3rd July 2008, 12:21 AM
Quote:Is your fandom Serious Business? Be careful, because you may fall into the underbelly of every fan community: Fan Dumb. These are the fans that claim to be the watchdogs of their fandom, but in reality they are more like dogs in the manger.
Because fandom's diversity comes from differences of opinion and tolerance of Dis Continuity, this may be hard to pinpoint, but there are some telltale signs. Several types are...
The Purist: A nostalgia-laden fan who can't shut up about the Good Old Days, with an inability to enjoy new spins on things without constant comparison to How It Used To Be. Despises mixing fandoms, yet is invariably attracted to obscure and mostly inaccessible shows.
A false variety of the above may troll by attempting to get Gannon Banned with stupid minutiae.
Another variety is the person who tries so hard to prove that he's not a screeching eleven-year-old girl that he pushes himself too far in the opposite direction. This one has particularly nasty things to say about adaptations.
The Culture Alien: A fan who is completely objective (i.e., complains equally) about what he watches, without regard to the tropes, directions or demographics appropriate to the particular genre. This fan usually has an extreme lack of Willing Suspension Of Disbelief, and doesn't so much dislike a convention as refuse to accept it at all. Often criticized as overly disliking something which is obviously not geared to him.
A subspecies, the Toxic Critic, claims upfront to dislike the entire genre (even in a detached academic sense), yet is perplexed when no one wants to listen to him.
The Strawstuffer: A fan whose disappointment with a show's overall appeal ignores the chain of decay, middle management and all those who contribute to decision-making, and just aims at an easily named target regardless of their involvement in deciding a story's content; for instance, an actor. Usually antagonistic.
In video games, they will usually target what would in any other media be termed an "executive producer". Chance approaches 1 when the person has a nickname (e.g. "Fatty-fatty Falcoon has ruined King of Fighters with his inferior character models and costume designs!" "IGA is a misogynist!")
The very existence of the trope Woolseyism reflects some fans' passionate opinions on minute trivia.
The Tinfoiler: A fan who believes that changes and new directions he dislikes occur not because of Executive Meddling, conflicting Creative Differences, or even simple apathy, but because writers explicitly hate the Tinfoiler's fandom and enjoy spiting him. The telltale sign here is word choice, as the fan will reference abstract concepts or teams as if they were a single being. Usually defensive. Enjoys hyperbole-laden verbs like "rape", "butcher" and "Macekre".
The Chicken Little: The paranoia-besot fan, convinced that the whole world is out to destroy his or her object of fandom, and that the slightest slip-up will give outside forces the chance to rip it to shreds. However wildly successful the production, expectations are as low as possible. Ambition is to be mistrusted. If we don't rock the boat, maybe no one will notice us. Maybe we can squeak on by under the radar, forever. Alternatively, maybe if we scream enough we'll be able to scare off the cancellation demons before they even get close.
The Freedom Fighter: This fan seems to believe that people challenging his opinions on the show in question is a direct assault on his personal liberties, and that someone (or several people) telling him that he's wrong about something on an internet forum is the same thing as the Soviet Secret Police kicking down his door and dragging him off to a gulag without trial. As such, you will often hear this fan use terms such as 'freedom of speech', 'oppression' and 'dissent' entirely seriously, as if he is the last free voice in the wilderness railing against some oppressive fascist regime using thought-control to brainwash the masses into liking a particular program. Needless to say, this person will not experienced any significant loss of liberty or personal oppression before, since although he may have a point depending on how aggressive (and equally Fan Dumb) the people are oppressing him are, the comparison between his situation and the political oppression he cites demonstrates a clear lack of perspective.
The Martyr: Related to the above, but instead of politically charged anger, any criticism or contradiction of the Martyr's point of view will instead result in a self-pitying litany of complaints about how people are always shouting him down because of his views. Is prone to making very grand gestures in which he publicly announces to all that he is leaving the forum because he's sick of everyone ganging up against him, regardless of whether this is the case or not.
The Toxic Genius: The fan who tends to chalk the fact that people are disagreeing with him not to the fact that they have different opinions about the show to him, but by the fact that he is so much smarter than them because he is able to see all of the flaws that they are disagreeing with him about, regardless of whether the people he's disagreeing with view them as flaws or whether those flaws even exist. Oddly enough, his much (self-)vaunted intelligence rarely extends to seeing the positive attributes that the show possesses.
Interestingly, there are some that go to the opposite extreme. They are eternally optimistic about their favorite franchise/medium, and will ignore all flaws, attacking those who point them out. Despite being totally opposed to the personalities above, they will adopt the exact same tactics, and can be found in very similar categories. The key here is not just that they like something that nobody else likes, but that they pigeon-hole anybody with any kind of complaint about their chosen idol into one of the above categories; if you don't like the work, then there's something wrong with you. Although the positive variant are more or less the same as their 'hater' brothers and sisters, some particular 'positive' fan-dumb variants include:
The Misplaced Champion: Just as some people get a bit too confrontational when it comes to their country being criticised, this fan gets a bit too confrontational when it comes to criticism of the object of their fandom. Regardless of how mild or gentle the criticism. Regardless of how valid or reasonable the criticism. Regardless, in some cases, of how even the Word Of God may even agree with the criticism. As such, even saying that you really liked last night's episode but thought that this particular scene was a little bit lame will have him swooping down to berate you for your lack of loyalty and demand to know why you don't just go and watch something else if you hate the show so much.
Bizarro Chicken Little: In the same fashion as the Chicken Little above, this fan sees doom in every raindrop; however, whereas the former thinks that even the slightest misstep on part of the production team will result in cancellation, this Chicken Little seems to operate on the assumption that even the smallest voice of criticism will reach the ears of the Powers That Be, who will immediately cancel the show in the belief that no one likes it any more. Ergo, all voices of criticism must be silenced without prejudice in order to keep the show on the air.
The Wilfully Blind: This fan refuses to see any faults in the object of his love at all. Even if they're staring him right in the face. Tends to go beyond merely liking something to a irrational state of mind where, because he likes something, that means that it cannot possibly have any faults at all. Is fond of the 'if something's popular, it's good' line of argument, often insistently referring to large ratings to support this assertion. If they encounter evidence of a flaw that even they cannot ignore, they are then prone to rationalize it away with the excuse that "it's still better than everything else" regardless of how obviously incorrect this is.
One of the surest signs that you are dealing with Fan Dumb, optimistic or not, is when the phrase "true fans" (or some variation thereof) is thrown around.