Toxic Fans vs. Devoted Fans. Whats the difference?

[KiwiKat]

Like many of you, I am very invested in a few select fandoms, going from reading fanfiction to imagining my own. But what does it take to make a devoted fan into one who thrives on calling out supposedly "fake fans" and feeling entitled to deciding what happens in the source material. (example of a fandom who has a noticeable toxic fans: Steven Universe - the Zamii incident). I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this! :3

 

[Iamtheecchiking]

Star Wars fans can be the worst.

The ones who are toxic and slag off the series are generally older fans who enjoyed the originals. I was like, 10ish when Episode 1 came out and it was the first one I saw. I love it as a kid, cause it was fucking lightsaber fights. lol I didn't care about Midichlorians, and I still don't.

Personally, Lucas can create his Star Wars universe however he wishes, and people who slag off the prequels seem to have to not enjoy it because they don't agree with how Lucas took HIS OWN FUCKING SERIES. The creator is inclined to go in any direction he wishes. If you don't like it, you can nod off.

That is a relatively short way of saying things.

 

[Nilum]

Personally, Lucas can create his Star Wars universe however he wishes, and people who slag off the prequels seem to have to not enjoy it because they don't agree with how Lucas took HIS OWN FUCKING SERIES. The creator is inclined to go in any direction he wishes. If you don't like it, you can nod off.

Disagree. Criticism of ideas is the main building block toward improving them. Pointing out that the prequels are sloppily written garbage doesn't make the person who made them (or the people who enjoy them) any less valid, because an emotion and an objective quality are two very different things.

Which segways into an answer for the thread.

Like many of you, I am very invested in a few select fandoms, going from reading fanfiction to imagining my own. But what does it take to make a devoted fan into one who thrives on calling out supposedly "fake fans" and feeling entitled to deciding what happens in the source material. (example of a fandom who has a noticeable toxic fans: Steven Universe - the Zamii incident). I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this! :3

What does it take? Insecurity. Lots of insecurity.

Being a devoted fan to something is fine. Go be a devoted fan to something you like, even if it's fucking weird--like My Little Pony, or Furries, or giant murder robots that are totally awesome. If somebody doesn't like that thing, and you move on with your life, congratulations--you're a functioning adult who is emotionally secure about themselves. If somebody doesn't like that thing and you go into a screeching tirade about it, congratulations on having a life so privileged that the worst thing that could happen to it is some person disagreeing with you on the Internet and saying the things you like are shit.

By the way, the things you like are shit. All of them.

 

[Jtec]

From an outside perspective, devoted fans are the toxic fans.
From a perspective in the fandom, toxic fans are those who are ignorant/disrespectful of the source material.

 

[Natalija]

I like to consider my-self a Star Wars fan. Not any kind of deep one, but I like the franchize (at least what I watched and played of it, 3 original movies, 3 prequels, and played some SWTOR mmo, until it started boring me, enogh to know a bit about that era too). I havent seen any of the newest movies, so I cant coment on that.

Frankly, the only time I come across toxic fans, vas on one forum where I mentioned I like the prequels. Ep 1,2,3. I dont see most ppl's problem with them. They are fun, they tell the story good, and they fill in the gaps. Frankly I think I like them more then the originals, because they are more realistic and less fancy-ful (bunch of Ewok primitives taking out a Imperial batalion - please). I even find the "hated" Jar Jar Binks funny. Why not? He cracks me up, I love the way he talks, and I love some comedic relief! But vhen I mentioned I like prequels, I had a shit-storm started, with all kinds of butt-hurt litle assholes dissing my opinion and calling me a idiot for liking them. And you know vhat? I dont give a shit. I just loged-off that forum and never come back. My time is too valuable to waste arguing bulshit vith a bunch of neurotic little pricks living in there mommys basement. I belive what I belive, I like what I like, and someone calling me names for it wont make any diference.

 

[Mythos]

As someone who spends far too much time on the internet and enjoys popular things, yeah. There are a lot of toxic and devoted fans to pretty much anything that gets really big. Rick and Morty comes to mind.

The difference between the two, so far as I've found, is how they treat other fans. People who are really devoted to a series usually thrive on meeting other people who like the same thing and having long discussions about the thing. Toxic fans.... they just want to torch anyone who has an even slightly different opinion.

 

[Ink_Rain]

The difference between the two, so far as I've found, is how they treat other fans. People who are really devoted to a series usually thrive on meeting other people who like the same thing and having long discussions about the thing. Toxic fans.... they just want to torch anyone who has an even slightly different opinion.

