Tag: fandom fuckery

solacekames:

rush-keating:

ricafrede:

rush-keating:

ricafrede:

rush-keating:

kidgecat:

undercitytwerkteam:

why is it always media that tries to be open and inclusive like steven universe, overwatch, dream daddy, that have the worst fanbases that run around telling eachother to kill themselves over inaccurate fanart and headcanon disputes

They’re not any worse than other fanbases that are steeped in bigoted, reactionary dickheads. It’s just that people make a bigger deal out of more diverse fandoms behaving badly because marginalized people are held to different standards.

Also you’re more likely to encounter bad SU, Dream Daddy and Overwatch fans on tumblr. Bad fans of more reactionary franchises are more common on reddit or the chans. And if they are here they’re not people that the OP would be following anyway.

i feel like not any worse is not a very satisfying answer though because it’s still kinda like why are communities that are supposed to be about openness and inclusiveness still comparable in violence to stuff like rick and morty

Im not a sociologist but my guess would be that anything that promotes group identification (i.e. “we play overwatch and overwatch players are like this”) also encourages people to create community norms and boundaries. This can be a good thing (like keeping Nazis or sexual harassers out), a bad thing, or a bit of both.

you’re probably right but it’s still kind of disheartening because i feel like we should be doing better

I still think the #1 easiest thing that would make fandoms way way better would be for everyone to stop inferring RL political beliefs from fandom affiliation. I understand why people do it but it leads to an atmosphere where youre either paranoid of large swathes of people based on nothing more than their consumer habits or youre paranoid that YOUR consumer habits might be alienating your friends or other members of a marginalized group you are in.

Not to mention it creates a culture where people care more about making their fandom look good than addressing bigotry and other problems in a mature and transparent fashion.

I don’t even watch cartoons or play video games but I can throw in my two cents here: I think fandom is intensely competitive but not very honest about being competitive. I agree fans of “diverse” media aren’t any more badly behaved than fans of, say, the Big Bang Theory, but they aren’t any better behaved either. It’s just a constant of human behavior.

Maybe fandom would benefit from acknowledging that negativity and competition are inherent to fandom as a social activity. 

Fantasy football is an example of a male-dominated social competitive activity. I really think fandom on places like Tumblr is kind of a female-dominated mirror of that same competitive urge. Instead of teams, we root for ships, instead of players we root for characters. There’s lots of other ways to compete such as “who has the best analysis” and so on. Sometimes there’s money involved too, but even playing for social capital and attention is enough to really motivate people.

Making fandom a better and less nasty place would mean acknowledging that different people access it for different reasons. Some people don’t want to compete at anything, they just want a stress-free passive enjoyment. Other people have a strong drive to compete, to show they’re right, to get into conflicts. Most people are somewhere in the middle or go through different stages. But a lot of the most competitive people aren’t honest about their drive to compete. Maybe if there was more space to fight and get it out but in a way that doesn’t hurt everyone’s feelings. Livejournal fandom (while horrible in many respects) was great for that because you had lots of fan-organized writing competitions, charity competitions, even sports-bracket-type things for ships (I don’t know what to call them because I don’t even sport).

I think we’re always going to want to kick each other’s asses and get in arguments and fight stuff out. But that’s OK if everyone understands the rules and the stakes and accepts them. But when you have a massively unequal playing field, and one person thinks they’re playing a fun game but it’s dead serious to someone else, you can’t establish those kinds of friendly tournaments. 

Attempts to make things better that start with “why can’t we all just get along” are going to fail because a lot of people don’t want to get along. That’s not what they’re in fandom for. They’re in it to win it. And because most of us are women or woman-aligned, we have an internalized sense of shame about competition that we really shouldn’t have.

I agree with this and my experience with fandom can be that it is very competitive in a way that mirrors sports. The Once Upon a Time Fandom was certainly like that. People would watch the episodes as if they were sports matches and cheer on their favorite characters and ships.

