Online Fandoms and Why Do I Even Bother?

 

Online Fandoms and Why Do I Even Bother?

This is going to be a strange write up from me, I usually tend to critique or examine a topic, but I am going to make an exception here. Another exception I am making is that I am breaking my code of never talking about my personal life or at least doing so in a write up. This blog is going to have a lot of rambling in it and probably isn't going to be structured or planned as well as I think because this might be my first and only personal blog. I have recently watched the Anime series Genshiken and I have been talking about that show a lot on my Twitter feed lately, and the reason why is only because I think it's a very good show but because I feel the club that characters go to is how I feel what in a sense what a media discussion community should feel like while the characters have their own sets of problems, they seem to genuinely enjoy talking about the media they like and when they do get into disagreements, it never gets out of hand, it never gets "toxic", there is no hive mind mentality and no one is being overly defensive like their lives are at risk because there is one disagreement. There is no taste discussion elitism or any form condescension. It actually feels like a causal disagreement among friends who like to hang out and do express their liking for their hobbies together.

Which is what transitions to me my next topic. I have been on internet fandom communities since 2008 and I can't help but say that the internet has to be the biggest missed opportunity for media discussion ever. When I was in middle school and high school, I always wanted a place where I could discuss media whenever I wanted and have people who are just like "me" or as passionate as I was in a sense to talk about media with. I did have that at times, but it was never something that would happen every day. People back then always spoke of music, sports and dating with some other stuff in between but talking about media and letting my inner fan out was usually rare. Which is why I often went to stuff like the Youtube Comments because there was people who were passionate about media as I was. I often got attacked and insulted a lot in the Youtube Comments sections and when I was younger, I would participate in these "flame wars" but the more I grew older, the more I realized how much of a waste of time it all was. I often tried to not be rude and I would just state my opinion on its own and that would either get people who were overly defensive or people who would throw insults at me. At times, I was like, "guys it's just a piece of media" and that is kind of ironic because that is what people in real life would tell me whenever I got overly passionate. Years later, the more Youtube started phase itself as sort of a social media platform(you could've used as that despite not officially being social media) and I went to Twitter, and at first, things weren't too bad and it actually seemed "good" but the more I started to stay on there, the more I started to get annoyed with many things. Around 2017, I feel is where it started to really to grate me. Twitter introduced so much crap that eventually would lead me to absolutely not stand it anymore. Examples including, seeing tweets that people who you are following liked, seeing replies to other people's tweets, and that and the usual stuff I couldn't stand like gif posting instead of arguments, quote tweeting because hitting the reply button would make you get less attention and you appear to be "cooler". When you add up all this and more you got the rise of Twitter personalities who didn't even actually have to do anything in life to get a lot of followers. These people I am talking about use all these things I have mentioned to their advantage to become "famous".  I remember when people were talking about, "Youtube Whores" many years back who used Youtube's false thumbnails and it's faulty algorithm to make money, I am starting to think these "Twitter Whores" are barely any different. With the rise of the "Twitter Whore", this now leads to why I think Social Media particularly Twitter has become something I tolerate less of as time goes on. It leads to people pushing false narratives and hive mind thinking. To name a specific example, a game journalist writes a headline that sounds questionable. The first thing will happen is that these "Twitter Whores" will Quote Tweet them and then mock that said journalist despite not actually reading the article in question. They then get their followers to like and retweet what they are Quote Tweeting. These "Twitter Whores" think they are smart for attacking the journalist but did they ever thought to think that by insulting that journalist and giving his article a crap load of attention, you are directly inspiring him to write even more articles with questionable headlines and giving the his website tons of traffic? By this point, you aren't really critiquing him, you are giving him advertisement without even trying. It's kind of like how in Robocop where the OCP funds the cops while also protecting the criminals creating a self contained source of income, it's almost feels like one big corporate scam except at least OCP are actually amusing. I would probably talk about the left leaning politics and cancel culture too, but I feel that would just make this blog longer than it needs to be and I am looking at it from a media discussion angle. Either way, these Twitter Whores love to promote themselves while indirectly promoting people they dislike in a condescending way despite those very same people probably even knowing that they are getting lots of attention. COVID 19 has really made dislike these things even more since Twitter I used more than I normally did and exposed me to this more. I had no conventions to break up the pace from all this and special events were rare. It's just made me more jaded and cynical.

