D&D 5E Toxicity in the Fandom

[Zardnaar]

This I will disagree with.

Fandoms are being painted as toxic because they are, in fact, toxic. Unrelentingly negative. It’s not enough to say, “I don’t like this.” No for the Toxic Fan, you must be told over and over and over why something you like is terrible, and you are an idiot for even considering it anything less than an affront to things good and right.

Look at the treatment of Wil Wheaton. Some teenage kid goes to conventions where people are proudly displaying Kill Wesley Crusher buttons. Or the treatment of that kid who played Anakin in the first prequel. On and on and on.

The reason that perfectly reasonable critisms get buried is because the completely unreasonable toxic mouth breathers aren’t interested in a conversation. They just want to tear everything down.

So if you have a reasonable concern about something, you wind up not being able to voice it because there are ten thousand unreasonable voices screaming at the top of their lungs.

In DnD you saw this with the 4e edition wars. DnD gets mentioned in a high profile place like Newsweek. Finally gets some mainstream attention and if you make the mistake of looking at the comments section it’s post after post about how 4e suxxors. It was mind blowing.

So if actually did have a reasonable concern with 4e and there are many perfectly reasonable concerns- it didn’t matter. If you said something negative there’d be an immediate dogpile of people shouting about how you hate 4e and and equal number patting you on the back for showing these newbies how much their game sucks.

It made conversation utterly impossible.

And that certainly wasn’t being fueled by media companies.

Problem is when you get labeled as toxic for expressing negative views about something.

I got this around the STs thought they were crap. But I don't dislike Disney Star Wars overall. Never complained about the Anakin actor or any of the new actors.

It's not toxic to dislike something even vehemently. Just means you don't like it.

It's a problem when someones dogmatic about it pro or con. Dogmatic idealists are a problem regardless of what those ideals are.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just finished page 1 in this thread, and had to post…

Y’all DO remember the origin of the word “fan” is the word “fanatic”, right. That right there should lead you to expect SOME form of turbulent behavior in any hobby or pastime community.

 

[Zardnaar]

Just finished page 1 in this thread, and had to post…

Y’all DO remember the origin of the word “fan” is the word “fanatic”, right. That right there should lead you to expect SOME form of turbulent behavior in any hobby or pastime community.

You'll get it in anything. At best alot of things may be cliquey. So if everyone likes abc someone else liking ABD might struggle fitting in.

Generally I don't hang around interest groups that much. If I have do just be polite it's their interest not mine.

It's a problem if those group's start looking down on other groups.

 

[Hussar]

You can believe this of course, but there are people here that I would still consider part of the D&D 'fandom' and they are unrelentingly positive.

Sorry? Did you mean positive or negative at the end there?

If someone is unrelentingly positive they are absolutely not toxic. They are the opposite of toxic.

 

[Scribe]

Sorry? Did you mean positive or negative at the end there?

If someone is unrelentingly positive they are absolutely not toxic. They are the opposite of toxic.

Right.

My point is that fandom, is not the problem. I noted that there will always be segments of a fandom that are toxic, but fandom itself is not toxic.

Its generalization taken to an extreme to paint any given fandom (Star Wars, Star Trek, 40K, D&D) as toxic, but that generalization is being done.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sorry? Did you mean positive or negative at the end there?

If someone is unrelentingly positive they are absolutely not toxic. They are the opposite of toxic.

Can still be toxic due to onetruwayism/fanboyism.

 

[Hussar]

Problem is when you get labeled as toxic for expressing negative views about something.

I agree. That’s the problem. Not liking something is fine. There’s zero problem with not liking something.

The problem is when I don’t like something so I insist on repeatedly telling everyone I don’t like it over and over and over again and then getting angry when other people don’t immediately tell me how I am so amazingly perceptive for sudsing out what a completely failed and garbage thing this thing is that I don’t like.

Someone who tells me they like something will rarely spend much time repeatedly telling me why I should like it too. They’re typically pretty content with just liking something. If I say ima big fan of Tolkien, no one ever argues with me.

Say I don’t like Tolkien and people will argue the point but typically in a conversational way.

But when people tell me that the new Amazon Tolkien series is crap because they have female orcs and people of Color playing elves? Yeah those people are naughty words.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Oh, I'm dead certain we could come up with things to be toxic about regarding knitting.

Correct techniques ("You can't do that! It will unravel!" "Not if I use my BRAIN and make sure to tie it off at the end!" "That's not stable, no end-knot is!" etc.)
Correct styles (color, pattern, type of finished product, etc.)
Correct tools (whether to use independent needles or the ones that have a wire or tube connecting the ends, for example)
Correct materials ("I'd never use synthetic yarn, it can't match the feel and quality of natural fiber" "Well SOME of us aren't bougie fat cats, and have to be practical about our yarn." "Pfeh! As if anyone who doesn't care enough to use REAL yarn is actually knitting!")

Etc., etc., etc. It is easy for difference to lead to judgment, and for judgment to lead to anger for both parties.

My Mom tried her hand at a few different textile hobbies. We have some exemplars of her work around the house.

Her crowning achievement was transposing a Christmas-themed image of a quail onto a canvas, then making the piece come to life. She searched therough all the major stores in Dallas/Fort Worth selling thread to find the right colors and textures, only to find that they simply didn’t exist here. So she took threads of differing colors and twisted them together to create the colors in the image, something that was apparently unheard of. Some of the saleswomen and crafters were VERY interested in her progress. It took months.

The completed piece was a bit over 18” on a side, and her twisting techniques had resulted in extremely accurate representations of the colors in the original image. One of the store owners suggested she should enter it into the competition at the Texas State Fair.

So we took it to get framed at a place several of the other crafters recommended. When it was time to pick it up, it wasn’t there. There wasn’t even a record of its intake. It was gone, as if it had briefer existed.

Don’t know why it was stolen, but the situation reeked of jealously. She put away her supplies for that hobby for good. We still have the card, though.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You can believe this of course, but there are people here that I would still consider part of the D&D 'fandom' and they are unrelentingly positive.

. . . "Fandoms are inherently toxic" and "some fans are unrelentingly positive" are absolutely not contradictory statements. Individuals in the fandom can be extremely positive (fanatically so), while the fandom overall is still extremely and inherently toxic.

 

[MGibster]

Not a single Star Wars movie has been "smart".

That's true, but the original trilogy wasn't stupid because it managed to tell a cohesive story. Even the prequel tells a cohesive story. In the original triology, we learn about the Emperor in the first movie, he's giving Vader orders directly in the second movie, and when he appears in the third movie it makes sense. They didn't do anything to forshadow Paplatine's appearance along with his fleet in episode IX. They just pulled that baloney out of their netheregions. It was stupid.