But I think there’s a difference between “not getting along” with a fandom and what I’m talking about, which is essentially no-platforming everyone in a fandom because one thinks that being in that fandom alone is the equivalent to having political views that should be no-platformed. One is complaining about the behavior of people within a fandom while the other is saying that nobody can be friends with or sometimes even show basic kindness toward people in that fandom because being in it is the equivalent of supporting RL oppression and violence. That makes enjoying fandom difficult, especially for people who like villains and/or have a lot of friends who do since a lot of villains do things that would be pretty messed up IRL. 

I don’t think sports fandoms are like that (at least not in the US, I know from having friends internationally that, yeah, people do interpret the political ideologies of people based on what team they support and the results of that haven’t been great to put it mildly).

rush-keating:

If you all want to convince me there’s a coordinated effort by ‘antis’ to boycott the new Ad*m Driver movie you’ll need to do better than show me a screenshot of three lines of something a Jewish blogger wrote about how a Jewish actor should’ve been cast instead of him.

You don’t have to agree with that person but address what they’re actually saying, instead of just labeling them an “anti” and blowing what they said out of proportion.

“Not liking something isn’t enough to make someone an ‘anti.’ They have to actually go out and harass people” becomes a hollow statement when someone is called an anti because they were venting on their own blog about something they didn’t like.

dragon-in-a-fez:

tainbocuailnge:

tainbocuailnge:

“adults shouldn’t be in fandom” discourse is the funniest shit to me especially coming from 16-18 yr olds. you really think ur gonna stop liking things in the next 2 or 3 years? get real.

“adults in fandom have a responsibility towards younger fans to not be creepy and keep a respectful distance especially when the fandom in question is for a piece of media meant for a younger audience”

“there’s something inherently predatory about adults being in fandoms that also have minors and adults thus shouldn’t be allowed to participate in fandom in order to keep minors safe”

I mean, yeah, but I wish tumblr would stop acting like this is a Real Problem, and in the process ignoring the fact that teenagers don’t have any real social or structural power to keep adults out of their spaces or hobbies, while adults on the other hand have immense power to exclude young people and do so on a regular basis. go outside of places like tumblr (where demographics skew younger) for five minutes and this *should* become obvious. like do you know how often I’ve heard adults complain about the fact that there were kids at midnight premieres of the Harry Potter movies? and guess what, no theater would ever have an “under-18s-only” screening but there are PLENTY that have daily adults-only screenings of movies whose ratings in no way require it, solely because adults get pissy and entitled when asked to share space with youth. so yeah, teens who try to push adults out of fandoms are doing a shitty thing but like, context.

I think the harm in it doesn’t come from what the teenagers are actually doing because, yes, adults have always been in fandom and teenagers don’t have the structural power to keep them out but instead the messages that teenagers (and adults in their early 20s) are internalizing about what women should do when they are past 30. People who are constantly hearing “women who have non-domestic hobbies when they’re of parenting age are childish and cringeworthy” are going to have a harder time transitioning into that age in a way that doesn’t involve internalizing sexism and beating themselves up over it.

The messages can be annoying for fans over 30 but they could be more than that for girls and younger women especially when combined with the “forever young” messaging they’re also getting from the rest of society outside of fandom.

Towards a working definition of “anti”

hazel2468:

rush-keating:

hazel2468:

themonsterwithoutaname:

shinelikethunder:

Most of us know it when we see it, but I figure any discussion about fandom antis and how to respond to them would benefit from having a solid answer to “what even is an anti, anyway?” Laying out the exact characteristics that distinguish anti wank from every other kind of wank also helps clarify what, exactly, is going on here, why it’s appalling, and also why it’s appealing to those who engage in it.