Now this next topic is the biggest reason why I dislike media discussion on the internet: critical immunity. Critical immunity has destroyed any form of faith or hope I had in internet communities. What is critical immunity you ask? Well it's a piece of media that never gets attacked or criticized and are so rare to see get any slander to the point where you wonder if that thing is an alien artefact rather than a piece of media. I would list examples but I think you have the idea. With this whole thing I got to wonder, what is even the point of an online discussion anymore? The whole point of online discussion was to not have people act like the way they did in school and in real life yet the online people I used to think were like "me" are just that. I just hate this whole "perfection" mentality that looking for flaws is viewed as heresy like going against some kind of religious cult group. I am going to tell you something shocking: Finding flaws in your favourite media does not mean you dislike it nor does it ruin your wellbeing. Flaws can vary in how much you can enjoy media and some are bigger than others, but acting like your favourite work has none is basically just naivety. We are only human after all so it makes sense for the media that humans to create to have flaws like humanity does. Everyone makes mistakes no matter how big or small they are. Perfection is boring and something I can't connect with. If perfect media does exist, I would probably find it really boring because it was probably designed by an alien not a human. It's funny because critically immune media tend to have fans who act like they are in an alien hive mind. Before I continue off this point, I want to mention a huge pet peeve about online communities I had for some time, and that is people hardly going out of their way to look up new media and expanding their horizons. I don't get it even before I become somewhat adept at examining media, I always thought it was always good to expand one's horizons and have a large pool of different media to form the basis of your critique from. Usually people on social media just talk about the same old mainstream entertainment all the time which is funny because isn't the reason why a lot of people joined online communities is because there is more discussion on more "niche" media? What really gets me is the fanboyism that surrounds it all. If you criticize any critically immune work and say a lesser known piece of media is better, I am willing to bet that you will get ridiculed by the fanboys then inspire a genuine sense of curiosity from these people. I don't know about you, but if someone says a movie is better than my favourite and I have never seen it, I wouldn't attack that person, I would check the damn thing out to see if he was right! I wouldn't attack him for daring to say some slander like a weird cultist. I just find the whole thing discouraging at the end of the day, all this stuff of mainstream media dominance and promoting lesser known media makes you a menace to the internet, makes me question why I bother going out my way to expand my horizons when all I do is get attacked for it. Is this how a superhero feels when they give so much to help the city they protect and all they do is get attacked by the people? I sure do feel it. But hey, at the end of the day, it's not all hopeless since you could find reasonable people but it's rare, but that 0.1% chance is what keeps me going.

Another point I want to address that really annoys me is hated media getting liked and vice versa, I am not against the idea of changing one's thoughts on something, I am no stranger to it. I recently beat Sly 3 Honour Among Thieves and enjoyed it a lot more than I did the first time, but the thing whenever these sorts of things happen, it never feels like it's because people went out of their way to be proven wrong, it felt like there is a hive mind telling them that they are wrong and they have to comply. The fact that there are so many people that suddenly changed their thoughts on something tells me that it just feels like someone told them too. And there are certain people who I will not name that tend to influence how these online communities think. Then I start wondering to myself, wasn't the whole point of going to online communities because people in real life would act like this? The more I think about it, online fandoms just feel like a farce to me.

