February Ramble: Fandoms & Toxicity

Your reactions to the noises were so funny to me.

I love Giant Porg's exhausted posture in this one

A friend of mine in junior high, whose music taste I admired and thought was super-cool, used to talk about this band The Mars Volta. When I saw them on the cover of Rolling Stone, I rushed to tell this friend about it, and they replied somberly "aw man, 😞 I liked them."

Sorry I keep leaving comments on years-old videos, I'm just happy to be here. XD I tend to either get into things late into the fandom where only the halfway decent people are left or things that are so obscure that it's just me and four other people sending homemade memes to one-another. It's not even on purpose, I wish the things I loved had more people to be excited with, but it's a trade-off I'm willing to accept. For everything else, sometimes it's nice to grab some popcorn and watch. A Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson doesn't happen every day, you know.

It is sweet that Jenny thinks Doctor Who fandom is not a toxic dumpfire. There has been toxicity in the fandom going back at least as far as the early 80s (when Colin Baker took on the role). And more recently it is curious how often these "true believers" reveal their hatred for women and non-white people. (Producer Chibnall's incompetence has not helped matters.) But I think you might enjoy Who if you ever found time for it, in amongst the vast number of genre things available to consume. I think you would enjoy Capaldi's "grumpy old man" version of the Doctor. Anyway, it is interesting how fan truisms change with the generations. Movies and TV seasons that were once anathema become accepted when those who saw them as children grow up and take over the fandom. Luckily ("luckily") there are always new things to hate.

i know this one’s old but I gotta say it made me sad :( there are so many men who get super defensive and rude when you find out you have ANYTHING in common with them like… what the heck! I’m so tired of it…

I would like to point out, as a member of the grammar fandom, or gramdmom, that the plural of "fandom" should be "fanda". Just like multiple Pandoms are called Panda. Or my friend Shandom.

This video gave me life.

Jenny, sorry if you answered this upstream, but the comments are loading veeeery slowly for me: you hate Doctor Who? What's the story there?

i know this is an older video but this reminded me of when i went to the skyrim midnight release, and i was, and still am a huge elder scrolls fan like i had been following the press for skyrim for years and in the months leading up was developing elaborate very lore heavy backstories for my possible characters, but while i was there (i was a 15 year old girl at the time) people kept giving me shit and saying my dad had "dragged me there" and eventually i just whipped around and started going off about the history of the dunmer civilization until people left me alone

Aw man, did Patreon eat my comment? It was mostly about fandom experiences and a rant to bring back Minty, haha!

In the 70s and 80s we were lucky to get the toys (especially the first Christmas after Star Wars came out! See Empty Box Campaign for more details!),

Sorry for making this comment so long after the video posted, I live in an area of New York that was hit particularly hard by storms and was without power for over a week. That said, I am one of your older Patreons (53 next month) and I will do what I can to tell you what fandom was like in the 70's and 80's. The lack of social media meant that most communication for fandom was centered around writing to magazines that supported your fandom (or the letters page of comics) and hoping your letter would get published. Most visual media was ephermal, since there was no home video...movies would only rarely get rereleased to cinemas (Disney movies being the exception), and TV shows would only be rebroadcast for reruns and syndication, with no way to record the video portion of the programs (thus those old "Doctor Who" fans taking pictures of the screen and audio recordings of the shows that are all that are left of most of the first several seasons). There wasn't much gatekeeping, mostly because there really wasn't any canon to most media (Catwoman was recast and portrayed much differently on the old "Batman" show, and it wasn't really a big deal). When home video became a regular thing, things changed a bit, since now it was a lot more viable to be obsessed with something, not having to hope for an edited broadcast (all of those TV shows and movies were edited for broadcast, mostly just so they could add more commercials), and canon started to become more of an issue in mass media, since it was a lot easier for people to spot inconsistencies. It's funny, that's why I think the "Star Wars Holiday Special" isn't some crime against fandom, because there was no canon, and fans were happy to get a dose of Star Wars while waiting for the next movie to come out. I can only say that life was very different in those days, when we only got to see whatever TV shows were playing, and whatever movie was in the theater at the moment.

