D&D 5E Toxicity in the Fandom

[Hussar]

Is criticizing a brand toxic or not? Like if you say that an intellectual property that is being produced is bad, is that toxic fandom? If you don't like the product, shouldn't you just be quiet and not buy it?

In a word? Yup.

Well, that's a bit glib, so, let me go a step further.

Complain about it? Sure. No problems. Tell me that you don't like it and hopefully be able to tell me why. No problems.

OTOH, come onto, say, En World, and spout never ending negativity in every single post, repeating the same criticisms (founded or not) over and over and over and over again poisoning any possibility of a conversation? No. Don't do that. You mentioned the blanket ban on Edition Warring in the past. Do you really think that happened because everyone was being reasonable and having a productive conversation? Do you think that being forced into board ghetto's to discuss certain topics because something like, damage on a miss, was such a contentious topic that we'd get fifteen simultaneous threads talking about what a craptastic game 4e was was reasonable conversation?

So, sure, if I ask you what you think about 4e and you tell me you don't like it, that's fair. But, what was the point of spending YEARS taking large steaming dumps in the middle of EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION? I mean, I don't particularly care for Pathfinder. Fair enough. It's just not my bag. And, I was a Paizo subscriber for quite a few years, so, it's not like I wasn't a fan of Paizo at one time. But, they went in a direction I didn't like, so, I just don't post on the Paizo forums anymore. Nor do I hunt down threads on the Paizo boards here.

Is it really that hard to just not be negative in every single post on every single topic? Good grief, on the front page of En World right now there's a posting for Astral Elves in Spelljammer. Imagine my complete and utter shock at seeing the same names come up yet again, to complain and talk about how they don't like this.

 

[Kinematics]

Concerning the OP:

I had a similar experience with the anime community. I got into anime and manga in the mid-90's — good old VHS days — and then joined a forum dedicated to anime released on DVD (animeondvd.com, naturally) when the DVD format first came out.

In those days DVD players were still costly (especially multi-region DVD players that could play region 2 Japanese DVDs along with region 1 US DVDs), and you bought 3-4 episode discs one at a time at $30 a pop, rather than an entire season for like $50. And I was buying most new series coming out.

And a lot of the community on the forum was of a similar mindset. These were the people dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars per month on anime; they weren't just fansub pirates. I get the feeling that that had a strong influence on the flavor of the community. It was both serious and fun, and you could count on the people there being serious about it as well, and not just trolls passing through. There were strong opinions about which style of DVD case was the best, but not (very) heated arguments about which anime was the best. Everyone was there because they loved anime, and they were willing to invest heavily in that love.

That website eventually was bought by one of those early venture capitalist firms trying to make a buck on a brand, and the owner of the site needing a bit more financial support to keep things running. It's gone through a few more rebrandings since then, but when that first happened I started looking around into other anime communities to get my "fix" of discussion.

Anyway, what I found was a whole lot of what would now be called toxicity, even if of a very different brand of toxic. There was hate and vitriol spewed all over the place, both in the forums and in the editorials. Anime News Network was one of the worst, despite being one of the premiere anime news sites around. Some news aggregator/comment sites hosted plenty of sexist and bigoted vitriol in their comments sections.

Ironically, one of the best places I found was a site built around fansubs, that had a well-regulated and moderated forum covering every new show that released each season. That worked because of proper moderation, and good siloing of topics (ie: one thread per show, or, if there was enough ongoing discussion, moving it to a subforum with one thread per episode).

Good moderation (and a corresponding lack of moderators/editors/administrators prone to stirring the pot) and focused discussion seem to be the keys for a healthy fandom environment. Lack of politics is another huge help. Twitter and Facebook and the like are the exact opposite, with little to no moderation, and discussion that can go anywhere at any time.

People are people, which means the worst of people can come out any time in any fandom, but it also means that in the right environments you can expect them to be decent people, too. Recognize the difference between arguing and criticizing and trolling. People are too quick to blame the first two on the last. Maybe give people a place where they can vent. (One creative writing forum has an entire sub-forum for Rants. You can yell and scream and vent all you want in there, but you leave it at the door when you move to other parts of the forum.)

It doesn't seem like it should be too hard to have a healthy discussion environment, but you do need to actually put a little effort into it.

 

[Hussar]

so his fans are going to have their wishes denied

See, this, right here, is the problem and why it's toxic.

You have equated what you want with what "fans" want. Instead of simply talking about yourself and what you want, you are pretending to know the minds of other people and are insisting that no one else knows the truth. That if anyone disagrees with you, they are disagreeing with Tolkien because YOU are the only arbiter of what counts as a good interpretation of Tolkien and you are pretending that you represent the great mass of fandom.

