Why are some fans so... weird?

[Honest Tiefling]

I think the answer is something only barely touched upon.

Fans who act like normal people blend in with normal people. They don't go on crazy internet rampages or attempt to talk about nothing but their particular fandom. They don't always display their fandom with their clothing or accessories, particularly where it is not appropriate or where they are meeting non-fans. Basically, you don't see the non-crazy ones until you go into their Geek-Cave.

I'm personally a big fan of Star Trek, I mention it from time to time here, since there are other Star Trek fans here and a big intersection between DnD and Star Trek. I don't ONLY talk about it and do recognize that it is a very flawed thing and not to everyone's liking. Don't like it? That's fine, not your thing.

[Knaight]

The internet is a huge magnifier for glib, uncivil, absurd behaviour. It's easy to be caught up in your emotions and saying something online that's objectively awful and that you'd never say to a living breathing person. Lacking the sense of perspective for what you're doing accompanied with the anonymity to avoid facing any personal consequences for actually doing it, not just in the straight legal or social standing sense but in feeling any of the emotional weight such confrontational behaviour should have. Similarly to how the above-mentioned sports fan can feel shielded from responsibility through the mob... and alcohol. I mean, it's easy to look at fandoms absurdities and face-palm, but this carries over into anything people can conceivably care about and have an opinion on within this online medium.
...
Lastly, gaming is a fairly unique medium because it brings interactivity into it. The relationship people have to it is a bit more intimate than say, movies or television. You don't, for instance, join a clan over the course of a movie's theatrical release. Nor can you come back to a book and choose to engage with it non-linearly. It's a thing where the circumstances of how you consume it are relevant as much as its objective qualities. It can create chasms between people's personal experiences and frames of reference with a particular work.

I'm not convinced about this - it doesn't take a lot of digging to find examples of people being terrible to each other face to face, and there's a serious case to be made that much of what the internet has done is made that more visible to third parties. As for gaming bringing in interactivity, that doesn't actually seem to matter. TV shows have just as obsessive fandoms, books have just as obsessive fandoms, sports team have significantly more obsessive fandoms (starting with the tendency to riot whenever their team is in a big match).

This is also old. See how easy it was to end up dead by insulting a well known Charioteer in ancient Rome. The blues vs green (and Purples and Scarlets when they existed) were very much part of people's identity and sense of belonging.

I was going to bring this up, but with a slightly different example. The Byzantine Nika Riots were a lot more than just sports fans being obsessive, but it was essentially a case of chariot racing fandoms developing broader cultures, these cultures getting big and belligerent, and the entire thing boiling over to a ridiculous extent.

Fans who act like normal people blend in with normal people. They don't go on crazy internet rampages or attempt to talk about nothing but their particular fandom. They don't always display their fandom with their clothing or accessories, particularly where it is not appropriate or where they are meeting non-fans. Basically, you don't see the non-crazy ones until you go into their Geek-Cave.

This is a significant phenomenon, but it doesn't answer the question of why that other group even exists. Why aren't all sports fans just people who watch the games, go to the games sometimes, and maybe while at the games display more fan stuff? That's the majority of them by far, but it's a group seeded with more than a few people who will wear a team jersey all day every day unless it's absolutely imperative that they don't, who get incredibly hostile towards people who like a different team, who get in stupid barfights with those people over liking a different team, and who riot when their team wins. The vastly larger group capable of blending doesn't really say much about where that group comes from.

[The Fury]

I think the answer is something only barely touched upon.

Fans who act like normal people blend in with normal people. They don't go on crazy internet rampages or attempt to talk about nothing but their particular fandom. They don't always display their fandom with their clothing or accessories, particularly where it is not appropriate or where they are meeting non-fans. Basically, you don't see the non-crazy ones until you go into their Geek-Cave.

I'm personally a big fan of Star Trek, I mention it from time to time here, since there are other Star Trek fans here and a big intersection between DnD and Star Trek. I don't ONLY talk about it and do recognize that it is a very flawed thing and not to everyone's liking. Don't like it? That's fine, not your thing.

There's also differences in fan communities. Going back to Star Trek, you could get away with pointing out flaws in it. Fans do it all the time in fact, Trekkers are even somewhat notorious for this. Other fan communities are less accepting of this kind of behavior. For whatever reason video game fans seem a lot more defensive about criticism in general, I'm not sure why that is. Sort of like I have no idea why animation fans are so serious about shipping.

[kraftcheese]

This is a significant phenomenon, but it doesn't answer the question of why that other group even exists. Why aren't all sports fans just people who watch the games, go to the games sometimes, and maybe while at the games display more fan stuff? That's the majority of them by far, but it's a group seeded with more than a few people who will wear a team jersey all day every day unless it's absolutely imperative that they don't, who get incredibly hostile towards people who like a different team, who get in stupid barfights with those people over liking a different team, and who riot when their team wins. The vastly larger group capable of blending doesn't really say much about where that group comes from.