Oh man, that "Star Wars is a DEAD Brand" video was so hard to watch...it's like the evil/bizarro universe version of Retail Archeology: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoiU6GNOFdM&feature=youtu.be&t=27" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoiU6GNOFdM&feature=youtu.be&t=27</a>

I've always wondered how you became a brony. It's so great that you were hardcore into it way before it was cool. You seem to predict trends a lot, like in Friendship Is Witchcraft. (Still the funniest series on the internet) I say wait for the Ready Player One movie to come out to do a video.

Loved this vid Jenny and agree with you for sure. It is very interesting to examine especially with the MLP stuff.

Given your reaction to the book (specifically the issue with the narrator), I feel like coupling your thoughts about the movie too would probably work better. Not in a like "oh this has to be balanced" way, but more what you'd be saying would feel more conclusive on this piece of media in general.

PS: About getting "cred-checked"... this has actually happened to me at a mini con I attended with my cosplaying friends. I would act as their sort of bodyguard to make sure they could walk without getting pestered (something that occurred involving Bronies a lot because one of my friends would always walk as a cute human version of Fluttershy and oh boy, do Bronies have a boner (broner?) for Fluttershy). But one of them started a convo with me about girl cartoons and it all ended in him questioning my knowledge about Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon... So while this guy didn't fight me on ponies he intended to fight me on another girly property. It went for so long and turned into a big argument that I tried to literally leave him alone but he kept following us to debate me and test my "fan level" we ended up calling the con security. Gatekeeping is just ridiculous and can really sour one's fandom experience. I guess that is exactly what these people want, so it's best to ignore them as much as possible.

Interesting topic and many equally as interesting comments, so I will try not to echo what has already been talked about ;) I am no longer that active in fandoms, most of the time I lurk and view the ~discourse from the outside (such as the Reylo/Antis fights, Bronies afraid of G5 and such). I loved when you said you are hoping for G5 to be either great or utter trash. I actually said "ha!" out loud because only a few weeks ago I said something similar to a friend of mine when we were speculating over G5. I am grateful to have a few close long-term friends that either share or don't mind my few fandoms. Talking to them about them usually fullfills me enough to not get tempted to join in on internet arguments ;) It would be hilarious if G5 was both well written and unashamedly pink, frilly and glittery, tho. I was rather fond of the Applejack redesign that gave her a long hairstyle with flowers as well as feathering and an adorable paint horse coat. It was so horsey, but also horse-girly. I just think such a design would be hard to translate into Hasbro's cheap-o toys (G3s, imo, had a perfect balance of quality, size and price point).

The Orange County Doctor Who fan group has had some drama, but it's more related to politics and creepers than events in the show.

The YouTube channel you talked about, was in my recommended section while I was watching a video from your channel a few weeks back. And I agree 100% with everything you said about his content. No one should bother watching more than 1 video of his.

I guess I can understand wanting to keep a fandom to yourself on some level, but I've always gone by the logic Jenny uses here: you want the stuff you like to get popular and succeed, because then there'll be more of it. Also never understood hardcore VS-style fandom, like Marvel vs DC or Trek vs Wars, where if you like one you have to hate the other and want it to fail. Like... really? Isn't it better to have better things all around? Don't we want things to be good instead of bad?

Whovian drama is the worst, since the show by design changes feel and direction every few years. There's always a huge chunk of the fandom that absolutely /hates/ the current showrunner/doctor/companion/etc. And god forbid the phone-box-piloting, shapeshifting alien takes the shape of a female! :P

I would have been around 8 or 9 when Empire came out. What I remember most is arguing with my friends about whether or not Vader was actually Luke's father. It seemed (and still seems, honestly) unearned based on the first movie. But other than that, we just liked the movie, and ran around pretending to murder each other with lightsabres. Some kids had more star wars toys than others, but it didn't feel all that important. This idea of some people being truer fans than others didn't really enter into it since everyone kind of liked it and there just wasnt that much extra material to get immersed in.

