Over the weekend, I received a DM from a stranger who wanted to let me know I was a nasty bully waste of space because I disliked the
DCEU and the works of
Zack Snyder. The troll in question was otherwise oddly polite, introducing himself by name and insisting his words were not offensive before he launched into his screed. This is nothing new for me, sadly, and certainly not from ardent fans of Snyder and the
DCEU. Indeed, for a decent period of time, if you googled my name, one of the first image results was a screenshot of a sarcastic tweet I’d made about Snyder. It was being used as proof of my nefarious scheming against DC and further evidence of an industry-wide agenda to critically maul DC films and keep Marvel at the top. In a business where conspiracies breed with unnerving speed, this particular one may be the most baffling on a personal level.
Yet it’s indicative of a mindset many of us have faced from large corners of the DC fandom, especially those who are avid fans of director Zack Snyder. Almost every critic or pop culture writer I know has had at least one bad incident from certain DCEU fans, usually on social media although many have received nasty e-mails, website comments and DMs. They’re hardly the only fandom on the internet right now with issues of toxicity - we could be here all day tallying up the numbers and barely scratch the surface of fandom history - but nowadays there is something about the DCEU fandom that has many of my colleagues dreading the worst when it comes time to review or write about them. Pajiba still gets angry comments from said fans on years old reviews.