As other people have said previously, I feel like it boils down to people basing their identity and life on being a fan of "x" to such an absurd extent coupled with being nasty people, further egged on by other fans who feel the same way; it all mashes together and makes you a horrible, reactionary SOB that's constantly getting confirmation from their friends that what they're doing is good.

[snowblizz]

For whatever reason video game fans seem a lot more defensive about criticism in general, I'm not sure why that is.

Because they (feel) that they are constantly under attack from various directions (and it's not ungrounded, seeing as games are the "bad medium corrupting youth" atm).

Which means you adopt a defensive mindset.

Another way it shows IMO is being fan of X above else everywhere or essentially prozelyting their fandom. Like eg just for an example that bothers me when people take MLP to the extreme that every other fandom has to be infused with X. So some people will have MLP avatars here, if they play Warhammer they naturally play with MLP Unicorn Bretonnias any discussion here becomes how does A or B from MLP translate to being OOTS cast etc etc etc.

[The Fury]

Another way it shows IMO is being fan of X above else everywhere or essentially prozelyting their fandom. Like eg just for an example that bothers me when people take MLP to the extreme that every other fandom has to be infused with X. So some people will have MLP avatars here, if they play Warhammer they naturally play with MLP Unicorn Bretonnias any discussion here becomes how does A or B from MLP translate to being OOTS cast etc etc etc.

Ha! Yeah, I've definitely noticed that too.

Lately I've had one foot in geek culture, and another in car culture, (owning an old car sort of forces that.) Because of this there are two types of people I'm always encountering-- those that are obsessed with MLP, and those that are obsessed with first generation Camaros. Now if someone would paint a 1969 Camaro in Twilight Sparkle's colors it would be the perfect symbol for things I can't get away from.

[Thanqol]

Ha! Yeah, I've definitely noticed that too.

Lately I've had one foot in geek culture, and another in car culture, (owning an old car sort of forces that.) Because of this there are two types of people I'm always encountering-- those that are obsessed with MLP, and those that are obsessed with first generation Camaros. Now if someone would paint a 1969 Camaro in Twilight Sparkle's colors it would be the perfect symbol for things I can't get away from.

Internet is way ahead of you.

[Knaight]

Because they (feel) that they are constantly under attack from various directions (and it's not ungrounded, seeing as games are the "bad medium corrupting youth" atm).

It's drastically exaggerated. Putting aside how games have serious completion in the "bad medium corrupting youth" category (rap and hip hop are still getting heavily targeted there), the industry is huge. The U.S. games industry makes more money than Hollywood, and it's not nearly as outsize compared to games as a whole as Hollywood is for films. What real threats there are have largely faded, and much of what's being reacted to now is either other videogame players preferring other videogames, or people providing serious artistic criticism and getting a ridiculous amount of fury in response. This often comes from the exact same people who were bemoaning videogames not being taken seriously as art.

[BeerMug Paladin]

It's drastically exaggerated. Putting aside how games have serious completion in the "bad medium corrupting youth" category (rap and hip hop are still getting heavily targeted there), the industry is huge. The U.S. games industry makes more money than Hollywood, and it's not nearly as outsize compared to games as a whole as Hollywood is for films. What real threats there are have largely faded, and much of what's being reacted to now is either other videogame players preferring other videogames, or people providing serious artistic criticism and getting a ridiculous amount of fury in response. This often comes from the exact same people who were bemoaning videogames not being taken seriously as art.

I wonder how much videogames getting taken seriously as art is exactly the problem. Some communities can't seem to handle hearing that criticism exists, which is going to be inevitable for art. So the criticism must not be genuine. It's some kind of conspiracy.

I would suspect part of the issue is confusing criticism of the art with criticism of the experience of being exposed to the art. IE, someone exposed to the critique hears, "You are stupid if you actually enjoyed this trash, because of these reasons I list here". So to defend the experience of having enjoyed a game, one must refute the list, even though the list is a subjective judgement and those points could have (in part or all) been meaningless to the person in question.

[Knaight]

I wonder how much videogames getting taken seriously as art is exactly the problem. Some communities can't seem to handle hearing that criticism exists, which is going to be inevitable for art. So the criticism must not be genuine. It's some kind of conspiracy.

Given that a lot of the criticisms that get a pretty virulent response are clearly being done in the style of criticism that routinely gets applied to literature, film, and other narrative media that are generally accepted as art I'd call this a major factor. It's just particularly frustrating when the people complaining about it either were or are bemoaning about video games not being taken seriously as art.