I see guys (and some girls but fewer) who feel like they were bullied/persecuted by people because of their 'nerd' interests all the time at my work (book store/comic shop) who constantly want to get into some kind of dick measuring contest about them. It really drives away some newer fans. I personally will avoid mentioning a lot of things I like to these people because I don't want to have a 15 min 'debate'/lecture.

Great video. Really insightful. Regarding Ready Player One, I'd prefer it if you waited until the movie was out and talked about both.

Something that just occurred to me while I was thinking about Jenny's interaction with the guy in the theater: that Black Panther scene actually *isn't* anything to do with any scene in a comic, like, in any way at all. So that guy was 'Gate Keeping' about something he wasn't fully immersed in on behalf of people he thinks are fully immersed against someone entirely because of their gender. Another example of why it's bullshit to call gate keeping just a natural reaction to protecting something you deeply cared about. It's about exclusion.

I'd be fine with you just doing a video on the RPO book, rather than that and the movie.

I could barely take world class bs’ers for 50 seconds.

My experience of 1970s fandom was Star Trek and comic books proper (not TV or movie adaptations) which could be pretty partisan/toxic in its own way, but of course on a much smaller scale as you mention (clubs, zines, conventions, etc). There was some pretty expensive merch if you wanted. The internet actually existed in the 1980s, and lots of discussion and arguments ("flame wars", the lingo came from nerd culture and I remember diatribes that would start by quoting the Human Torch with "FLAME ON") of fandom, but up through the early 1990s the demographics of the internet (and USENET newsgroups, which were not exactly the same thing but for the sake of this discussion we could treat them as such) was the overlapping of three pretty distinct and often nerdy sub-cultures: people at research universities, certain government/military departments, and UNIX software or networking companies who had computer access. My memory is the fandom was just as toxic, but the vitriol skewed toward more erudite takedowns and screeds. In September 1993, folks noticed that suddenly a bunch of "dumb people" had wandered out of AOL and were crashing the party. So, ultimately, you got that fear of change and "why are dumb people ruining MY internet" fanboy thing about the INTERNET ITSELF (I know, I was one of the people who thought it was horrific :^). We even had/have a name for it, the "Eternal September" after which the Golden Age of the internet was over.

Hey Jenny, long time first time. Born in 1965, and as a youthful Trekkie and comics nerd we were pretty anal about canon. DC famously destroyed their whole universe in the Crisis because we were so anal about canon; Paramount cleverly said that novels and games didn't count for Trek canon and was generally pretty careful not to diverge too much until the Abramsverse and Enterprise.

also, I’m still bummed Star Wars Celebration ain’t happening in Orlando this year. I was so excited when my friend wanted to do a Disney trip, and now the steam is just blown out

I would just do one video for both the book and movie for Ready Player One. Wait til after it comes out, I feel like you’d get more traffic. (But I know nothing, so grain of salt)

Re: Ready Player One, the audio-book narrated by Wil Wheaton made it work for me. Felt like his enjoyment was heard through this delivery. Would stay in my car in the parking lot at work to keep enjoying his read

Hey Jenny great video and totally agree on the WCB section. But I just started reading phasma, my first SW book and was wondering what are your best and favorite canon books? I’m thinking of doing thrawn or Ashoka next but I would like your Jedi insight. Thanks!

Oh yeah - and Ready Player One is an awful book but the story and the references definitely strike a chord with old farts like me :-)

Great video. Good topic.

I don’t really see any scenario where two Ready Player One videos will be necessary. If the movie is awful then it will probably be awful in the same ways that the book is and you can just kill two birds with one stone in your analysis, if it’s amazing then you could make it a video where you go beat-by-beat about everything wrong with the book and how the movie fixed it, and in the MUCH more probable case that the movie ends up being just “okay” since everything Spielberg has done since Chrystal Skull has been aggressively uncontroversial then you can just talk about the book and add a line somewhere in there where you say “the movie was okay”.

As one of your older fans I have to say that not much has changed - but the Internet has magnified and intensified certain behaviours, especially the toxic stuff. I feel like younger fans are not as turned off by nastiness and it bleeds over and is normalised - mirroring the general attitudes and behaviours of people in the public eye like actors and politicians. Certainly in the last 5 or so years, more and more vitriolic, click-bait titled videos have appeared. I also feel like certain words or phrases are spouted in order to antagonise people and someone somewhere gets off on the fake drama. I blame "reality" TV, bear-baiting discussion shows and humiliation "talent" shows for a lot of this as much as anything. End of old man rambling.

