2010, Bertha Catherine LP Chin, "From Textual Poachers to Textual Gifters: Exploring Fan Community and Celebrity in the Field of Fan Cultural Production", thesis submitted to Cardiff University, page 33:
Within the Lord of the Rings fandom, for instance, this group of fans is identified as 'tinhats' amongst fans in jest, in reference to tin hats normally worn by conspiracy theorists who believe that the hats will prevent governments from controlling their minds.
2011, Katherine Larsen, Lynn Zubernis, Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/producer Relationships[1], page 131:
Some of the most violent wank over RPF occurs between "tinhats" (fans who like to imagine a romantic relationship between two real-life and supposedly straight individuals, in which the term can mean either an insult or a tongue in cheek in-group reference) and "hets" (fans who like to imagine a romantic relationship between a male and female real person).
The former are known as "tinhats" or "hats," a tongue-in-cheek reference to how "crazy" it is to imagine such things.
2014, Anna Martin, "Writing the Star: Stardom, Fandom and Real Person Fanfiction", thesis submitted to Lancaster University, page 94:
It is the conspiracy theory aspect of this caricature that is most important here: the LOTRPS tinhats believe in a complex conspiracy in which the stars of the trilogy were being forced by PR to hide their relationships, but the stars in question would find ways to communicate the "truth" to their fans.
2020, Judith May Fathallah, Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture[3], page 59:
Two people do reply, and the second is noteworthy: "I seriously doubt very many people here legitimately believe any of the boys – okay, with the possible exception of Brendon *facepalm* – is actually gay. Those that do are teenies and tinhats."
Tinhats - aka fans who believed the people they shipped were secretly a real couple - had been scrutinizing Boone and Simone's every move for years, reading into their interactions and constructing elaborate theories to prove there was something going on between their favorite actors off-screen.
2022, Kaitlyn Tiffany, Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It[5], unnumbered page:
A year later, some "Domlijah" shippers became convinced that the dream relationship between Dominic Monaghan and Elijah Wood wasn't fiction after all, but an elaborately covered-up tragedy. They became the very first "tinhats."
