When I was 11, I fell deeply and irreversibly in love with
the Lord of the Rings. It actually changed my life. I adored every last second
of it and honestly? Though the fires of passion have faded through the mists of
time, I still firmly believe that it's the best studio trilogy ever and the main reason why I’ve just dropped a significant wad of cash to tour New
Zealand this summer. The Lord of the Rings is excellent.
It also made me utterly unbearable. I could just about go five
sentences into a conversation before turning it back to Rings. I wore t shirts
until they stank and then threw a mard when I was ordered to change into
something else. I spent far too much time alone online, rereading the same few
websites and the worst, most terribly written fanfiction I could get my hands
on. Most importantly though, I couldn’t handle any criticism about the films
because I took it as a personal insult against me, the world’s most important
person. I remember some catastrophic sense of humour fails which left me crying
and my poor, beleaguered family exhausted.
I’d transplanted a personality for a fandom. I used to look
back fondly on how much of a nerd I was, but now…?
 |
| The Guardian, 05/06/2018 |
 |
| The Guardian. 09/10/2017 |
 |
| BBC, 06/06/2018 |
Guys, we need to talk about toxic fandoms.
Liking stuff is great. Handmade merchandise is neat. Listening
to niche, cool podcasts is fun. Memes are awesome, this one being my favourite:
 |
| Stuff like this is why I still have a Tumblr. |
As fans become closer to the creators of their beloved
objects of desire through Twitter, Instagram and still somehow Facebook, great
stuff can come from it too. However, for every cute story about The Rock throwing a high schooler a cinema day, there are about ten more for a celebrity
who’s had to just leave to stop the abuse hurled at them. Ed Sheeran quit
Twitter. Justin Beiber privatised his Instagram. Adele, Rihanna, Leslie Jones,
Daisy Ridley and Emma Stone all had to quit following trollish, abusive
comments. And then there are the hordes of Youtubers who receive vitriolic
hatred for their opinions on a daily basis. All of this from fans.
I’m not going to say ‘so called fans’, because these are
people who like stuff, same as me. Ed Sheeran left following his appearance on
Game of Thrones, Justin Beiber closed down his Instagram because people were harassing
his girlfriend. Leslie Jones left because of eye wateringly racist abuse when
she was cast in Ghostbusters. Game of Thrones fans. Justin Beiber fans.
Ghostbusters fans. TV. Music. Films. Is it beginning to sound ridiculous yet? Does it sound insane?
To an entitled fan (of which I very much was one when I was
11) it’s perfectly reasonable. To someone who replaced a personality for a fandom, to see
something even slightly out of step of what they envisioned their chosen life
to be is a personal, scathing insult. I think Ed Sheeran ruined Game of Thrones!
It doesn’t matter that it was a short cameo and mainly for the benefit of a
young actress on the show, it destroyed the realism of my dragon story! To
Twitter, for I must call him a hateful slur to the online equivalent of his
face! Twenty people liked that hateful slur, I shall hurriedly create another,
more elaborate hateful slur! Forty people liked it! I’m winning the hateful
slur game, hurrah! If I’m lucky, my hateful slur will end up on Celebrity’s
Read Mean Tweets, then I shall be the God of the internet for the day!
And oh my God have
entitled fans turned Star Wars into a hellscape. The conspiracy theories, the
abuse, the endless, endless videos
about why The Last Jedi was awful and horrible and the worst thing since the
Black Death. And entitled Star Wars fans, who believed they owned a film created
for children but it had the audacity, the sheer nerve to cater to audiences
beyond aging men and branch out into further, better representation for groups
of people who are different from them, chose to lash out at actors, the
director, the producer, anyone they
could get their hands on. Kelly Marie Tran is gone from Instagram and I’d bet
my cat on people being smugly triumphalist over it. They proved they were right
to themselves when the stories hit and the other side of the Star Wars divide
cried shame, just much too late. The trolls were allowed to fester like an
infection, and it feels like they’ve killed any joy left in being a Star Wars
superfan.
When I was a Lord of the Rings fan, it was fun. So was being
a Harry Potter fan, a Discworld fan, a Game of Thrones fan, a Marvel fan, a jazz fan, a Hamilton fan, an Assassin's Creed fan, a Rick and Morty
fan and yes, a Star Wars fan. I was also a Sherlock fan, until it turned
rubbish and utterly untethered from any known reality. I tweet at creators so I
too can have a shot at a retweet, a like or maybe even a reply and be God of
the internet for the day. But should I have leapt on Twitter and called Mark
Gatiss a hateful slur because I didn’t like what he’d done with his show?
Which, because I’d been a fan, I felt entitled to call my show too. That would
have got more attention, I could have got my reply I desperately crave.
When I was 11, I felt like I owned Lord of the Rings. It was
mine, and I was unnerved when anyone else I knew said they also liked it,
because they couldn’t possibly like it as much as me. They weren’t real fans,
not like me (I didn’t read the books until I was 23 by the way, I was a pretty lousy
Lord of the Rings superfan). These Star Wars fans probably feel the same way.
These comer-ins with their feminist takes and intersectional diversity, they
don’t know Star Wars, not properly. They didn’t spend their lives reading
subpar novels and going to poorly attended conventions and sticking up for the
prequels and becoming so overbearing about this one thing that it consumed their
life so the only people they can have a proper conversation with are other
people with their exact same experience. The director and cast, they’re not
proper fans either, or they would have made the film thrashed out on Reddit two
years previously, not whatever it was they threw out to the cinema. They don’t care, not like the real fans. Kelly Marie Tran needed to know exactly how much she didn’t care and how she
personally ruined their Star Wars.
Yes, it was fun being a fan.
Until entitled fans ruined it.