I'd prefer one Ready Player One video addressing the movie and the book

You *hate* Doctor Who!? *Unsubscribes *Unpatrons *Destroys Jenny Shrine

I think you should wait until the movie comes out and do a video discussing both!

I heard the sirens but not anything else.

The thing about reboots and canon these days, is that it's created by adults who grew up as kids in fandom back from 80s and upward. The creators back in the 70s and 80s just saw it as a job. And had no idea this stuff would become franchises repackaged over and over.

I genuinely think that the points you made on this topic are *important* in broad, societal ways. I'm a teacher and I'm working on post-Master's work in education and I've started academically studying the way internet culture affects adolescents (and boys in particular). You're so right on with how these stuff develops, in particular with the boys who associate their entire identity with a fandom. Any slight against that fandom needs to be viciously avenged, because it is a slight on the entirety of who they are in their own eyes. It isn't a coincidence that the toxic places within fandoms are full of casual-to-vindictive racism and sexism. The anger is there and ready to be exploited, and that has not gone unnoticed by groups and individuals who want to exploit it. The whole "gamergate" thing wasn't an entirely natural occurrence, it was fostered by alt-right groups who saw it as a chance to spread their message. Hate speech against groups that don't really have anything to do with the fandom itself are commonplace in those fandoms because it's been injected and then normalized. Even if there is no logical connection, hating on these groups becomes part of the subculture of the fandom. I think you were *really* spot on about your comments on the role the internet has played in making fandoms be something that can be an entire social sphere. Children now aren't any different than children in the past, but technology is much different. Youtube personalities, for instance, have unfiltered daily access to children in ways that absolutely dwarf any sort of celebrity of the pre-youtube world. The extreme exposure they have to children can be used in really nasty ways. There are situations I've seen firsthand where they have nearly cultlike control over children. I don't think technology is innately bad, I mean I'm here on a Patreon for a Youtuber, but it is something new and we've not had much time to understand and study how it affects our culture. I'm glad there are people like Jenny and the rest of you in these comments who understand it, though. It bears watch.

If you've not been following Jenny since her 2003 forum posts then do not dare call yourself a fan.

yes! this shade about worldclassbullshitters is exactly the sort of thing I'm subscribed to patreon for hahaha. one video is titled "The Fempire Strikes Back"!!??

My blood is boiling over that guy talking smack to you at the movie theater. Hold me back! Did you like Black Panther?

Thanks so much for the video! Born in 1979, the first hostile fan reactions to changes/reboots I can remember were to Highlander 2 and Alien 3. Because there was no internet, this was came through newspaper reviews, letters to film magazines etc. These fan reactions felt much more 'official' to me - they were published in print, so had a feeling of legitimacy and authority to them that a message board post typically doesn't. And because they were often part of a physical object that I owned, these letters and articles felt like a form of merch in connection with the original product. I can remember the content of some fan letters and input that I read in magazines in the early '90s as much as I can the media they were talking about. Even if I disagreed with them, it was much more of a buzz to simply see someone talking about something I liked, compared to now. Also, at the time I thought that 'legitimacy' and 'authority' were words it was appropriate to use to describe a critical response to media, and I'm hopefully way less pretentious now. I remember Alien 3 hostile reactions being a bigger thing, likely because of there being a larger existing fanbase for Alien than there was for Highlander. And it also felt like Highlander 2 was so universally regarded as a disaster that there was nothing really to discuss, beyond commenting, "Well, fuck".

WCB... that is some seriously dumb, seriously hateful shit. You know there's overlap in the Venn Diagram of WCB subscribers and White Supremacists. Mega gross.

Talk about the book instead of the movie

My response to The Force Unleashed was that it was using an alternate universe to tell a cool story that might not have worked if it was canon. I liked it, but I'm more of a casual star wars fan

Escape from Tomorrow vid!!?? 😃

I hate going to the theater to see Marvel movies anymore because the people talk about Easter eggs all the way through it. Ready Player Rogue One, am I right?!?