That's what I've noticed as well. I feel that toxic fans also drive away newer fans or those who don't know that much about the series/fandom/etc.​

 

[Mythos]

That's what I've noticed as well. I feel that toxic fans also drive away newer fans or those who don't know that much about the series/fandom/etc.​

Yeah, it's hard to want to get involved with something new if all you've ever seen or heard about it is how awful the fans are. The worst though is when they go way overboard and end up driving away good content creators with their BS, like what happened with Jennifer Hepler. She was a writer for BioWare and did a lot of work on their Dragon Age series, but some so-called 'fans' got pissed off that there was gay content added and they ended up harrassing her off of Twitter. Someone even went so far as to send death threats to her children. She left BioWare sometime after that and I can't say that I blame her for it. I hadn't played the games at that time, but I remember giving the topic a wide berth for years after that.

(I did, incidentally, get the series on Steam a few months ago and I am so glad I did.)

"The people on the Internet who complain about the show were going to hate it no matter what I did, so I don't really care about their opinions."
— Seiji Mizushima, director of Mobile Suit Gundam 00

 

[Nilum]

Y'all aren't conflating criticism with fandoms or hate speech, right? Just... Verifying that it's still okay to criticize something you don't like, or which you like but think could be done better?

 

[SedentaryCobra]

Personally, I find Kpop, Harry Potter, Supernatural, and Steven Universe to get toxic and defensive at the tiniest hint of criticism. I haven't experienced it personally, but I would imagine a number of traditional sci-fi and fantasy fandoms to get that way as well.

 

[Kaos]

There are far too many people overtly obsessed with a series to the point that they can become obnoxious. Playing a song on loop in public areas, slipping or jamming references into conversations with random people hoping they catch on just a little too often, pushing people they know and total strangers alike to get into their series, getting aggressive about your disinterest in it, getting enraged by a subjective opinion, that sort of thing. It's OK to be passionate about something, but when you interject it into EVERYTHING, there's a problem. That problem's called an unhealthy obsession.
What a lot of them don't understand is that so many people become aware of what's on television, even people who actively avoid learning. If someone was interested they'd try it already.
As far as books? Book readers who get obsessed over their fandom psychoanalyze characters and the plots until they don't resemble themselves or what the creator envisioned. They behave like pretentious art aficionados, trying to make things deeper than they really are, and will even correct the author, or tell them what they should do with their series instead of walking away from it... Or worse, use tiny things said in passing as an excuse inject sexuality where there is none, ship characters against their nature, re-write them or co-opt the story the author made with fanfiction.

Steven Universe fanfiction is the best modern example of fans going bad. I honestly couldn't even tell you what the series was about without a google search, all I know is that some people who are fans of it are trying to make female anthropomorphic rocks have babies together.
Could I potentially like the series? Maybe, but the fandom has pushed me entirely off of the concept because I can't disassociate the series with the fan stuff I've already seen in passing. It's a kids cartoon, shouldn't the main focus of the creators be preserved? Like the morals, the story, the comedy, anything at all other than that?

 

[Krieg]

I'll break this question into how these types of fans interact with others within and out of their community aka. their social interactions.

Devoted fans are able to criticize what they love so much because they either love it or see so much potential into it. Sometimes being a devoted fan doesn't mean even liking a series. Hence the word "devoted", after all, if you hate a series with so much passion why bother continuing to watch it? You could do so much better with what time you have.

Toxic fans see no criticism -- or if they do, they dash it swiftly. They deal in absolutes. Sometimes the more fanatical of these fans can come off a bit frightening, like some internet equivalent of an inquisitor.

 

[Imbion]

• There are two sides of toxic fans: Ones that look toxic to the outside and ones that are toxic to the inside.

• Let's be honest, almost any fan who openly shows their love for their thing in public gets called toxic. It's understandable, as other people may be annoyed. And, to an extent, I agree. You should keep your things mostly within your fandom. But passingly leaving a reference isn't toxic. However, I'm going talk about a very specific example: The Jojo's Bizarre Adventure [JJBA] fandom and Jojokes. I do enjoy leaving a small Jojo reference here and there. It's kind of there to throw a message in a bottle into the sea and see who responds back. But there are people who... Overdo it. As in, spamming almost every conversation with a JJBA reference. And if you even mention JJBA... Oh boy. Prepare to have the forum/comment section filled with "ORA's" and "KONO DIO DA's". Other than the unnecessary spamming though, the JJBA is pretty chill and much better than most anime fandoms. I absolutely love the JJBA fandom, even if looking in from the outside it looks like a toxic wasteland.

• From the inside? The only toxic fan is the worse fan: A fan who attacks other fans. That, in my opinion, is the worst thing you can do as a fan. You can obsessive over one character, ship, spam all of the unrelated places you want, write and draw all of the weird things you want and I really won't care. But when you start attacking other people within your fandom, that's when you really start to become toxic. A well-known example of this is the entire Steven Universe thing where a girl attempted suicide. Why? Because Tumblr. People got upset that she drew the character "Rose Quartz" as skinny. RQ is a big woman, sure. But was it worth sending a girl death threats and convincing her to attempt suicide? Hell no. This goes for anything. Attacking other fans because they like a different character, ship or have a different opinion about this theory or that theory is the worst thing possible you can do as a fan. Nothing is more toxic than that.