Re: My TL;DR response pt 1
Meme rather than population bloc: The actual people involved are a fluid, regularly-changing group, but the patterns of behavior don't change (much). Kinda like "Democrat" as a concept has only a limited connection to "the people who are registered as Democrats," many of whom have radical differences of opinion from the party's official platform.
Acafandom has no "official" platform, but it has habits that continue even as people move in & out of academia proper.
acafan- which seems to be a very organic, natural language type of class which varies in meaning between posters
Oh, sing it! Even in trying to discuss "acafen and "acafandom," I'm painfully aware I haven't defined them, and there's no simple, sharp definition that people agree on, not even as a vague consensus.
I agree that it's not so much aca=good vs aca=bad, but a clash between behavior styles & acceptable judgments, and those may commonly break down on aca lines without being directly tied to them. I can also understand "I'm not aca because I went to grad school; I went to grad school because I'm aca."
And I love aca discussions. Mostly. I once wrote 6000 words to say, "I think the Knut is worth about $.02 US;" I understand searching through canon for snippets of support and worrying if you've missed some obvious bit that would make your whole paper meaningless. But there are some topics, some discussions where the academic approach just... doesn't fit what I need to say about it.
(Limited time at work. Want very much to discuss this. Hoping that if I throw a short comment in, that'll push me to finish my thoughts later.)