Also, you seem to worry about monetizing clips. I'm pretty sure RLM does it all the time. You should be protected because you're using it for educational purposes. If you couldn't monetize clips, Best of the Worst wouldn't have commercial breaks etc.

Having a Star Wars binder and constantly talking about it got me bullied pretty hard by both boys and girls in early 90s Bay Area high school. I was never able to find women into sci-fi stuff at my school BUT there were tons at our rival school across town. They lived in the richer neighborhood so maybe that had something to do with it?

Hi Jenny, stupid question here : does it make any difference for your incomes if we watch the ramble videos on patreon or on youtube ? Thank you

"Nobody wants to talk about what they were doing online in 2003" haha I know. I first discovered internet forums and I honestly miss those compared to modern day social media. I was part of so many forums and they were so specialized. My mom and I would fight over our one computer because she was on every Disney forum. We actually shared an account for a forum for the show Lost.

I thought Jenny lived in a tiny home in the middle of an orange grove.

I myself have had to look at myself and my knee-jerk reactions when I hear opinions I don’t agree with on media I like, or when I find out that someone I don’t like in real-life also likes something I do (i.e. I was so bent on dehumanizing them, finding something in common was like a personal attack, LOL). It turns out it means nothing about that media, it just says a lot about me and what I’m death-clinging to and highlights some things I need to work on as a person. The reverse side of that is that I’ll backpedal out of pursuing fan material if I feel like my interest is lacking compared to the vocal fans. I started watching Steven Universe and thought it was cute. I liked the art, I liked the gender fluidity, etc. But then I started coming across the fan theories and took a pass; I appreciated it as a cute cartoon with inclusivity for kids, but pursuing it deeper than that was just not what I was interested in. I don’t know if it was necessarily the fandom’s fault, but I didn’t want to associate myself with it. I find the Harry Potter fandom to be about as broad and inclusive as the Star Wars fandom (i.e. mainstream). They started an annual event here around Halloween called Wizarding Weekend, and it’s been a big hit so far. I did a themed coffee crawl in the days leading up to it, and one of the cafes went all out with exotic ingredients and potion vials, and I absolutely loved it. I agree with you that the Ready Player One movie will likely be better than the book, hence why I’m interested in going to see it (not expecting it to be great, but it will look pretty, I’m sure) despite tossing the book away after getting only a quarter of the way through. Either if you do it sooner or later, I’m excited for your hot take.

There is definitely drama in the Dr Who fandom, the U.K. end of it anyway. Usually from middle aged men who should know better as well.

As far as The Force Unleashed is concerned, I'd say with the general fandom response to it has been pretty positive, and people generally wanting a version of that story in canon. I'm sure there are hyper-logical pockets out there that dislike it for some of the more extreme parts of the story but I think there is something about the self-insertion nature of video games that lend itself to having fans easily attaching themselves to the story whether that be The Force Unleashed or KOTOR. This is all from my perspective of someone in their early 20s who likes having some of these conversations but I probably haven't seen some of the angrier corners of the star wars fandom in relation to this topic.

Look we all like your videos, so I don't think you need to constrain yourself with deadlines as to when to do certain things. We are going to watch whatever content you put out there. I think for 'Ready Player One' you should wait until you finish the book and watch the movie, then you can also compare and contrast the two.

Good ramble and something I'm really interested in atm. Whilst I wouldn't say that I'm a member of any fandoms I've always been a lover of sports and I think that there is a very similar culture, with all the positives and negatives of fandoms in general. I've always been a huge soccer fan, but I can specifically remember instances where I disagreed with what the majority of England fans wanted at the time, and you were seen as an outsider or wrong for wanting something different to the groupthink. From 2006 I felt alienated from what a soccer fan is and what it meant to support England and I think that's very similar to how fandoms of Star Wars etc have evolved. I really do think fandoms can become heavily toxic in sport. I think the vast majority, or a vocal minority, of England soccer fans have created a culture of expectation and pressure that puts the players under far too much pressure. A good single example I found was I'm a cricket fan and I'm an open fan on women's cricket. England have a player called Sarah Taylor, who as a player to me represents what is good to watch about the game; she's elegant, stylish, exciting to watch. Yet I found resistance from my friends towards the idea of looking up towards a female player rather than a male player. In the past five years that's got better but that toxic idea of not wanting to watch women's sport because "it's not how the game was" still exists. If that TLDR, the other thing I'd say is that with a fandom the size of Star Wars, it's become so diverse in terms of views and background, that I think there is an effort by those who see themselves as the original fans will want to push back and have their original opinions enforced across the entire fandom. I think this is true of all fandoms of a certain critical mass when they become diverse enough to support large groups of people with differing views.

