The toxic world of fandom

[pdw1]

Liked this little opinion piece

https://unherd.com/2021/02/the-toxic-world-of-fandom/

[Slim]

The Internet really opened my eyes to the way (some) people feel about their favourite bands and TV shows and the old rushmessageboard.com site was a venue for some of the worst excesses of this, in the noughties. It did seem to improve in later years.

But back then it was like a piranha tank. All you had to do to receive a torrent of impassioned indignation, often expressed wholly in capital letters, was to post something mildly critical about the band. I remember posting that there was too much new material in the set on one tour and getting "this tour is NOT about YOU!!!" from one contributor.

Another time I commented that I wish Geddy hadn't spoiled Lakeside Park with the Taurus pedals on the AFTK tour, which by this time had taken place over twenty years earlier. This provoked someone to comment "LAST TIME I CHECKED YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER OF RUSH!", with a reminder that these things were up to the musicians, not the audience and if I remember correctly they used an increased font size as well as capital letters to press home their point.

But as well as being extremely defensive about the work of their idols there's an odd tendency for the worst sort of fan, especially of TV shows, to inhabit a fantasy universe in which their favourite actors or artists love their fans, and each other, fiercely. I once read a post by a young woman who insisted that Alex, Geddy and Neil didn't tour for the money, but only because they cared about their fans.

I suppose everyone here is familiar with the bizarre phenomenon of "slash? A minority of female fans are especially fond of this. It's a genre of erotic fan-fiction in which the principal characters of films and TV shows are imagined to be in homosexual relationships - Kirk and Spock, Crockett and Tubbs, Bodie and Doyle. The old UFO mailing list which I participated in years ago had a few enthusiasts. Straker and Foster were usually the main characters in their writings, although someone wrote a crossover story once in which Straker got down and dirty with Taylor (the Charlton Heston character) from Planet of the Apes.

[pdw1]

The interesting part of the article was not the discussion on rabid fans but the fact that it is a really bad idea for the bands/brands listen to them. Why do a few tweets mean a brand bends over backwards and make itself you like a twat?