Are certain Fanbases worse than others?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by MpCollector81, Nov 3, 2015.

  1. MpCollector81

    MpCollector81 Banned

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    I was doing some reflection on my time spent at He-Man.org (the worst fan community on the Internet), and it got me thinking about what personality types may be attracted to certain franchises, and how these users interact with one another. He-man.org for example was a joke. Every time a toy was released, pages and pages of whiners would explode, critiquing every aspect of the toy (sculpt, colors, accessories etc.) and making the most inflammatory, ludicrous statements. People would literally scream like their childhood was ruined by a figure, and when a good cry-hard got some traction, other people would just glom onto whatever tired rant he was feeding. I vividly remember one nutbag's constant rants, and one particular post, where he raged that he had to 'pay professional painters' to fix all of Mattel's mistakes. Come on man! Are you so miserable and OCD that you just can't buy a toy and be happy with it?

    So after navigating hundreds of pages, and thousands of posts divided He-Man.org users into 2 camps. The Mattel Apologists who defended everything their beloved toy company did (even if there were legitimate QC issues, or major screw ups, like Subscribers paying for the highly sought after Fisto figure and never receiving it) and the detractors which hated and raged over everything, but yet at the same time, obsessively bought the products. Some of the most miserable, entitled users seemed to need to buy this stuff the most. Here, people seem to openly discuss Hasbro's foibles, but I haven't seen too much bitter infighting amongst users.

    One day I started a topic about 3rd Party products, and was not surprised when most people thought it was sacrilege for any other company to produce anything Mattel may have some tenuous rights too, even obscure characters to never be produced. Its like He-Man.org is so insular, they can't even imagine that someone else having an amazing idea on how to produce MOTU related things people would want to buy. Here its quite different, 3rd party items are celebrated. There's more excitement going on in the 3rd party threads than in the Hasbro news.

    I have a theory that the material itself may even have something to do with the types of people this fandom attracts. For example, the G1 cartoon, for all its goofiness was certainly written to be enjoyed by an older audience, while MOTU was written for a much younger audience, and featured stories and concepts, such as crying dragons and talking trees that probably appealed to immature viewers, who now in adulthood still cling to that. An adult Transformers fan, wants a G1 Shockwave that transforms into a energy weapon. He/She wants a great transformation, a toy/cartoon accurate sculpt, and will buy it from anyone that can produce quality. A adult He-Man fan, wants a lady in a pink dress with flowers in her hair, and looks like she did in a cartoon where she makes flowers appear out of thin air... and if they don't get it, they rage, and fuss and complain for years. Suggest other options? They dismiss everything and sniffle in the corner, waiting for Mattel to pat them on the head, until they get their next fuzzy dolly.

    I'm glad to have found this place, its rekindled my love of awesome TFs, and reminded me that not every fandom is a collection of giant (and slightly psychotic) anti-social children.

    Anyone care to discuss my theory?
     
  2. agentSAP2006

    agentSAP2006 Avatar by Sprite

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    Have you read about the Steven Universe fandom lately?
     
  3. NotRamjet97

    NotRamjet97 Well-Known Member

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    It can REALLY vary.

    Heck, some fandoms, like the TF fandom, are really divided. You've got the fans on here and other sites, but you've also got the rather large fanfic/fanart community, as well.

    I suspect this could end rather badly, though.

    The one fandom I did meet that did seem genuinely polite and nice were a group of fans for the second MLP cartoon, Tales.

    The other fandoms I've been around, Halo, MLP:FiM, TFs, all have their issues. They all have really good people in them and really cruddy people. Like a lot of fandoms and large groups of people.
     
  4. ABH1979

    ABH1979 Veteran

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    No, but certain individual fans are certainly worse than others. It's pretty subjective though.
     
  5. KA

    KA Well-Known Member

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    the TF fandom is THE WORST(tm)
     
  6. Hot Shot.

    Hot Shot. Well-Known Member

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    Someone explain to me how ctrl+F-ing "Sonic" on that wall of text gave me 0 hits.