I’m going to define it as a behavior rather than a particular type of person. The anti movement is:

1. A form of intra-community aggression within fandom, that
2. Seeks, as its primary goal, to designate out-groups who are fair game for social brutality, by
3. Categorically declaring certain forms of fan engagement (ships, characters, fic genres, fanart styles, video game mods…) to be intrinsically morally wrong and in need of stamping out, regardless of how or why one engages with them, and
4. Justifies this by claiming a causal relationship between the targeted activities and some form of (usually SJ-flavored) real-world harm that they allegedly promote.

The order is important, because it goes from most to least essential. 1 is fundamental context, 2 is ultimate purpose, 3 is the mechanism used to accomplish that purpose, 4 is the justification for using that mechanism.

Let’s take it number by number.

Keep reading

Antis are not people who dislike something and write meta about it, Antis are literally bullies that will doxx you because you like their notp 

Yes this. There is a HUGE difference between someone who just doesn’t ship something or who has a NOTP, and an anti. 

Someone who doesn’t ship something or someone who has a NOTP will scroll past things, maybe blacklist those tags or go to stricter lengths if the content in question makes them rlly uncomfy. BTW, that is what you SHOULD be doing if you aren’t down with a ship.

Antis will literally go into the tags of the ship, find specific users, send them anons with death threats, racial slurs, and suicide baits, and then complain about how they are seeing the ship all over their “recommended” (which, btw, when you fucking SEARCH SOMETHING or use the tag, it’s going to show up because tumblr thinks you want more of it). 

Tl;Dr- Antis are NOT the same as non-shippers/ people with NOTPs. 

“
Someone who doesn’t ship something or someone who has a NOTP will scroll
past things, maybe blacklist those tags or go to stricter lengths if
the content in question makes them rlly uncomfy. BTW, that is what you
SHOULD be doing if you aren’t down with a ship.”

That distinction can become another version of “ignore the bullies and they’ll go away” though.

If someone’s posting something that is blatantly racist (like, say, a line in a movie “translated” into fake ebonics, which actually did happen), I’m going to say something. If that makes me an anti then…

Except that isn’t what we are talking about here. At all. I’m talking about like- here’s an example. 

I don’t ship Kylux. The reason being that Hux bears a physical and behavioral resemblance to someone who abused me in the past. It is not a ship that I personally enjoy, nor one that I want to really see on my dash. 

So I avoid the tag. If there are certain things that make me super uncomfortable, and there are, I blacklist the tags. I avoid those tags in fanfiction. I am someone with a NOTP/ a non-shipper. An anti in my situation would purposefully find people who ship Kylux and send them anon hate. Or would spread rumors that those who ship Kylux are actual Nazis. Or would claim to hate Kylux because they think Kylux is a Nazi ship and then go into anon and call a Jewish Kylux shipper a k*ke (a thing that has happened to me and other shippers in the context of another ship). 

Call out racism and BS. I will ALWAYS call it out when I see my fellow shippers doing it and when I see antis doing it, because it is wrong no matter who does it. But none of what I said above was ”ignore the bullies and they will go away”. it was “maybe you shouldn’t be sending slurs and death threats to people just because they ship something you don’t like.” The original post explains antis in a lot more detail if ur interested. 

Okay gotcha. I just feel like I’d rather risk being labeled an anti than scroll past something hurtful because it was related to a ship, even if it was tangentially.

I understand how you feel about Kylux as my opinion and attitude toward it is very similar. 

Towards a working definition of “anti”

hazel2468:

themonsterwithoutaname:

shinelikethunder:

Most of us know it when we see it, but I figure any discussion about fandom antis and how to respond to them would benefit from having a solid answer to “what even is an anti, anyway?” Laying out the exact characteristics that distinguish anti wank from every other kind of wank also helps clarify what, exactly, is going on here, why it’s appalling, and also why it’s appealing to those who engage in it.

