#Phonepunk#
Banned
So I keep seeing this reactionary take, that the Fandom Menace (scary name, i know!!!) is some "alt right" group with evil designs, who is respsonsible for all the toxicity in Star Wars (cos that element never existed before 2017). The usual gatekeepers, people that think you HAVE to like all the films and you can't have any criticism of them or you are a racist bigot, have successfully painted this group in the mainstream eye as some horrible thing. But is it?
It's funny I kept hearing about them, mostly from SW stans who could not let other people have an opinion about their favorite space movie. So I dove in, and I started with maybe the famous "toxic" video of them all. "Why the Last Jedi Is a Complete Cinematic Failure". Did I find a bunch of scorn thrown at the idea of casting asian and black leads? Not at all. Did I find a 20 second section where he shows Poe purposefully framed by all women as he is shut down? Yes. Apparently pointing out that a filmmaker is trying to do feminism is itself sexist! Even if the filmmaker was a man! Vito made this video and ever since has been getting death threats from extremist stans. Despite the "scary" thumbnail it's actually a pretty light takedown of the film.
So I didn't find much there. I looked for the head honcho, Jeremy ("with another videoooo") from Geeks + Gamers, who is the main one pushing out content. This guy is one of the most active, he does daily videos, he reacts to articles and twitter, he pretty much covers every scrap of SW news. Is this toxic? I don't see how, since this is a thing done by hundreds of millions of other people every single day. Again, I found nothing much at all showing that Jeremy hates women. Maybe I am missing the secret decoder ring.
The funny thing is, these people don't really spread Right Wing or Alt Right views at all. They are just hyper concerned with SW. I often see claims that they called KMT "yellow bitch" and have yet to see it come up in any of these videos. In fact these people always say it isn't the actresses fault her character sucks.
So how about Doomcock? I mean with a name like that you know he has to be a WAMAN hating misogynist, right? Nope, just another super nerd extremely passionate about SW. He's pretty silly, he wears a makeshift super villain costume and has a stuffed Cthulu sidekick. Maybe his voice modulator is too scary for snowflakes or something.
There is also Mauler, a guy who put out a really nice longform takedown of The Last Jedi. Again, this is not a right wing troll. See my comments from before. I've watched dozens of his videos, and you are more likely to see racist/sexist trolling on any random ResetEra thread than in his videos.
So yeah, I dunno. These are a bunch of folks I've started watching, cos I wanted to hear actual criticism of the film, and not just beating the same old strawman "toxic fans" over and over again. The key to all these people is they are overwhelmingly concerned with the text itself. They are almost too geeky about it. They talk about the ST and the OT and the PT and the EU and comics and movies. None of their channels have "Hitler was right" videos. None of them do race science studies. Rarely do they ever go into politics at all.
So what do yall think? Personally I would have ignored all this stuff had butthurt fanboys left it alone. But no, they have to brand EVERYTHING that is not a glowing blowjob to the entire franchise as racist/sexist. The more and more I saw legit criticism (like Finn only ever there to scream "Rey!") handwaved away, the more I wished people actually had a chance to talk about this stuff. Luckily, they have! These are people actually talking about the films themselves! What a concept!
Reactionaries will point to the amount of content they upload as if that is some great sin, commenting on pop culture via Youtube. Again, this is something done by hundreds of millions of people a day. For me, this is the Streisand effect in action. The more this group was hyped up as this horrible evil, the more attention they got, and once I decided to finally check it out, I found them far from toxic.
It's funny I kept hearing about them, mostly from SW stans who could not let other people have an opinion about their favorite space movie. So I dove in, and I started with maybe the famous "toxic" video of them all. "Why the Last Jedi Is a Complete Cinematic Failure". Did I find a bunch of scorn thrown at the idea of casting asian and black leads? Not at all. Did I find a 20 second section where he shows Poe purposefully framed by all women as he is shut down? Yes. Apparently pointing out that a filmmaker is trying to do feminism is itself sexist! Even if the filmmaker was a man! Vito made this video and ever since has been getting death threats from extremist stans. Despite the "scary" thumbnail it's actually a pretty light takedown of the film.
So I didn't find much there. I looked for the head honcho, Jeremy ("with another videoooo") from Geeks + Gamers, who is the main one pushing out content. This guy is one of the most active, he does daily videos, he reacts to articles and twitter, he pretty much covers every scrap of SW news. Is this toxic? I don't see how, since this is a thing done by hundreds of millions of other people every single day. Again, I found nothing much at all showing that Jeremy hates women. Maybe I am missing the secret decoder ring.
The funny thing is, these people don't really spread Right Wing or Alt Right views at all. They are just hyper concerned with SW. I often see claims that they called KMT "yellow bitch" and have yet to see it come up in any of these videos. In fact these people always say it isn't the actresses fault her character sucks.
So how about Doomcock? I mean with a name like that you know he has to be a WAMAN hating misogynist, right? Nope, just another super nerd extremely passionate about SW. He's pretty silly, he wears a makeshift super villain costume and has a stuffed Cthulu sidekick. Maybe his voice modulator is too scary for snowflakes or something.
There is also Mauler, a guy who put out a really nice longform takedown of The Last Jedi. Again, this is not a right wing troll. See my comments from before. I've watched dozens of his videos, and you are more likely to see racist/sexist trolling on any random ResetEra thread than in his videos.
So yeah, I dunno. These are a bunch of folks I've started watching, cos I wanted to hear actual criticism of the film, and not just beating the same old strawman "toxic fans" over and over again. The key to all these people is they are overwhelmingly concerned with the text itself. They are almost too geeky about it. They talk about the ST and the OT and the PT and the EU and comics and movies. None of their channels have "Hitler was right" videos. None of them do race science studies. Rarely do they ever go into politics at all.
So what do yall think? Personally I would have ignored all this stuff had butthurt fanboys left it alone. But no, they have to brand EVERYTHING that is not a glowing blowjob to the entire franchise as racist/sexist. The more and more I saw legit criticism (like Finn only ever there to scream "Rey!") handwaved away, the more I wished people actually had a chance to talk about this stuff. Luckily, they have! These are people actually talking about the films themselves! What a concept!
Reactionaries will point to the amount of content they upload as if that is some great sin, commenting on pop culture via Youtube. Again, this is something done by hundreds of millions of people a day. For me, this is the Streisand effect in action. The more this group was hyped up as this horrible evil, the more attention they got, and once I decided to finally check it out, I found them far from toxic.
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