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Taking a stand against toxic fandom (and other ) — Page 3

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 (Edited)

TV’s Frink said:

SilverWook said:

I don’t recall much of the media hype around the movie anymore.

Really? I seem to remember it getting a ton of hate. Mostly well deserved.

It has been a long time now I guess.

I don’t remember it getting a lot of hate from the media. The movie got mixed reviews with most reviewers agreeing, that Lucas had become too enamoured with digital effects, whilst not spending enough time on story and character. The general consensus seemed to be, that most felt Lucas was a bit rusty not having directed for over a decade. As with TLJ the hate came from a section of the fanbase with sites like “Jar Jar must die” and such being created. Certain media outlets were reporting on the perceived racial stereotypes, but I don’t remember it being that big to be honest.

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There was a website? Sounds like a knock off of all the Kill Barney! (the dinosaur) stuff in the late 90’s. Is it still around? I’m morbidly curious.

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I can’t comment on the reaction to TPM at the time, because I was a kid and only knew other kids opinions and we all liked it… but I do know, once I finally started going on the internet, the discourse about the film was overwhelmingly negative.

Honestly it still kinda is, but I feel like there’s now a pretty significant section of PT lovers out there (mostly people who saw them when they were kids too, if I had to guess).

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I must admit that I need help with my toxcity about Disney’s cannon.

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DominicCobb said:

I can’t comment on the reaction to TPM at the time, because I was a kid and only knew other kids opinions and we all liked it… but I do know, once I finally started going on the internet, the discourse about the film was overwhelmingly negative.

Honestly it still kinda is, but I feel like there’s now a pretty significant section of PT lovers out there (mostly people who saw them when they were kids too, if I had to guess).

I saw TPM with my roommate and fellow Star Wars fan in college and both of us walked out of the theater having had a good time. We loved any scene with a lightsaber in it, brushed off Jar-Jar as kid stuff that wasn’t the end of the world, and had a good laugh at the Tusken Raiders during the pod race.

It’s not perfect by any stretch, but at least I enjoyed myself.

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Was easy to think back in 1999 that we would not be seeing Jar Jar in Episode 2. 😛

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This is what our culture has become. We live in a social media driven word where clicks matter most, and what gets the most clicks? Negativity. All that negativity has actually had an affect on how people process entertainment. They don’t go into a movie to enjoy the hard work, talent, and imagination of others. They go in on a seek-and-destroy mission to find everything wrong and blow it out of the water, because that’s what’s cool now.

I am certainly not advocating the switching off of brains. Nothing wrong with examining something critically, and it should be able to stand up to normal critique, but it has gone to a detrimental extreme. People think they actually know better than highly paid, award winning professionals. Much of their criticism is more personal taste and not artistic merit, but the bashing is all that matters.

If people would just go into things with a different mindset, one of a desire to appreciate, not nitpick. If they could stop thinking about how they would do it better and just enjoy the work of art that thousands of people came together to make for them, I think they would enjoy themselves a whole lot more often.

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TFA receives an overwhelmingly positive response from fans and everything is cool.

TLJ receives mixed reviews and it’s because of the social media swamp and “toxic fans”.

I’m having trouble buying into this narrative. What happened in the 2 years between these films that turned a chunk of the fanbase rotten?

Nothing. Nothing at all. Star Wars fans are the same fans they’ve always been. TLJ is a divisive movie; it has a strong perspective. If it were as derivative and formulaic as TFA, we wouldn’t be debating the toxicity of the fanbase. We’d be skipping along, arm in arm, on our way to Episode IX, with some of us grumbling along the way, just like we did with TFA.

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 (Edited)

There’s a big difference between merely saying This movie sucks! and taking it out on the people who made it. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, Trekkers were not screaming for Robert Wise’s head. Even the late Harlan Ellison wrote a polite, but negative review in Starlog. And this is the guy who often took potshots at Gene Roddenberry the way Stephen King hates on Kubrick.

Social media is the big factor here. It’s possible rotten fans may have always been with us. I imagine there were letters even Cinefanstatique magazine declined to print back in the day. There was that one SW blogger fellow who’s been blocked by Dave Prowse and John Williams on twitter for their behavior. Seriously, what issues could anyone possibly have with them?

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Jay said:

TFA receives an overwhelmingly positive response from fans and everything is cool.

Are you new here?

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SilverWook said:

There’s a big difference between merely saying This movie sucks! and taking it out on the people who made it. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, Trekkers were not screaming for Robert Wise’s head. Even the late Harlan Ellison wrote a polite, but negative review in Starlog. And this is the guy who often took potshots at Gene Roddenberry the way Stephen King hates on Kubrick.

