The most in-depth visual depiction of the idea of a vocal minority and it’s STILL wrong-or at least incomplete.

Invisible Ecosystems | Fandoms, And Why So Many People Hate Them

NOTE: Hey everybody, I have a Twitter now! Follow me there if you want.

My first editorial to receive significant backlash (from people whose opinions I actually care about) was “Campfire Stories”, in which I talked about fandoms, and why hating them seems to be more popular than actually happily taking part in them.

Much to my dismay, it seems that people are now more than ever-

Nope, NOPE, we are NOT doing that again!

NOTE: You just did, dumbass.

Anyway, we’ve got a lot to discuss today, so strap yourselves in.

I often think back to my old editorials and why the little reception they got wasn’t what I had in mind. Sure, there are some points I could have articulated better (I’ve been thinking about either revisiting some of my old posts starting with the one about Persona 5, or just using those old posts as jumping-off points for what are essentially remasters), but overall I feel as though people were just unwilling to entertain my perspective.

Now, I can’t blame them too much- I mean, at this point I’m still basically nobody- but when *I* see something I may initially disagree with, I make it a point to read/watch it and see where I agree or disagree. Not to say that there was none of that with “Campfire Stories”, but it’s unlikely that I had changed anybody’s mind.

But to tell you the truth, even if “Campfire Stories”, or this editorial for that matter, was on the front page of every social media site currently in vogue, even if everybody who saw it clicked on it and read it the whole way through, it would persuade almost nobody. Here are a few potential reasons why I think this is the case, and why the almost universally poor reputation of fandoms is likely here to stay:

But First, a Vocabulary Lesson!

First, here are some definitions you will need to know for the rest of the editorial:

Fallacy of Composition- taking attributes of part of an object or class and applying them to the entire object or class

Modifier- a word, phrase, or clause that functions as an adjective or adverb to provide additional information about another word or word group

Descriptive Statement- claim is a claim that asserts that something *is* the case, makes no value judgement

Normative Statement- a claim that something *should be* the case, makes a value judgement

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s continue.

Anatomy of a Fandom

One thing I think tends to go over a lot of people’s heads is that communities are social constructs. Religions (as an idea, not strictly organized bodies like specific churches), political parties (see religions), and other such groups can hardly be described in their totality by simplistic general terms like “toxic”.

So when people start talking about fan communities as if they’re monolithic hiveminds that not only think and act the same, but somehow all know each other, I just have to laugh. I get that humans have a hard time perceiving and understanding things they can’t directly see in their entirety, but come on!

And there’s another glaring error in this logic, but we’ll get to that later.

Fandom activity is all around us, from the art that pops up on your Twitter feed to in-depth discussions that crop up in random comment sections on YouTube. For the most part, the interactions are perfectly peaceful and civil, or at least don’t escalate into serious issues.

Here’s a loose breakdown of how fandoms tend to work, from the highest concentration of people to the lowest concentration of people:

• Casual Participants (casual readers/ players/ etc.)
• In-depth Participants (more frequent readers/ players/etc.)

— — — — — — — — — ( The “Line Of Open Engagement”) — — — — — — — — — — —

• Commenters (on forums, comment sections, etc.)
• Fanartists (visual art, fanfiction, music covers/remixes, original music, etc.), Theorists/Analysts
• Convention-goers

Notice how nowhere did I describe “good behavior” or “bad behavior”, that comes later. I’m simply describing the general levels of activity that fandoms consist of. Exact percentages are hardest to parse, and it varies between fandoms, but it can be assumed that any fandom is made up of a majority of casual participants, especially if the media has a high participation ceiling like Dark Souls or Touhou Project.

When somebody talks about a fandom, they’re likely only taking into consideration the most visible parts of fandom that also take up the least amount of space. In general, these parts of fandom have the greatest sway over its reputation, but since they are unreliable representatives by nature of their comparatively small size, this is honestly unfair, hence the Fallacy of Composition.

People often say that the the most toxic parts of any group tend to be the loudest and most visible, but why is that? Two reasons:

1. They want to be.
2. People let them.

Simply put, toxic people are determined to spread their toxicity. They WANT to destroy the reputation of whatever fandom they’re in. And witnessing toxicity can be really discouraging to some people, to the point where they hyperfocus on these incidents and let them cloud their entire view on said fandom.