[Rynjin]

Part of the problem there is THAT video games receive much of the same criticism as film, literature, and other narrative media.

A lot of people critique games as art as though games are merely interactive movies, where a large part (the most important part) of a game's artistic appeal lies in the gameplay.

Saying a game is bad or not "artistic" because (solely or primarily because, anyway) its story is bad or cliched or whatever completely misses the point.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Part of the problem there is THAT video games receive much of the same criticism as film, literature, and other narrative media.

A lot of people critique games as art as though games are merely interactive movies, where a large part (the most important part) of a game's artistic appeal lies in the gameplay.

Saying a game is bad or not "artistic" because (solely or primarily because, anyway) its story is bad or cliched or whatever completely misses the point.

I'd say the ideal is to focus on the core gameplay elements. But really, there's different aspects of criticism for videogames just like there are different aspects of movie criticism.

A critic primed to see an action movie is probably going to weight the importance of a good story much less than the quality/quantity of the action scenes in the movie. They might talk about the believability of the special effects and the quality of the cinematography or presentation of set pieces.

A critic wanting to see an interesting story is probably going to focus less on the number and quality of action scenes, in favor of analyzing the thematic elements of the work. They might talk about consistent character motivations, choices or whether character arcs are complete and make sense.

Neither approach is strictly "correct". Videogames have the same sort of choices to make in regards to how the individual puts weight on various factors involved in gameplay, graphics, sound design, soundtrack, etc... There's more factors to consider than a movie has, but it's not fundamentally different.

Presentation can matter a great deal. Metroid: Other M, Mass Effect 3

[137beth]

There are two companies whose fans have given me a rather...rough time. I have, on numerous occasions, been told that "the world would be better off if you [I] killed yourself," by fans of two particular companies. The reason, according to the fans in question, that I was such a blight on humanity, was because I bought some products from the fans' favorite company, but not all products from the fans' favorite company.

The two companies in question are Apple and Paizo. There's an iPhone in my pocket, and I still buy music recordings from the iTunes store (I'm one of those people who prefers to purchase a perpetual, DRM-free copy of a work of art I like over an elaborate rental system like Apple Music or Spotify). On the other hand, I'm typing this post on an HP laptop running Linux Mint. I've also never owned an Apple Watch, nor an iPad. I can fairly confidently state that I will never buy an Apple Watch, as I've always found wrist-watches of any sort physically uncomfortable (before cell phones, I carried a pocket watch). I don't anticipate buying an iPad in the near future, either, although that could change if Apple ever addresses my two primary issues with iPads, which is quite possible as they continue to improve their tablet line.

Anyhow, there are some people who believe that I am required to pick a "side:" either I must buy every single Apple product released every year; every new iPhone model, every iPad, every Macbook update, every Mac desktop, every Apple watch, etc....or I am not allowed to buy anything from Apple at all. Since I do not follow one of those two extremes, I am deemed worthy of being killed by some Apple customers.

It's a similar deal with Paizo. I don't purchase every single product that Paizo releases. I'm probably spending less on Paizo products than on Apple products, due to the differing price range of what the two companies sell (I'm not going to spend $600 on an RPG supplement that I expect to replace in three years). But I am spending more than $0.00 on Paizo products, and that, according to some people who buy every Paizo product, is reason enough for me to be a plague on the world.

The main difference, in my experience, is in how the two companies respond to such harassment by their fans. Obviously, neither Paizo nor Apple can control what people say on the internet, but they do have some degree of influence over their own websites. On the Paizo.com forum, there have been times where a poster advocates lethal violence against me, and then one or more Paizo employees come by and praise how "welcoming and positive" the person advocating killing me is being. Or, in other cases, a post advocating my death has been "favorited" by one or more Paizo employees. By contrast, on Apple's own discussions.apple.com forum, anyone who advocates violence against another human is banned. No, it doesn't matter that you are a member of the iPhone Upgrade Program, or that you own every Apple product since the Apple I. If you harass or threaten Apple customers, you get booted from Apple's own online community. There are still Apple fanatics who think I deserve to be killed, but they are restricted to posting on dark corners of the internet that I don't visit.


I'd imagine that there are other companies and brands who have similarly vocal fans, but I'm thankful that I personally haven't been a target of them.

[Rynjin]

There's also Blizzard fans, but unlike Paizo they don't have the company's blessing (and help, more often than not) to be toxic little ****lords at least.

[137beth]

There's also Blizzard fans, but unlike Paizo they don't have the company's blessing (and help, more often than not) to be toxic little ****lords at least.

I've heard that about Blizzard fans. In that case, though, I fall into the extreme of buying no Blizzard products at all. I don't have the requisite operating system(s) to play most Blizzard games even if I wanted to, and the handful that I could play aren't my type of game.

