I've been thinking about this topic for a while, having had some run ins with toxic fans on various star wars articles on facebook (I know I know, my fault for being there reading the comments etc). But it got thinking, and here's a convient place to talk about it.
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First and foremost, how do you define toxic fandom? To piggyback on North Sunrider's post (really he nailed it) all to often it gets used as an easy and cheap way to dismiss people you disagree with. I get that people criticizing/complaining/whining about a franchise is annoying, but that doesn't automatically equal
toxic. And even folks who use the term in good faith seem to have different ideas of what it means. Take CounterPunch for example.
Counterpunch wrote:Toxic? No, I would not say so.
Elitist? 100%, always has been. I say that as a guilty party in some aspects.
There has always been a group who has tried to define what is the "real" or only "proper" way to enjoy the hobby. At first it was the G1 people crapping on BW. Then it was the G1 people crapping on the modernization of the brand in the early 2000's.
Alright fair enough, but there's another group of folk who would argue that elitism is gatekeeping, and thus textbook toxic fandom. So a lot of the time it seems to be a case of, "I don't know exactly how to define it, but I know it when I see it".
As for Transformers, we're definitely not the most toxic fandom, though we've had our moments. Trukk not Munky, the reception to Beast Machines, the debates about if people who liked the Unicron Trilogy were "true fans", "Michael Bay raped my childhood" etc.... But overall I think we've chilled out. Part of it is that anyone who's been a transformers fan for a length of time has to realize that the franchise reboots itself every several years. This means that what you love may end, and you may get something you hate in it's place, but there's always the future when something better may show back up. Plus we can have multiple continuities going at once, so there's more likely to be something out there that appeals to you.
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