But you can’t let that happen, because that’s what these people want. This gets especially true when you take motives like political affiliations into account. In particular, reactionaries occupy space in fandoms of things that are popular, directly tie their ideology and rhetoric to the media, drive more progressive-minded people away from said fandom because they see the fandom and the media itself as “tainted”, which ends up giving the reactionaries exactly what they want.

All of this is most prevalent in fandoms of extremely mainstream properties like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, two fandoms that have recently been on the receiving end of lectures about toxicity amid racist/ sexist/ etc. harassment of cast and crew members. Vocal minorities of toxic people are roughly proportional to the size of the fandom and the popularity of the thing itself, so it’s no surprise that these lectures and discussions have gone so far as to hit mainstream news outlets.

Now, here’s where it gets a bit messy. I was unsure about how I wanted to write the rest of this editorial. Do I:

1. Go down a list of some of the most hated fandoms and talk about why I think the hate is unearned?
2. Continue talking about the general psychology and circumstances surrounding hatred of fandoms?
3. Talk solely about my personal experiences in fandoms?

Obviously I can’t do #3; people love anecdotes until they don’t support their own personal narrative, and I’m VERY much arguing the minority position in this editorial. So I’d be opening myself up to an onslaught of “uhh, well, actually, you’re WRONG because you don’t speak for EVERYBODY, YOUR experiences aren’t in the MAJORITY” comments and messages for the foreseeable future.

And for similar reasons #1 is out of the question, but I’ll elaborate more on that later.

So I’ll stick with Option 2, and largely speak in general concepts.

Troubleshooting

Every YouTuber and their mother has ranted about their bad experiences with one fandom or another, whether it’s in a Twitter thread, a Community tab post, a side rant in a Let’s Play, or its own dedicated video confessional.

What can I say? Personal stories are powerful. Hell, some of my best editorials have started off with me telling personal stories as a jumping-off point.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with telling stories about your negative experiences in fan communities. The best way to make sure that less people are harassed and bullied is to expose these incidents whenever they pop up. The problem isn’t the vehicle these people drive, it’s the road they take. Or rather, the road they end up leading other people down.

You see, most fandom horror stories involve one victim, or sometimes a few victims, being targeted by one person, a small group of around 12–20 individuals, or hundreds of people with hundreds upon hundreds of bots and alternative accounts. This isn’t really that many people in the grand scale of a fandom, which often consist of thousands upon thousands of people.

But that won’t stop the person telling the story, or the person’s fans, from using the incident as an excuse to bash people who weren’t even involved and hold them responsible. Even if the person telling the story says that their experiences are not reflective of the entire fandom, some people just will not listen.

NOTE: Not to say that the people telling the stories are always so gracious. Especially if they title their story “Being a (insert minority group) in (insert community here)”. At that point, they’ve put all their cards on the table and are trying to speak for a large group of people they don’t know, and that is undeniable.

To prove that a fandom is “toxic”, that by necessity requires the accuser to prove with concrete evidence that the ideas and behavior that constitute this toxicity are supported and practiced by a majority of the fandom.

But when you ask them to do so, they usually can’t. Or at best, they’ll point to things that are just normal human psychology, things that aren’t exclusive to the group they’re talking about.

We’re going to be using the Super Smash Bros. community as an example because of course we are.

There’s a reason this editorial was posted on July 2nd (at least, that’s what I’ve had planned); it’s been exactly three years since the community was turned on its head with dozens of accusations of sexual misconduct.

Since then, the community has been more vigilant than ever in calling out out everything from racism and sexual assault all the way down to some people that are just assholes.

But I feel that sometimes people can get a bit overzealous.

And for comparison, here’s King of Skill’s reply to this tweet, which in my opinion is a much better response to the situation than “Smash players suck”, which is funny since everybody involved in this conversation, innocent and guilty, plays Smash.

But yeah, Smash players in particular can never say “yeah, those people suck, we don’t associate with people like them”, they’re prone to overreacting and saying stuff like “I am so ASHAMED of this ENTIRE community, HOW could we let this happen, we are an ACTUAL LITERAL TOXIC WASTE DUMP and I HATE EVERYBODY” or anything along those lines.

Not very good for morale, now, is it?