THAT'S why it's toxic.

 

[Zardnaar]

See, this, right here, is the problem and why it's toxic.

You have equated what you want with what "fans" want. Instead of simply talking about yourself and what you want, you are pretending to know the minds of other people and are insisting that no one else knows the truth. That if anyone disagrees with you, they are disagreeing with Tolkien because YOU are the only arbiter of what counts as a good interpretation of Tolkien and you are pretending that you represent the great mass of fandom.

THAT'S why it's toxic.

Way I look at it is vote with your wallet. If enough people agree with you you'll see some sort of result.

Sometimes that hits critical mass and companies realize they goofed up.

 

[Celebrim]

When I Star Trek fans bent out of shape about diversity and inclusion, I do think they're bad fans -- as in, clueless and toxic. I wouldn't post memes about their bad-fanhood, but I would call out the abhorrent racism that underlies their "criticism." There's plenty not to like in Star Trek, so I wouldn't judge someone for not enjoying some or all parts of it. Disparaging others is a clear line, though.

I agree with you about disparaging others, but I feel the majority of the times that someone is claiming that the Star Trek fan is bent out of shape over diversity and inclusion, that is just another case of disparaging others.

I'm not really a Star Trek fan so I don't even know what is going on in that community, but in the case of the sequel trilogy the majority of fans I knew weren't criticizing diversity and inclusion per se but tokenism. They were quick to point out (I think rightly) that it would be stupid to claim that the same people who loved Leia, Lando, Mace Windu and Padme as characters were racist if they didn't like Rey and Finn as characters. Among their complaints is that it seemed that characters like Finn were created solely to check a racial diversity check box with no clear idea by the writers what role that character was supposed to play in the story, and with the apparent understanding that "black man" was a personality and sufficient characterization that no further character building was needed. These critics to the extent that they cared about race at all tended to not at all be upset that there was a black actor in Star Wars but that a black actor was asked to play such a flimsy poorly written part as "Finn" solely because he was black and with no other apparent consideration. And they were equally angry to be told that if they thought Finn's motives weren't clearly explained, Finn's actions weren't logical, Finn's characterization made him seem to be stupid and unlikeable, and Finn was not contributing in any other way than the JarJar comic relief (speaking of embarrassing roles for a black man) that they were bad racist fans and should just shut up.

And some of this goes back to the marketing your new product by hating on the old one, in as much as some fans felt they were being told that the original films were racist/sexist and you should feel bad for liking them, as if strong female figures were somehow new to Star Wars (especially in Legends, this is a ridiculous claim).

I don't really know how much tokenism played a role in casting and hiring actors for the sequel movies, but I do know that Mace Windu and Lando Calrissian were for all they were supporting characters still much more strongly written than Finn was, and that Leia to me is a cooler character than Rey and Leia's treatment in The Force Awakens was terrible.

Isn't suggesting someone is racist about the strongest form of disparagement you can do in society? I don't like the whole "Either you loved the sequel trilogy or you are a racist." thing that seems to be going on in the Star Wars community.

 

[Zardnaar]

I agree with you about disparaging others, but I feel the majority of the times that someone is claiming that the Star Trek fan is bent out of shape over diversity and inclusion, that is just another case of disparaging others.

I'm not really a Star Trek fan so I don't even know what is going on in that community, but in the case of the sequel trilogy the majority of fans I knew weren't criticizing diversity and inclusion per se but tokenism. They were quick to point out (I think rightly) that it would be stupid to claim that the same people who loved Leia, Lando, Mace Windu and Padme as characters were racist if they didn't like Rey and Finn as characters. Among their complaints is that it seemed that characters like Finn were created solely to check a racial diversity check box with no clear idea by the writers what role that character was supposed to play in the story, and with the apparent understanding that "black man" was a personality and sufficient characterization that no further character building was needed. These critics to the extent that they cared about race at all tended to not at all be upset that there was a black actor in Star Wars but that a black actor was asked to play such a flimsy poorly written part as "Finn" solely because he was black and with no other apparent consideration. And they were equally angry to be told that if they thought Finn's motives weren't clearly explained, Finn's actions weren't logical, Finn's characterization made him seem to be stupid and unlikeable, and Finn was not contributing in any other way than the JarJar comic relief (speaking of embarrassing roles for a black man) that they were bad racist fans and should just shut up.

And some of this goes back to the marketing your new product by hating on the old one, in as much as some fans felt they were being told that the original films were racist/sexist and you should feel bad for liking them, as if strong female figures were somehow new to Star Wars (especially in Legends, this is a ridiculous claim).

