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Fandom Is Broken
birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/05/30/fandom-is-broken
I didn't follow the whole GamerGate thing either, but while reading the above piece I'm thinking the whole time about parallels to religious fanatics or how, as we move to a more secular society, crazies will still be crazy. The author visits this in the last paragraph.
Anyway, I actually came across that article while reading this newer one. This one being about superheroes specifically. Maybe those with more comic/supers leanings will find it interesting.
comicsalliance.com/superhero-fandom-virt...trackback=tsmclip%22
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Fandom has always been a bit broken, IMO. Fans latch onto their fannish obsessions as a way of disengaging from a tedious or worse reality. So when disappointing things happen to the object of their obsession, fans tend to be less able to cope. And because fandom is their safe place of retreat, it doesn't take much disruption to upset the fans. Comic books make for an especially volatile fandom, because you've got these classic characters from several decades ago that don't really fit our modern world. Too many white males, not enough diversity, and originally created for kids. Now all these characters have become hot movie and tv properties, but they need updating for the current market. Cue up the fan outrage. Aside from that, superhero comics always had a lot of creative churn, with frequent turnover of creative teams, and fans driven to spend more when outrageous changes happened.
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- SuperflyPete
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Chapel wrote: These people in the article need to grow the fuck up.
Sums up how I feel in a single sentence. Also applies to people that fight over sports, music and any other hobby.
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- Colorcrayons
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They have chosen a distraction to be their focus, or society has has manufactured a distraction to obsess over. That energy could do a lot of good if say, the guy painting his body gold and purple screaming about the vikings was instead as vociferous about domestic hunger/ poverty/ education/ abuse.
Eldridge Cleaver once wrote that as long as we have a TV in each house, we will never have a meaningful revolution.
To be a fanatic about anything other than fighting: misinformation, ignorance through lack of education, despotic leaders who do not represent their constituency, etc is just a bunch of people running around in circles waving their hands and shouting gibberish.
And there is a certain portion of society which wants to keep you like that. Uneducated, and more importantly, distracted in case you do happen to be educated.
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- Legomancer
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- Jackwraith
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On topic: The best thing about the Internet is that it's the world's largest forum where everyone can participate and communicate. The worst thing about the Internet is that it's the world's largest forum where everyone can participate and communicate.
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"These fans are treating stories like ordering at a restaurant - hold the pickles, please, and can I substitute kale for the lettuce? But that isn't how art works, and that shouldn't be how art lovers react to art."
Well... maybe it's time for geek culture objects to be a bit more about art then. It's interesting that fan entitlement often reaches it's crescendo with products that appear to be designed by committee, written & marketed in such a way that they do in fact come off as modular, disposable, tailored to audiences in an a la carte fashion. I think it's an ecosystem thing. These products have created these types of fans.
Besides, you can't just throw Art down as some sort of divider between the plebes and the enlightened creators. That shit flew out the window in the 60's.
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That said, a lot of his article makes sense and I agree that technology enables a great deal of this stuff. I disagree about the corporatization of storytelling being some new problem though: music, TV, and movies have been that way for generations. To me he describes the main culprit quite well. It's the sense of entitlement that so many fans and other consumers have. But he lets the actual fans off the hook. To him it couldn't possibly be a generational difference in attitudes, because of that Gen Xer's death threat. I mean, QE Fucking D, right?
In my opinion technology and generational differences in attitude are the cause. You have to teach a 50-year old to troll on the Internet after all. They didn't take it in with their mother's milk the way Millennials do. So they learn by watching, just like anyone else does.
Every generation thinks that the culture is coarsening, right? I guess such complaints are inevitable, just like societal decline, heh.
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Feelitmon wrote: In my opinion technology and generational differences in attitude are the cause. You have to teach a 50-year old to troll on the Internet after all.
I'm on the backside of 40, and I perfected internet trolling before most of the millennials were even born.
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- Legomancer
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Feelitmon wrote: he unironically labels GamerGate a "terrorist hate group."
He's not wrong.
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Look at popular culture. Right now, fandom has everything it could ever want. A dozen comic-book films every year. The CW alone is slowly morphing into "The DC Comics Channel, with occasional shows about white dude vampires fucking." The highest grossing domestic movie of all time is FUCKING STAR WARS.
Yet they're not happy. They bitch even when given everything they ever wanted. "The MCU is going downhill." "Episode VII was derivative and ho-hum." Blah de blah de fucking blah blah blah.
I don't deal with fans or fandom anymore. Fuck 'em. Miserable little bitches.
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I used to proselytize for atheism. I don't anymore. People are even crazier without their gods then they are with them.
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Ken B. wrote: Look at popular culture. Right now, fandom has everything it could ever want. A dozen comic-book films every year. The CW alone is slowly morphing into "The DC Comics Channel, with occasional shows about white dude vampires fucking." The highest grossing domestic movie of all time is FUCKING STAR WARS.
Yet they're not happy. They bitch even when given everything they ever wanted. "The MCU is going downhill." "Episode VII was derivative and ho-hum." Blah de blah de fucking blah blah blah.
.
I think there's an important distinction between being "ungrateful" and being "critical." Fans off geeky things absolutely should be grateful that we're truly living in a Geek Golden Age.
However, that doesn't mean we can't be CRITICAL of those things, and hold them to basic artistic standards of creativity, craftsmanship, and quality. I think there are totally valid, legitimate criticisms you can level at The Force Awakens, or the MCU, or whatever. In fact, I would argue the opposite -- fans often aren't critical ENOUGH. They're far too willing to lap this shit up without even thinking about it. And I HATE the argument, "Eh, it's just silly, genre nonsense, so it doesn't have to be good." UGH.
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