So next time,

1. Step back, take a deep breath.
2. Get the actual names and numbers, to the best of your abilities.
3. Don’t get innocent people swept up in the blame game.

Instead of “wow, this community is terrible”, try “wow, the people who did/ said this specific thing are terrible”. Direct callouts are even better.

I don’t see the point in fumigating my entire living room with Raid when I could just hit the spider with a shoe.

Sure, most people won’t say “some people in this fandom are toxic” instead of “this fandom is toxic” just because you ask them to (most people would call you whiny for even asking), but it’s something to consider.

Specifically, people will defend their right to generalize by saying “when I say “this group is toxic”, I’m not saying they’re ALL like that!”, which is ridiculous if you know anything at all about language. Without a modifier like “some”, people are going to assume you’re talking about the whole group.

Trust me, if literally every single person in a fandom was responsible for carrying out one of those “incidents”, we would know because a good chunk of the Internet would literally collapse under the weight of all that activity.

Most people just watch shit go down from a distance, for better or worse.

Taking The Bait

March 3rd, 2016 is a date that will live in infamy, for multiple reasons, but there’s one in particular that I want to talk about: this was the day that the first teaser trailer for Ghostbusters 2016 officially dropped.

Once upon a time I was going to write a whole editorial about the controversy surrounding that movie, but eventually I felt there was no need. But to summarize:

The trailer was terrible, but a not-insignificant faction of reactionaries voiced their hatred of the movie solely because there was women in it. Regardless of the fact that most people, women included, thought the trailer and movie in general was terrible, the sexist complaints were hyperfocused on by the cast and crew of the movie, as well as various people in the mainstream news reporting on the movie leading up to its release.

This pattern has since repeated several times, most notably with Disney’s 2023 live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, and at this point I think everybody’s tired of it. It’s gotten to the point where a movie NOT having some sort of identity politics-related controversy surrounding it will be enough to convince me to see it.

There are several things that happened as a result of fandoms going mainstream over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, but among the most prevalent is content creators and corporations in Hollywood using the idea of “toxic fandom” as both a means to shut down criticism and an excuse to ignore all feedback and continue doing whatever they want.

The number-one reason I didn’t write this as its own separate editorial is that during my research, I stumbled across this Twitter thread by Dr. Thala Siren that explains this concept better than I ever could.

Nowhere does Siren deny that bigoted backlash against media with diverse casts exists, just that it’s a vocal minority that gets attention from people looking to use that fact for their own purposes. In this case, that purpose is free advertising from people defending the values of social justice, diversity, and so forth, unaware that at the end of the day, they’re playing right into the hands of people who would sell their souls to buy more yachts.

Notice how it keeps coming back to that same basic concept, the idea of vocal minorities?

Gee, it’s almost as if I was right this whole time or something.

F#%* The Police

When the subject of an entire community being negatively generalized over the actions of a select few comes up, the same response tends to come back up again and again:

“Police your communities! Don’t just say that not all of you are bad people, do something about it!”

Ah, this takes me back.

Hey, remember back in 2015–17 when Islamic terror attacks were a really big talking point, and the refrain “not all Muslims are terrorists” was met with “well, I don’t see any moderate Muslims condemning terror attacks”?

But all you have to do is go online and you will see many, many stories of Muslims condemning extremists within their religion.

Literally any time something bad happens in a fandom, the first time I hear about it is from people in said fandom talking about how horrible it was that this happened, and expressing sympathy towards people negatively affected. But the innocent majority, no matter what, gets wrapped up in the blame.

Once upon a time I thought that only happened to black people and Muslims and trans people. But at least that’s only by conservative and reactionary talking heads that most decent people hate. At least most people are aware that automatically associating Muslims with terrorism is wrong; even if they subconsciously can’t help themselves, they can correct those thoughts before they leave their mouth.

I mean, if you can separate the average Muslim from 9/11, you can separate the average gamer from GamerGate. It’s not that hard.

NOTE: I can’t wait for somebody to get mad at me for comparing fandoms to marginalized identity groups, saying that because fandoms aren’t an oppressed class you can say whatever you want about them, apparently. Or something like that.

The other common refrain in this conversation, one that’s even more detached from reality, tends to be, “well, if you were REALLY committed to stomping out bad apples, these incidents would never happen in the first place!”.