I don't really know how much tokenism played a role in casting and hiring actors for the sequel movies, but I do know that Mace Windu and Lando Calrissian were for all they were supporting characters still much more strongly written than Finn was, and that Leia to me is a cooler character than Rey and Leia's treatment in The Force Awakens was terrible.

Isn't suggesting someone is racist about the strongest form of disparagement you can do in society? I don't like the whole "Either you loved the sequel trilogy or you are a racist." thing that seems to be going on in the Star Wars community.

This Disney hamfisted it. Everything they did that they thought was new and original had been done 20 years earlier in legends.

Hell even Kylo Ren was similar to Hans Legends kid. Legends was far from perfect in quality either hell some if it was vastly worse than what Disney cane up with.

 

[Celebrim]

So, sure, if I ask you what you think about 4e and you tell me you don't like it, that's fair. But, what was the point of spending YEARS taking large steaming dumps in the middle of EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION?

So, we've known each other for a long time, and I know you to be a very passionate and forceful writer who is not afraid to be frank about their opinions. And that's OK. You'll note of the increasingly long list of posters that I've found I have to block for the sake of my sanity, you've never managed to be on that list despite all the borderline acrimony that has been between us.

But what I'm saying here and the point I'm trying to make is I don't think that's a remotely fair take on how the edition wars played out at EnWorld. It wasn't that I was jumping into every positive 4e discussions that was going on or even many of the positive 4e discussions to crap on people's fun. I agree that there would have been no point. Heck, I remember jumping into 4e discussions to help people design for the edition - the Thardizun thread for example - even as I at the same time was increasingly certain this edition was not for me.

So maybe that was going on and I just didn't have perspective on it because 4e positive discussions weren't things I was all the time partaking in. What I do know is that if I partook in any sort of skeptical 4e discussion where I was critical of whether "the math was fixed" or whether triggered abilities would in play result in speedier combats or whether 4e really was a Nar game or whether the concept of the Skill Challenge was really good design or whatever, that every single time I had 4e supporters come and tell me I was a mental defective for not liking 4e and that I was probably a bad person and a bad DM etc. etc. So from my perspective it seemed that the real toxic people where the people who could tolerate no criticism whatsoever of 4e, and that the toxicity wasn't at all solely or even mostly coming from people who preferred 3e.

So maybe that's just my perspective and I didn't know the whole story that was going on at the time because I only sample a small percentage of threads (especially about something like 4e), but it's real and valid perspective.

I really like the (+) innovation here at EnWorld where the OP signals that they aren't interested in their premise being challenged. I'm like totally on board that. But it wasn't just the people who didn't like 4e who were taking "large steaming dumps in the middle of EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION" as you so descriptively put it.

 

[Irlo]

I agree with you about disparaging others, but I feel the majority of the times that someone is claiming that the Star Trek fan is bent out of shape over diversity and inclusion, that is just another case of disparaging others.

It was me you were quoting, FYI, not @billd91 to whom you attributed that to.

An example from the dark ages. 1995. Star Trek: Voyager went on the air. A few people were outraged that a dark-skinned actor was cast as a Vulcan (because everyone knows that Vulcans are white). I wasn't following social media in 1995. This was reported in newspapers and magazines (if I recall properly). These weren't criticismsof the actor's skill or how the character was written. These were criticisms before the show aired of casting a black actor. As an alien. Yes, that's toxic. And I'm okay with disparaging those few people over it.

but I do know that Mace Windu and Lando Calrissian were for all they were supporting characters still much more strongly written than Finn was,

Okay. I think Lando was barely a character and was barely written, much less well-written, but ... to each their own.

Isn't suggesting someone is racist about the strongest form of disparagement you can do in society? I don't like the whole "Either you loved the sequel trilogy or you are a racist." thing that seems to be going on in the Star Wars community.

No, suggesting that someone is racist is not the strongest form of disparagement in society. It's worse to be subjected to racist abuse.

 

[Celebrim]

@billd91: Sorry dude. Not sure how that quote got messed up.

Okay. I think Lando was barely a character and was barely written, much less well-written, but ... to each their own.

So you are going with "it was never very good anyway"? Ok

No, suggesting that someone is racist is not the strongest form of disparagement in society. It's worse to be subjected to racist abuse.

I've been the target of both sorts of attacks. I'm not sure I agree, but in any event you aren't even really responding here to what I actually said.

 

[Medic]

No, suggesting that someone is racist is not the strongest form of disparagement in society. It's worse to be subjected to racist abuse.

Living in a region where the effects of an elaborate race-based caste system can still be felt, I can soundly say that it is common enough for the two to go hand-in-hand. What a strange vector for this discussion to take, at any rate.