I’m going to define it as a behavior rather than a particular type of person. The anti movement is:

1. A form of intra-community aggression within fandom, that
2. Seeks, as its primary goal, to designate out-groups who are fair game for social brutality, by
3. Categorically declaring certain forms of fan engagement (ships, characters, fic genres, fanart styles, video game mods…) to be intrinsically morally wrong and in need of stamping out, regardless of how or why one engages with them, and
4. Justifies this by claiming a causal relationship between the targeted activities and some form of (usually SJ-flavored) real-world harm that they allegedly promote.

The order is important, because it goes from most to least essential. 1 is fundamental context, 2 is ultimate purpose, 3 is the mechanism used to accomplish that purpose, 4 is the justification for using that mechanism.

Let’s take it number by number.

Keep reading

Antis are not people who dislike something and write meta about it, Antis are literally bullies that will doxx you because you like their notp 

Yes this. There is a HUGE difference between someone who just doesn’t ship something or who has a NOTP, and an anti. 

Someone who doesn’t ship something or someone who has a NOTP will scroll past things, maybe blacklist those tags or go to stricter lengths if the content in question makes them rlly uncomfy. BTW, that is what you SHOULD be doing if you aren’t down with a ship.

Antis will literally go into the tags of the ship, find specific users, send them anons with death threats, racial slurs, and suicide baits, and then complain about how they are seeing the ship all over their “recommended” (which, btw, when you fucking SEARCH SOMETHING or use the tag, it’s going to show up because tumblr thinks you want more of it). 

Tl;Dr- Antis are NOT the same as non-shippers/ people with NOTPs. 

“
Someone who doesn’t ship something or someone who has a NOTP will scroll
past things, maybe blacklist those tags or go to stricter lengths if
the content in question makes them rlly uncomfy. BTW, that is what you
SHOULD be doing if you aren’t down with a ship.”

That distinction can become another version of “ignore the bullies and they’ll go away” though.

If someone’s posting something that is blatantly racist (like, say, a line in a movie “translated” into fake ebonics, which actually did happen), I’m going to say something. If that makes me an anti then…

diversehighfantasy:

stitchmediamix:

This is someone I’ve ALREADY reblogged, giving them evidence from the books about why it does make sense for Finn to turn away from the First Order.  This refusal to actually engage with the “text” of The Force Awakens on my post about how fandom refuses to watch Finn in the film but then says his actions make no sense is absolutely on purpose.

This is someone absolutely unwilling to like actually think critically about why Finn turns against the First Order and keeps saying that it doesn’t make sense, that Finn should do x instead, that killing should come natural to him. That it’s “bad writing” to have Finn “decide to be good for no reason”.

The very fact that this person CONTINUOUSLY insists that it doesn’t make sense for Finn to be good/decide to be good is like… beyond infuriating to me. I want to be all nice and help nudge people in the direction of good analysis and whatnot, but this purposeful crap is a hard limit for me. 

Like this person isn’t even actually seeing Finn as Finn. Never have, never will. They’re not interested in like… trying to approach the character differently. They keep trying to talk about such an important character that they have no interest in actually analyzing responsibly and man… I’m uninterested in that kind of hardheaded nonsense.

Anyone who believes that the village on Jakku was “harboring a terrorist” is beyond reason. The argument that the villagers were threatening the FO because they tried to defend themselves is pure fascist apologia.

To think that JJ Abrams wrote that scene, where a Nazi parallel invades a village of people who belonged to a religion they wanted to eradicate, disarmed the ones who fought back, and slaughtered them, including the children, with any intention of making the FO look like the victims, is absolutely stomach-churning. As is the notion that Finn should have stayed loyal to the FO and not fought back himself.

And we’re supposed to completely divorce attitudes like this from reality? George Lucas wrote allegories – Nixon, Vietnam, Bush. Abrams wrote allegories that were clearly more directly about the Nazis, down to a nearly shot-for-shot reference to Triumph of the Will that was supposed to be horrifying. And yet here we are, fans are more horrified by Finn not following the FO.