Social media is the big factor here. It’s possible rotten fans may have always been with us. I imagine there were letters even Cinefanstatique magazine declined to print back in the day. There was that one SW blogger fellow who’s been blocked by Dave Prowse and John Williams on twitter for their behavior. Seriously, what issues could anyone possibly have with them?

There are ridiculous trolls, of course. That’s not what I’m talking about here. There are legitimate criticisms being levied against TLJ that are being attributed to trolls in order to hand-wave them away.

Think about what you’re saying. “[T]hat one SW blogger fellow” isn’t representative of half the fanbase. The people who harassed Tran aren’t representative of half the fanbase. It’s become very easy to paint anyone dissatisfied with TLJ using that broad brush, though.

There are Lucasfilm employees on Twitter right now trolling Star Wars fans and comparing the situation to GamerGate. Just absurd. If Twitter had existed back when Lucas released the SEs and he posted his famous quote about the movies being his and not the fans’ (paraphrasing), what do you think the result would be? If the creators are going to participate in social media and actively berate their critics, the social media mob is going to descend upon them.

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

TFA receives an overwhelmingly positive response from fans and everything is cool.

Are you new here?

Are you new to the internet?

This forum doesn’t encompass the entirety of the conversation, nor is it even a microcosm representative of the entirety of Star Wars fandom. It’s a subset of a subset. The discussion here may have become contentious, but in the rest of the world, by and large, the response to TFA was overwhelmingly positive.

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TFA got a positive response at first. The backlash didn’t come till later.

The Person in Question

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i think it’s because people tried really hard to like it at first. i know i did, and it’s now my least favorite star wars film by a country mile.

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I really hated it at first and then went through a short phase of trying to get myself to like it but I eventually gave up.

The Person in Question

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 (Edited)

I don’t see any LFL employees sayin all TLJ haters are bigots or harrasers or whatever. Any comparisons to Gamergate are accurate insofar as the harrasers are concerned (though I haven’t seen these comparisons from LFL employees).

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DominicCobb said:

Any comparisons to Gamergate are accurate insofar as the harrasers are concerned (though I haven’t seen these comparisons from LFL employees).

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1016392684242550784

GamerGate: another great example of using a minority of harassers to paint an entire community with that wide brush and obscure the original criticisms.

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 (Edited)

Jay said:

DominicCobb said:

Any comparisons to Gamergate are accurate insofar as the harrasers are concerned (though I haven’t seen these comparisons from LFL employees).

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1016392684242550784

GamerGate: another great example of using a minority of harassers to paint an entire community with that wide brush and obscure the original criticisms.

Okay, well was I wrong? I’m not seeing the part in that tweet where he says that anyone who hates his movie is a Gamergate level harraser. He’s pretty spot on in the comparison.

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 (Edited)

Jay said:

SilverWook said:

There’s a big difference between merely saying This movie sucks! and taking it out on the people who made it. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, Trekkers were not screaming for Robert Wise’s head. Even the late Harlan Ellison wrote a polite, but negative review in Starlog. And this is the guy who often took potshots at Gene Roddenberry the way Stephen King hates on Kubrick.

Social media is the big factor here. It’s possible rotten fans may have always been with us. I imagine there were letters even Cinefanstatique magazine declined to print back in the day. There was that one SW blogger fellow who’s been blocked by Dave Prowse and John Williams on twitter for their behavior. Seriously, what issues could anyone possibly have with them?

There are ridiculous trolls, of course. That’s not what I’m talking about here. There are legitimate criticisms being levied against TLJ that are being attributed to trolls in order to hand-wave them away.

Think about what you’re saying. “[T]hat one SW blogger fellow” isn’t representative of half the fanbase. The people who harassed Tran aren’t representative of half the fanbase. It’s become very easy to paint anyone dissatisfied with TLJ using that broad brush, though.

There are Lucasfilm employees on Twitter right now trolling Star Wars fans and comparing the situation to GamerGate. Just absurd. If Twitter had existed back when Lucas released the SEs and he posted his famous quote about the movies being his and not the fans’ (paraphrasing), what do you think the result would be? If the creators are going to participate in social media and actively berate their critics, the social media mob is going to descend upon them.

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

TFA receives an overwhelmingly positive response from fans and everything is cool.

Are you new here?

Are you new to the internet?

This forum doesn’t encompass the entirety of the conversation, nor is it even a microcosm representative of the entirety of Star Wars fandom. It’s a subset of a subset. The discussion here may have become contentious, but in the rest of the world, by and large, the response to TFA was overwhelmingly positive.

That blogger fellow got into the credentialed podcast area at Celebration, which indicates to me Lucasfilm doesn’t vet these people very well. I wasn’t aware of Lucasfilm employees trolling fans, or do you mean Rian Johnson?