Aside from the fact that this is just goalpost shifting, remember what I said about fandoms being loosely connected groups with large swaths of people that aren’t even aware of each other’s existence? Well, the Internet is the main factor in the decentralization of modern fandoms.

The saying “a few bad apples spoil the bunch” is widely misunderstood. It’s the most common refutation to the idea of a vocal minority, but the problem is that it doesn’t work in a group as broad as a fandom.

A bunch of apples is a tangible, close-knit group. One apple’s rottenness will spread to others if it is not removed. Or say, in the case of a movie theater (like the thumbnail image of this very editorial), the words and actions of a few particularly loud people can actually directly affect the experience of others.

The Internet doesn’t work like that. There are hundreds of different subcommunities in every fandom, most of whom never directly interact. One person or group being toxic doesn’t automatically spread to other people and make them act in the same way.

When people say “it only takes a few people in a fandom to ruin it for everybody else”, my response is always “ruin what?”. Ruin the experience? Being online means that you can largely cultivate your own experience. Ruin the fandom’s reputation? Why should you just have to lie down and accept that?

I can never tell if this is supposed to be a descriptive claim or a normative one. Are you saying it’s good that vocal minorities can sway public opinion so strongly? Or are you simply saying that it’s a thing that happens?

Think about it: of all the Smash players from that one document who were found provably guilty of something inexcusably terrible, how many of them are actually still in the public eye? When people say that the Smash community is not the community with predators, but the community that gets rid of them, they’re not kidding.

NOTE: Please don’t come to me saying anything along the lines of “but what about Nairo?”. Technicals is full of shit and anybody who isn’t part of his nematode army knows it.

But even after all of that is said and done, the innocent majority in a fandom is just not allowed to ask to be treated as individuals instead of a toxic hivemind, lest they be called selfish for asking.

In Leffen’s video on the allegations, I remember that somebody in the comment section openly wondered if people outside of the community were going to judge all Smash players as predators because of the actions of the comparative few. They were quickly shut down, saying that awareness and justice for the victims was more important than the community’s reputation.

Which is true in a vacuum, but doesn’t account for the fact that all of these things bleed into each other. The reason #SaveSmash died down was that most people saw Nintendo’s actions as a reasonable punishment for the allegations.

You only have so much control over what other people do. How you react to what they do is far more important.

The Abyss Stares Back

Or: r/gamingcirclejerk Is Garbage And Here’s Why

So remember back to the last time I wrote an editorial like this, I shouted out a video by this guy who goes by Veridis Joe?

Well, it pains me to tell you that a couple of years later, he released a video called “BEING AN ANIME FAN IS SO EMBARASSING”, which among other thing essentially retcons his old video on fandoms.

NOTE: Yes, I’m aware that the video is age restricted. You can deal with that yourselves.

So that’s disappointing.

If you want to know more about how I feel about this video, OtakuDaiKun’s response pretty much said everything I wanted to.

But in my research I found out that a while back, somebody else released a similar video on the same subject and hasn’t walked back on it.

So that’s nice.

Anyway, I’ve often been told I have a poor understanding of nuance. But I guess “don’t judge an entire fandom based on the actions of a vocal minority” is… too nuanced? Not nuanced enough? An uncomfortable truth? I don’t know, but some of the responses people get for saying this are absolutely ridiculous.

After the Smash allegations dropped this time three years ago, I for some reason thought it was a good idea to see what r/gamingcirclejerk was saying about all this. It was exactly what everybody else was saying about the Smash community. And what everybody has been saying since.

Oh yeah, uh, if you don’t know, r/gamingcirclejerk is a subreddit that started as a parody of r/gaming, and was originally intended to parody the stereotype of the reactionary, “get women and minorities out of my media” gamer, the key words being “originally intended”.

NOTE: Because somebody’s going to be on my ass if I don’t explicitly say this, I know that anti-SJW factions have a not-insignificant presence in the online gaming community (as well as other broad groups like the anime community), I just take issue with the way r/gamingcirclejerk presents this archetype as an accurate portrayal of the average person who plays games, or even who calls themselves a “gamer”. That’s kind of been my whole point.

In my defense, my mental health was already in shambles at the time (it was 2020, after all), so I wasn’t thinking critically. All I did was simply point out on one of the many posts about the “situation” that the dozens of offenders listed in the document were just a small part of the big picture of the hundreds upon hundreds of players in the pro Smash scene, not to mention the millions of other players worldwide, so they were being very unfair.