It's funny really, I used to think people in real life where the people I described when in reality, they are not. In fact, they were people I wanted this whole time but couldn't see it. I watched the 1st Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie with my cousin and brother on Netflix almost a year ago and everyone enjoyed the movie including me. But my cousin had issues with some of the acting and dialogue and didn't particularly enjoy the romantic scenes between Peter and MJ really much. Now go on Twitter, I want you to try to find someone who was honest enough to admit that the movie had its issues like that you might, but I am going to bet over $9000 that the Twitter community wouldn't even dare to say one bad thing about if unless if you looked extremely hard. My brother is a huge fan of the Dragon Ball series and he admits that the series isn't that well written and he just watches the series for the fights, now I want you to go on social media and find someone that honest.

One more thing that annoys me is that people try to find mutuals online through similar interests and tastes, boy I want to tell those people that similar interests don't mean shit, you can have people with similar interests but at the end of day, strength of character is always going to win out. If someone has "good" taste and a poor character than they are always going to be inherently worse than people who you disagree with but are honest people with integrity. Do you want to talk to someone who you disagree with, have an interesting discussion and don't mind your opinions or someone who is an asshole who can't handle any form of criticism? I know who I would go for.  

And now, this is where everything comes full circle, I joined online fandoms because it was supposed to provide me the media discussion groups that real life couldn't provide me just to find out that people in real life were better all along. You already had inherently better things like how you can actually tell what a person feels through facial expressions and tone of voice. That and people in real life can't act overly crazy and act like an asshole because that in of itself would create a huge scene and gather a lot of unnecessary attention which being anonymous on the internet, you can get away with. So why do I come back to internet fandoms exactly? Why? Simply put the people I live with aren't really interested in the same stuff as I am except my brother, and when I do find people with similar interests they tend to be at conventions which I can only go for one or two days, and making friends at a con to me, seems kind of like a farce because once online conversations start happening, the magic you had with that face to face conversation goes away immediately. I guess you have to plan a meet up or plan a meeting but that is too much of a hassle because I just want to do whatever I want at a con. My brother while having similar interests tend to not be as passionate into media as much as I do, and he is very introverted so he only talks to me unless if he has to. I don't blame him, it's his nature but it doesn't make it any easier for me to avoid online fandoms. My cousin I tend to see on occasion. Then there are some other cousins I have who really into media but haven't seen since 2017 and live really far away from me. Now, there is also the fact that making real friends in real life is simply put, is really goddamn hard. First, you have to meet in the same place at the same time consistently or have some consistent meet up, then you have to make sure you have chemistry when talking to each other, on top of that you have to know the person well enough to even consider if you to be his friend and that requires to hang around for some time, then you hope that he doesn't have any deep dark secrets that if you were to find out could ruin the friendship. It takes too much time where online discussion requires very little effort on my part. Less risk and more chances to talk about what I like, even if more means more garbage. Go to similar groups with similar interests? Well, let's say I have bad experiences with those I want to 2 college course regarding media creation where everyone was into media like I was and like I said with the strength of character point, I couldn't stand how they acted and they annoyed me to no end. I tried to join up with one college club multiple times and those guys are a really dishonest and disinterested in what they did. So I guess, I am in online fandoms because I have rotten luck I suppose. It's funny, some people I have met at cons have better luck than I do. They have a friend group or at least so well off socially that they don't need social media. I envy them. Having some kind of group along the lines of Genshiken would be great because college groups aren't anything like that in real life. It's like Superman, how a person with great power would use it for good. I remember the description of the show got me mad at the time because of how unrealistic it was, now I am just disappointed because finding something like that is going to be hard and take too much effort for something I am not sure is worth it.

In conclusion, I have made it clear that I dislike online fandoms, and while I can't say I love it, the whole thing is basically the fast food of conversation. It's quick and easy where with actual bonds require time and effort which is something I don't have and also due to years of abandonment issues. There are times where online conversations comes together and things actually seem good but they are rare and wish would happen more often. I may have made an entire blog complaining about it, but I can't find a great alternative right now. Maybe someday, I will.