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Fandom Is Serious Business
Apr. 21st, 2011 07:51 pmPaul McDonald’s essay talks about the seriousness with which some kinds of fans approach their jihad against all they see wrong with the universe. I’ve noted before how nerd rage comes from the belief that they were deeply, personally-wronged by (fill-in-the-blank). Again, it’s not new or unique to SW fandom. But it is incomprehensible to most of us how these guys behave as though somebody burned down their house, stole their money, murdered their parents, and carried off their hot supermodel girlfriends at the same time and blood must be shed if not literally, then metaphorically on the internet in revenge. However, the blood debt is never repaid with these people. They can’t stop. They live for what they do.
I was going to post in reply to McDonald but Blogger ID doesn’t like me very much. So I’ll say it here. Something like SW ultimately attracts obsessed-types who do take their beliefs about SW or continuity ultra-seriously. Ergo you have fans going ballistic over little stuff, like the fate of an obscure Jedi or the addition of a silly character, and they hold on to it for years and years. I used to joke that they should make t-shirts that say, “Remember When Star Wars Was Fun?”
SW stopped being fun for them and they proceed to make it no fun for everyone else, which drives me up the wall. It’s like trying to have high tea while monkeys are flinging their poo around the room; it makes it a little hard to enjoy yourself. I’ve cut myself off from a lot of sites and other fans but going totally incommunicado isn’t easy either. Sometimes the poo lands on you no matter how far you try to put yourself from the monkeys, sometimes you’re inexplicably drawn to the tea room even though you know what will inevitably happen.
Take what happened to me the other day on Facebook. I’ve blocked the 501st from my feed but since several of my “friends” commented or liked the entry, it ended up on my feed anyway. They very nicely wished honorary member Hayden Christensen a happy b-day (he turned the big 3-0 on 4/19) and most of the people who commented were posting birthday wishes. But there’s always a few douchebags who feel that it’s a golden opportunity to bash Hayden and I called them on their behavior. It bugs the snot out of me that there are people who are that obnoxious and it bugged the snot out of me that the 501st didn’t have the decency to erase those posts. Hey, if someone had posted smack about Albin Johnson, the group’s founder, you can best believe those posts would be gone. But prequel people are permissible targets, so I’m not really sure why the 501st bothered in the first place. (Note to the rest of the SW cast…stay away, far away.)
Then yesterday I find on a retail site called Superherostuff.com a banner 10x worse than the one I saw on ThinkGeek recently. Read about it here: http://starwarsprequelappreciationsociety.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/another-e-tailer-bashes-the-prequels/. I mean, it hurts to read stuff like that. Why did this retailer think it HAD to do that in order to appeal to the folks who want to buy SW stuff?
I admit I’ve always taken affronts to the saga a little personally and maybe I shouldn’t. But I can’t help it. I’m a Leo. I’m loyal to a fault and SW was “there” for me at a crappy time of my life. I know what it’s like to be bullied and I can’t stand bullies when I see them. And the older you get, the lower your tolerance for b.s. becomes. Mine is way below the floor and sinking fast.
I was going to post in reply to McDonald but Blogger ID doesn’t like me very much. So I’ll say it here. Something like SW ultimately attracts obsessed-types who do take their beliefs about SW or continuity ultra-seriously. Ergo you have fans going ballistic over little stuff, like the fate of an obscure Jedi or the addition of a silly character, and they hold on to it for years and years. I used to joke that they should make t-shirts that say, “Remember When Star Wars Was Fun?”
SW stopped being fun for them and they proceed to make it no fun for everyone else, which drives me up the wall. It’s like trying to have high tea while monkeys are flinging their poo around the room; it makes it a little hard to enjoy yourself. I’ve cut myself off from a lot of sites and other fans but going totally incommunicado isn’t easy either. Sometimes the poo lands on you no matter how far you try to put yourself from the monkeys, sometimes you’re inexplicably drawn to the tea room even though you know what will inevitably happen.
Take what happened to me the other day on Facebook. I’ve blocked the 501st from my feed but since several of my “friends” commented or liked the entry, it ended up on my feed anyway. They very nicely wished honorary member Hayden Christensen a happy b-day (he turned the big 3-0 on 4/19) and most of the people who commented were posting birthday wishes. But there’s always a few douchebags who feel that it’s a golden opportunity to bash Hayden and I called them on their behavior. It bugs the snot out of me that there are people who are that obnoxious and it bugged the snot out of me that the 501st didn’t have the decency to erase those posts. Hey, if someone had posted smack about Albin Johnson, the group’s founder, you can best believe those posts would be gone. But prequel people are permissible targets, so I’m not really sure why the 501st bothered in the first place. (Note to the rest of the SW cast…stay away, far away.)
Then yesterday I find on a retail site called Superherostuff.com a banner 10x worse than the one I saw on ThinkGeek recently. Read about it here: http://starwarsprequelappreciationsociety.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/another-e-tailer-bashes-the-prequels/. I mean, it hurts to read stuff like that. Why did this retailer think it HAD to do that in order to appeal to the folks who want to buy SW stuff?
I admit I’ve always taken affronts to the saga a little personally and maybe I shouldn’t. But I can’t help it. I’m a Leo. I’m loyal to a fault and SW was “there” for me at a crappy time of my life. I know what it’s like to be bullied and I can’t stand bullies when I see them. And the older you get, the lower your tolerance for b.s. becomes. Mine is way below the floor and sinking fast.