What would a Gatekeeper of Jenny fandom be?

Audiobook is way better than the book for Ready Player One, plus you get to listen to Wil Wheaton, which isn't half bad. Listening to it makes it a lot more bearable imo. Also, I reckon a comparison between the movie and book as a video would be dece, and then you'd probably spend the whole time calling out both on their collective shit.

Nothing about Harry Potter fandom? Although HP is a big part of my life and contributes somewhat to my identity, I wouldn't say I was part of the fandom. I think we British have a quieter, less dramatic approach to the things we love.

Last comment Re: Ready Player One. Did you like the chapter where the narrator/author pretty much listed every single 80s thing like it was a competition to see how much pop culture that moron could just list without adding any context to it? Yeah... RPO is a *delight*.

To your point about the whole gatekeeping thing, I totally agree with you... I don’t freaking get it, why wouldn’t you want people to like the thing you like? I like it when I’m right, and it doesn’t happen often, so when it does I just take it as a win.

There are (at least) two different things here. First, there was a time when hateful people, crazy people, and fans who are way too personally invested in the lives and decisions of strangers were isolated. They were treated like the fringe people with screwed up priorities that they were. Now, they are connected to each other and the world, and their every insane thought is amplified and drowns out the vast majority of reasonable, sane people (and even infects sane people with their craziness... but let's leave politics out of it). Second, what used to be "geek culture" (science fiction and so on) has become mainstream culture. There is no "geek culture" anymore, for the most part (the whole pony cartoon thing might still qualify).

OK, the app on Patreon stinks for editing posts, because it just removed my entire post, so let’s do this again. In regards to 70s-80s fandoms, I’m almost 40, so I can comment on this while also being that creepy old guy hanging out with you youngin’s... We didn’t know shows like He-Man and Transformers solely existed to sell toys. We watched the shows, we bought the toys, we played with the toys. We counted our lucky stars if we found a classmate who was also in to those fandoms. We’d go over to their house and play with our combined toys. It was great. As these things got rebooted, we saw them, said, “Well, I guess I outgrew this.” And moved on. We didn’t have an Internet to go to and complain. We just shrugged our shoulders and moved on to the new thing or interest. It might be a little hard for you to comprehend, Jenny, as someone who has grown up with the Internet most of your life, but we didn’t know if people outside of our region liked things. We had no outlet. We had no internet... I can barely comprehend how I survived before an Internet existed. I didn’t have an outlet until the mid 90s, when BBSes and Newsgroups became more accessible. When the Internet became ubiquitous, it was really a time for sensory overload where you went “Wait, there are people like me out there?” As the gentleman who commented below me said, a lot of the time we just knew things. Call it learning by osmosis... I’m not sure how we knew certain things, we just did.

I've been off work for a week, and have spent it in bed, watched all your videos. You're wonderful.

Great video, thanks for always being so frank and honest. Wish everybody could just be cool about fandoms and like what they like without worrying about what others are doing. Also, loved your spider metaphor, I laughed out loud 😂💚

I feel bad for the tree. What crime did it commit, other than being large and alive?

Can you one day maybe do a Biog Ramble - tell us some things about yourself, who you are, what you do, what jobs you have, your family and friends and such biographical details?

Drama starters are the WORST! I see them all the time. It’s like they make it their mission to egg on conflict.

I have the same SW HP laptop, Jenny. Need to get outside but will resume watching this later! I can't really hear the noises except for that siren, ha!