    But yeah, certain fanbases contain more awful people than others, and there's a spectrum of just how bad those awful people can be. The big three I can think of worst-to-least are Steven Universe, Sonic the Hedgehog, and MLP after it became a furry lifestyle. Sonic is obviously worse than Pony because it contains people like CWC and the guy who did Two Babies One Fox(DON'T...google that), and Steven Universe's budding fandom is apparently filled with social justice tumblrites who want a girl to kill herself for drawing a fat character with a healthy body weight.

    As far as toy fandoms go, Transformers is easily in the top five worst, if not the top three.
     
  7. Belgrath

    Belgrath Boom! Nutshot!

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    This on both counts.
     
  8. DPrime

    DPrime Well-Known Member

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    lol, hard to disagree with any of this. :) 

    Having collected MOTUC from the start, I've (luckily... or maybe wisely?) avoided the .org for the most part, but it's difficult to completely ignore.

    I've heard a lot of Hot Wheels collectors are kind of weird as well...

    I dunno, I mean, we can't generalize too much - just because someone is into MOTU doesn't mean he's at all like the people you describe... but then again, when your "core" online community is as bad as the .org, well... I do think there's something to what you're saying, here.
     
  9. MpCollector81

    MpCollector81 Banned

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    I do not know what that is sir. Feel free to elaborate.

    PS: I looked it up myself. Yeah, I can already see crazy in this... I don't need to dig further.
     
  10. Dark Skull

    Dark Skull Well-Known Enabler Moderator

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    Well....all this just reminds me of this little excerpt from a vlog:

    https://youtu.be/xtlCyoAsC7Y?t=3m28s

    Of course, watching the whole video does give a message....but it's a little crass. I lol'd :lol 
     
  11. MpCollector81

    MpCollector81 Banned

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    Yeah the He-Man.org fandom was nuts on so many levels. The one guy that I actually invested time into getting to know (because he didn't seem to post rage like all the others) seemed cool at first, but over time he revealed to be pretty messed up. Our first disagreement was over Rainbow Brite. He just could not accept that I didn't like Rainbow Brite, and every time I would politely decline discussing it, he would get angry.

    At that point I should have realized hey, if he could not be rational when someone simply disagrees with his personal tastes, that's a sign that he may be a little unbalanced. Eventually he became very 'sensitive' about everything we would talk about, and one day, after some really pointed questions, he basically said that I was a terrible person! Why? Well obviously, because I didn't find him sexually attractive. I was like WTF dude! We've been talking about action figures, and life, and now you're angry with me because I'm not into you? What did he think? I'd pack my bags, fly down to his house and we'd sit in his basement, make-out and then we'd brush doll hair together? I should have known that a She-Ra fan (yes I like She-Ra) has a brain like a 12 year old girl. Argh! Block. Delete. Block. Sigh...

    That experience (along with a few others) really left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to fan bases and the socially awkward, oddballs that sit on their computers and exist in a world of 30 year old children's toys. Oh yeah, and then there's the religious whack-a-doos who have to inject religion into everything and live in a fantasy world where their perfect vision of 80s cartoons are actually Christian versions, and their heroes get their powers from Jesus. Yep, they exist on He-Man.org too.
     
  12. Hot Shot.

    Hot Shot. Well-Known Member

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    I touched on it in my post. A girl likes to draw "problematic" fanart, so the socjus tumblr part of the SU fanbase decided to make a mission out of bullying her off the internet. The girl tried to kill herself, and now those people are encouraging her to do it properly.
     
  13. rattrap007

    rattrap007 One meme mutha f’er TFW2005 Supporter

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    I think every fan base is the worst in another fan bases eyes. But I think almost everyone can agree Twilight is the worst...
     
  14. Dark Skull

    Dark Skull Well-Known Enabler Moderator

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    I just read up on that crap. Wow. People can be so amazingly........nevermind.....not gonna add to it. It wouldn't have been anything nice to say anyway. I'll defer back to that YouTube link I posted up.
     
