literary critiques and analysis. And in at least one case it seems to be invoked for any post which doesn't accept a story or an episode whole cloth and discuss only the overall emotional response- any one who wants to "dissect" the whole and look at the parts and underlying structures, even if it is not an analytical approach. (And I will point out the underlying value judgment implied in any metaphor linking an activity with vivisection to point out that the value judgments are not all coming from one camp).
Not all posters who favor an analytical approach are committing literary criticism. And not all literary critiques are actually analytical- I believe I remember a few that I felt failed the logic test big time, and were more about invoking the proper citation or identifying a specific literary style than actively revealing any new layers of meaning or a new way of viewing a fanfic or an episode. But to me, analytical thinking is the way my mind works most of the time. And I don't think it's only because I survived graduate school; in contrast I would argue that I made it to graduate school because my cognitive patterns already favored that approach. I assume that some fen have minds that work more or less like mine, and some fen undoubtedly have minds that prefer other paths. Therefore I would be surprised if a variety of different approaches didn't show up in cyberspace everyday.