And how do you think that went? If you guessed “terrible”, good for you!

You win absolutely nothing.

What followed was several days of dogpiling in the thread and in my messages. I was accused of not taking sexual assault seriously, of being a psychopath, and of being a pedophile myself.

“If you’re not guilty, why are you so defensive?”, they said, which for the record I refuse to dignify with a response.

Keep in mind, they were under the impression that I was just some random person, not a pro Smash player. And these same people were ALSO all over the “Bocchi” incident that happened a few years back as well.

NOTE: The Bocchi incident was yet another example of not just the majority of the community being disgusted and disavowing its toxic vocal minority, but the power of the kindness of majority to express their supoort for somebody in need (before she left the community later for different reasons).

So anybody who says that only pros, not the whole community, are targeted by the “sex predator with a side of sexism (and racism and everything else)” stereotype just aren’t paying attention.

Looking back, something like the anti-Hogwarts Legacy harassment campaigns was bound to happen eventually, since occupants of r/gamingcirclejerk not only spearheaded them but made apologetics for them.

For all of r/gamingcirclejerk’s talk about protecting women and minorities online, they had no idea that by dogpiling on me, they were harassing and pedojacketing a trans person of color, did they? You guys want to tell them or should I?

Furthermore, all the people who shit on fandoms for being “toxic” because they have a desire to stick up for people who have been harassed or otherwise negatively affected don’t really think about what they’re saying.

Is Hungrybox just as toxic as the guy who threw the crab at him?

Is Zamii just as toxic as the people who drove her to attempt suicide?

Hell, if you really believe that a fandom is really filled with dangerous people, and that there are either no good apples or the good apples don’t matter, then why not take matters into your own hands? Super Smash Con is returning this August. Why don’t you stroll in with an AK-47 or something and shoot up the joint?

I mean, I hate sex offenders as much as the next person, and since they’re apparently ALL guilty of keeping some sort of open secret for years before 2020, why don’t you do your due diligence as a decent member of society?

NOTE: I do not actually think you should do that. Seriously, don’t.

I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter anyway, since I got dogpiled so bad that even though it wasn’t the sole reason I closed my old Reddit account, it was a contributing factor, and it was a long time before I made another one.

But by far the funniest thing to come out of the Smash allegations was a stream segment by Vaush where he just straight-up ties pro gamers to sexually predatory behavior as if they’re interchangeable.

There’s a lot to be said about Vaush, but all you need to know about him is that he compared the purchase of child porn to the purchase of a computer, saying they were equally problematic. He’s also been involved in a whole host of controversies surrounding racism, sexism, ableism, and so much more.

There’s also something to be said about him claiming that Alpharad was the only good person left in the Smash community, completely unaware that Alpharad has friends in the community who might have heard that statement and felt offended by it. But knowing Vaush, he would’ve just called them “butthurt” or “defensive” or something.

Internet callout culture attracting people just as toxic as the ones they claim to fight against? What a concept.

Conclusion

Whatever you take from all of this is completely up to you. I tried my best to not come off as preachy, or overly obsessed, or too naïve. I’ve just been meaning to say all this for a long time, and I finally feel like I found the right words.

At no point do I ever mean to diminish the harm that vocal minorities are capable of, or that they’re not worth any attention at all. Instead, this is a call to approach conflicts in a more constructive way.

If you have the power to stop people from harassing or endangering others, use it. But it’s more likely that you just so happen to wake up to the news that somebody in one of your fandoms was harassed to the point of attempting suicide, and that will have been the first you’ve heard of that going on. If that’s the case, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just do what you can to let the victims know that you support them, and the perpetrators that you do not and will never stand by what they’ve done.

And don’t let scary stories stop you from reaching out into fandoms of things you’re interested in. For a while, I’ll admit I was scared of the Smash community. I wasn’t sure who to trust. But after a while, when the dust had cleared, there were so many new and old players and content creators to keep up with; casual, elite, and everywhere in between.

It’s not hard to find a space where you belong, with good-hearted and likeminded people who want nothing more than to have fun talking about things they love. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

Thanks so much for reading. Until next time, stay on the hook!