  15. MpCollector81

    MpCollector81 Banned

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    I did a little bit of reading, and honestly, nothing about this really surprises me about this. If the SU fan base has any ties to Tumblr and Reddit (and other social media cesspools) it is no shock that it would be a weird melting pot of online trolls and to quote what I read "manchildren".

    So why does Transformers seem a little cleaner? Consider this. Transformers has a fan base spanning 30 years, however for 20 of those years there was virtually no Internet. The fans existed in the real world. They met face to face, they socialized, they got sunlight and Vitamin D. Maybe that's why there are seemingly normal functioning, enthusiastic Transformers fans populating these boards. They actually had a childhood without social media and the Internet. They played with other children, took their lumps, experienced genuine human interaction during play time, and maybe somewhere along the way, learned some life lessons.

    Now you have cartoons and franchises picked up by internet savvy kids, and social media is woven into how they connect to other people who share their passion. From as early as 10 years old they are online, sharing their thoughts, reading Youtube troll comments on every video they watch, and being exposed to the filth of the internet. By the time they are 15, they are regurgitating all the hate they've absorbed. Hormones, online gaming, and witty catch phrases wrapped up in adult language become an intrinsic part of their online experience. Harassing people in the fandom becomes part of the fun, and by the time they're 20 (if they are still active in the fan base) they could very well be the people telling artists to kill themselves because they're upset over a depiction of a cartoon.

    So I guess for all the negative I experienced, I clearly have not seen the absolute bottom layer of scum in online fandoms. Its hilarious how cartoons such as SU, My Little Pony and Sonic The Hedgehog, purportedly have the worst sub-human fan bases, since they are so fundamentally child-like, colorful and cute.
     
  16. Noideaforaname

    Noideaforaname Pico, let's go up to Zuma

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    Yeah, it's a special kind of tragic when a franchise that promotes tolerance and acceptance ends up catching such hateful "fans". Like, as ridiculous as this 80s children's toys fandom can be, I don't think it ever reaches such alarmingly hypocritical levels such as that.
     
  17. strangeguy32000

    strangeguy32000 Well-Known Member

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    ALL Fandoms are weird and they all have intolerable gits in their numbers.

    JP (Jurassic Park) Fandom has a sect of folks that claim the paleo-accurate model of Dinosaurs is The ONLY models of prehistoric reptiles, avians, and proto-mammals.
    The Mass Effect fandom has a subset of people that endlessly bash the possible lesbian relationship between the hypothetical female Commander Shepard (Femshep) and the blue alien woman (Liara). Just the same, there's a group for every possible romantic option in the games (even paths that do not and cannot result in simulated intercourse)
    MLP has those insufferably public "Bronies"
    Transformers has Geewunners and so does Star Wars.
    Call of Duty kids want zombies in everything. I do mean EVERYTHING.
    PC gaming elitists think their ever-upgraded machines are the be-all end-all hot shit. (Even when 2/3 of them are running nothing but Minecraft and WoW)
    Trekkies will bicker amongst themselves about the merits of at least two fictional spacecraft captains, and which one is the best.
     
  18. MpCollector81

    MpCollector81 Banned

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    Best post ever. :D 
     
  19. Dark Skull

    Dark Skull Well-Known Enabler Moderator

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    What about Star Trek vs Star Wars?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd5yB9Vmd6I
     
  20. boxorak

    boxorak Lacking Shelf Space

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    You know, I've never seen Steven Universe, and I've been meaning to watch it to see what the hubbub is about. Nowadays, not so much, especially if watching it means I get lumped with the obnoxious fucks over on Tumblr.

    I'm disinclined to agree, mostly because I hate posts complaining about the Damn Kids These Days (and I'm desperate to convince myself and everyone else that the modern age isn't as bad as everyone says it is).

    Part of me wants to make a comment to the effect of how, considering a certain infamous Sonic fan who got himself arrested last year for pepper spraying a GameStop employee over a character's arm colors, the Sonic fanbase's bad reputation is sort of justified...but comparing anyone to that walking Aristocrats joke is a level of offensive I will not stoop to.