Part of the problem there is THAT video games receive much of the same criticism as film, literature, and other narrative media.

A lot of people critique games as art as though games are merely interactive movies, where a large part (the most important part) of a game's artistic appeal lies in the gameplay.

Saying a game is bad or not "artistic" because (solely or primarily because, anyway) its story is bad or cliched or whatever completely misses the point.

I think it depends on the kind of game. I've played text-based games where the story is almost everything. If an interactive fiction game isn't good as fiction, then it isn't a particularly good game.

On the other hand, consider GameRankings' highest-rated game of all time: Super Mario Galaxy (2007). I recall playing it when it game out, and while I wouldn't immediately peg it as the best game ever, I did greatly enjoy it. As a 3D platformer, it is an excellent game in my opinion. If I were to analyze it as a work of fiction, though, there would be almost nothing "good" about it. We have a really simplistic and trite plot (villain wants to conquer the universe, so he builds a super weapon which will destroy the universe and then somehow create a new one in the villain's image). But it doesn't really matter, since we barely have to hear anything about the plot: we get a few cutscenes at the beginning, and then a ton of pure platformer goodness.

And then there's the ending. When I played it 10 years ago, I remember the ending seeming rather nonsensical. Let's see how many plot holes I can remember off the top of my head. So Bowser has a doomsday device that will destroy the entire universe and then recreate it. We fight and beat Bowser...and that magically stops the device? How does that work? It's not like it's a spell that ends when its caster is knocked out. Did the Death Star instantly self-destruct when Palpatine died?

Okay, moving past the oddity of why the device self-destructs, we are told that it implodes onto Bowser. So the device with enough force to destroy the entire universe instead has all its power focused on one person. But then, in the ending, we see that Bowser miraculously survived. And though he has a headache, he sustained no long-term injury of any sort. Turns out the device that was powerful enough to destroy the entire universe can't even seriously harm one koopa.

But at the end of the day, none of that matters, because Super Mario Galaxy is not a play, or a novel, or a movie, or a comic. It's a game, and no one buys a Mario game for the story. If you want a game that has a rich story and lore with some degree of internal consistency while also being an entertaining game, pick up the latest Legend of Zelda or Fire Emblem. Critiquing a Mario game as if it were something other than a game is a recipe for disappointment.

[Bohandas]

There are two companies whose fans have given me a rather...rough time. I have, on numerous occasions, been told that "the world would be better off if you [I] killed yourself," by fans of two particular companies. The reason, according to the fans in question, that I was such a blight on humanity, was because I bought some products from the fans' favorite company, but not all products from the fans' favorite company.

The two companies in question are Apple and Paizo. There's an iPhone in my pocket, and I still buy music recordings from the iTunes store (I'm one of those people who prefers to purchase a perpetual, DRM-free copy of a work of art I like over an elaborate rental system like Apple Music or Spotify). On the other hand, I'm typing this post on an HP laptop running Linux Mint. I've also never owned an Apple Watch, nor an iPad. I can fairly confidently state that I will never buy an Apple Watch, as I've always found wrist-watches of any sort physically uncomfortable (before cell phones, I carried a pocket watch). I don't anticipate buying an iPad in the near future, either, although that could change if Apple ever addresses my two primary issues with iPads, which is quite possible as they continue to improve their tablet line.

Anyhow, there are some people who believe that I am required to pick a "side:" either I must buy every single Apple product released every year; every new iPhone model, every iPad, every Macbook update, every Mac desktop, every Apple watch, etc....or I am not allowed to buy anything from Apple at all. Since I do not follow one of those two extremes, I am deemed worthy of being killed by some Apple customers.

You have to understand that Apple is a cult first and a tech company second.

[Vinyadan]

"Reality alteration field"

I think that the problem with videogames is how much room they occupy in the brains of their fans. If you critique them and you get a violent reaction, it's possibly because you just critiqued the thing that guy spends the most time thinking about and wishing for.
In general gamer culture is surprisingly toxic. The Tribes Series world seems to be a very happy place by comparison; Chivalry already was pretty damn nasty. What some gamer community interprets as in-jokes, is open harassment when done to an outsider.

[BiblioRook]

I once read an interesting summation of toxic fandom, I wish I knew where to find it again because I feel like I wouldn't really do it full justice.
Basically it went like this: One becomes a fan of something and often seek to be part of it, once they are a part of it they often feel like they should be allowed to control it, then after trying (and falling) to control it they often can feel like if they can't control it then the people who denied them that 'right' don't deserve it and then seek to destroy it (ether in a effort to 'preserve' it or just because 'If I can't have it no one can').

Just to be clear I'm not suggesting fans in general are like this, more just the... less desirable minority of fandom. 'Gatekeeping' really comes to mind, basically the 'control' step in a nutshell.