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SilverWook said:

Jay said:

SilverWook said:

There’s a big difference between merely saying This movie sucks! and taking it out on the people who made it. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, Trekkers were not screaming for Robert Wise’s head. Even the late Harlan Ellison wrote a polite, but negative review in Starlog. And this is the guy who often took potshots at Gene Roddenberry the way Stephen King hates on Kubrick.

Social media is the big factor here. It’s possible rotten fans may have always been with us. I imagine there were letters even Cinefanstatique magazine declined to print back in the day. There was that one SW blogger fellow who’s been blocked by Dave Prowse and John Williams on twitter for their behavior. Seriously, what issues could anyone possibly have with them?

There are ridiculous trolls, of course. That’s not what I’m talking about here. There are legitimate criticisms being levied against TLJ that are being attributed to trolls in order to hand-wave them away.

Think about what you’re saying. “[T]hat one SW blogger fellow” isn’t representative of half the fanbase. The people who harassed Tran aren’t representative of half the fanbase. It’s become very easy to paint anyone dissatisfied with TLJ using that broad brush, though.

There are Lucasfilm employees on Twitter right now trolling Star Wars fans and comparing the situation to GamerGate. Just absurd. If Twitter had existed back when Lucas released the SEs and he posted his famous quote about the movies being his and not the fans’ (paraphrasing), what do you think the result would be? If the creators are going to participate in social media and actively berate their critics, the social media mob is going to descend upon them.

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

TFA receives an overwhelmingly positive response from fans and everything is cool.

Are you new here?

Are you new to the internet?

This forum doesn’t encompass the entirety of the conversation, nor is it even a microcosm representative of the entirety of Star Wars fandom. It’s a subset of a subset. The discussion here may have become contentious, but in the rest of the world, by and large, the response to TFA was overwhelmingly positive.

That blogger fellow got into the credentialed podcast area at Celebration, which indicates to me Lucasfilm doesn’t vet these people very well. I wasn’t aware of Lucasfilm employees trolling fans, or do you mean Rian Johnson?

To say that Rian Johnson is trolling fans is to have a very loose definition of the word.

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DominicCobb said:

Jay said:

DominicCobb said:

Any comparisons to Gamergate are accurate insofar as the harrasers are concerned (though I haven’t seen these comparisons from LFL employees).

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1016392684242550784

GamerGate: another great example of using a minority of harassers to paint an entire community with that wide brush and obscure the original criticisms.

Okay, well was I wrong? I’m not seeing the part in that tweet where he says that anyone who hates his movie is a Gamergate level harraser. He’s pretty spot on in the comparison.

Did you read the preceding tweet that he was responding to? It was about ComicsGate, another supposedly hate-driven campaign that’s being used to paint many comics fans with the same brush as GamerGate, with the usual shitstirring by the usual frauds looking for attention/money like Quinn and Sarkeesian.

Maybe he’s not doing it intentionally, but by drawing the comparisons to what’s going on with Star Wars, I find it hard to believe he doesn’t know who and what he’s inviting into the discussion.

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Author
Time
 (Edited)

DominicCobb said:

SilverWook said:

Jay said:

SilverWook said:

There’s a big difference between merely saying This movie sucks! and taking it out on the people who made it. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, Trekkers were not screaming for Robert Wise’s head. Even the late Harlan Ellison wrote a polite, but negative review in Starlog. And this is the guy who often took potshots at Gene Roddenberry the way Stephen King hates on Kubrick.

Social media is the big factor here. It’s possible rotten fans may have always been with us. I imagine there were letters even Cinefanstatique magazine declined to print back in the day. There was that one SW blogger fellow who’s been blocked by Dave Prowse and John Williams on twitter for their behavior. Seriously, what issues could anyone possibly have with them?

There are ridiculous trolls, of course. That’s not what I’m talking about here. There are legitimate criticisms being levied against TLJ that are being attributed to trolls in order to hand-wave them away.

Think about what you’re saying. “[T]hat one SW blogger fellow” isn’t representative of half the fanbase. The people who harassed Tran aren’t representative of half the fanbase. It’s become very easy to paint anyone dissatisfied with TLJ using that broad brush, though.

There are Lucasfilm employees on Twitter right now trolling Star Wars fans and comparing the situation to GamerGate. Just absurd. If Twitter had existed back when Lucas released the SEs and he posted his famous quote about the movies being his and not the fans’ (paraphrasing), what do you think the result would be? If the creators are going to participate in social media and actively berate their critics, the social media mob is going to descend upon them.

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

TFA receives an overwhelmingly positive response from fans and everything is cool.

Are you new here?

Are you new to the internet?

This forum doesn’t encompass the entirety of the conversation, nor is it even a microcosm representative of the entirety of Star Wars fandom. It’s a subset of a subset. The discussion here may have become contentious, but in the rest of the world, by and large, the response to TFA was overwhelmingly positive.

That blogger fellow got into the credentialed podcast area at Celebration, which indicates to me Lucasfilm doesn’t vet these people very well. I wasn’t aware of Lucasfilm employees trolling fans, or do you mean Rian Johnson?

To say that Rian Johnson is trolling fans is to have a very loose definition of the word.

I think he’s subtly trolling. He’s too clever to come at people directly.

The Lucasfilm employee who posted a selfie while drinking from a mug that says “fanboy tears” on it is trolling, though.

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Jay said:

DominicCobb said:

Jay said:

DominicCobb said:

Any comparisons to Gamergate are accurate insofar as the harrasers are concerned (though I haven’t seen these comparisons from LFL employees).

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1016392684242550784

GamerGate: another great example of using a minority of harassers to paint an entire community with that wide brush and obscure the original criticisms.

Okay, well was I wrong? I’m not seeing the part in that tweet where he says that anyone who hates his movie is a Gamergate level harraser. He’s pretty spot on in the comparison.

Did you read the preceding tweet that he was responding to? It was about ComicsGate, another supposedly hate-driven campaign that’s being used to paint many comics fans with the same brush as GamerGate, with the usual shitstirring by the usual frauds looking for attention/money like Quinn and Sarkeesian.

Maybe he’s not doing it intentionally, but by drawing the comparisons to what’s going on with Star Wars, I find it hard to believe he doesn’t know who and what he’s inviting into the discussion.

You of course have a typically cynical take on these “gates” that I have no desire to get into you with. Putting that aside, whatever you think of the people bring attacked, there is no reason whatsoever to violently harass. And it’s beyond absurd to suggest that one shouldn’t call out violent harassment just for fear that someone else entirely might come in and paint all criticism with a broad brush. I’m sorry I have more sympathy with those getting death threats than those merely getting supposedly generalized. I don’t know why Rian should have to top toe and ignore the issue completely just because of how other people may or may not respond.

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 (Edited)

Jay said:

DominicCobb said:

SilverWook said:

Jay said:

SilverWook said:

There’s a big difference between merely saying This movie sucks! and taking it out on the people who made it. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, Trekkers were not screaming for Robert Wise’s head. Even the late Harlan Ellison wrote a polite, but negative review in Starlog. And this is the guy who often took potshots at Gene Roddenberry the way Stephen King hates on Kubrick.

Social media is the big factor here. It’s possible rotten fans may have always been with us. I imagine there were letters even Cinefanstatique magazine declined to print back in the day. There was that one SW blogger fellow who’s been blocked by Dave Prowse and John Williams on twitter for their behavior. Seriously, what issues could anyone possibly have with them?

There are ridiculous trolls, of course. That’s not what I’m talking about here. There are legitimate criticisms being levied against TLJ that are being attributed to trolls in order to hand-wave them away.

Think about what you’re saying. “[T]hat one SW blogger fellow” isn’t representative of half the fanbase. The people who harassed Tran aren’t representative of half the fanbase. It’s become very easy to paint anyone dissatisfied with TLJ using that broad brush, though.

There are Lucasfilm employees on Twitter right now trolling Star Wars fans and comparing the situation to GamerGate. Just absurd. If Twitter had existed back when Lucas released the SEs and he posted his famous quote about the movies being his and not the fans’ (paraphrasing), what do you think the result would be? If the creators are going to participate in social media and actively berate their critics, the social media mob is going to descend upon them.

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

TFA receives an overwhelmingly positive response from fans and everything is cool.

Are you new here?

Are you new to the internet?

This forum doesn’t encompass the entirety of the conversation, nor is it even a microcosm representative of the entirety of Star Wars fandom. It’s a subset of a subset. The discussion here may have become contentious, but in the rest of the world, by and large, the response to TFA was overwhelmingly positive.

That blogger fellow got into the credentialed podcast area at Celebration, which indicates to me Lucasfilm doesn’t vet these people very well. I wasn’t aware of Lucasfilm employees trolling fans, or do you mean Rian Johnson?

To say that Rian Johnson is trolling fans is to have a very loose definition of the word.

I think he’s subtly trolling. He’s too clever to come at people directly.

He’s too nice, you mean. Every time I’ve seen him give a “clever” retort, he usually follows it up with a more reasoned response to try to engage and explain his perspective.

The Lucasfilm employee who posted a selfie while drinking from a mug that says “fanboy tears” on it is trolling, though.

Except, you know, that that picture was from three years ago, before TFA was even out (let alone TLJ).

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Sounds like a great way to get fired. Unless Lucasfilm and Disney just don’t care at this point? The closest Lucas ever got to trolling was wearing that Han Shot First t-shirt on set of Crystal Skull. Nice way to make a buck off a phrase unhappy fans coined.

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