Social Media and Fandom Entitlement
The advent of Social Networking Sites really has emboldened a lot of people into thinking that they are entitled to a lot of things. Fandom for example, the crew and actors were previously inaccessible to an average fan, but the advent of SNS has made them follow cast and crew of a piece of media they like.
So as I was browsing through TwiX, a former developer of a game over at BAMCO, was asked about how long patches would ever come out.
“So it takes a year for a tiny borderline insignificant patch to come out?” Is so disingenuous to the whole development team.
I will not claim that I know anything about video game development, or any kind of production at all, but I do know that for every glitch that gets reported to the development team, they have to investigate said glitch before writing lines and lines of code, a number of trial and error to see if the lines of code they wrote do not break something already in the code.
It’s why, while I was disappointed, I didn’t begrudge the developers of the REMAKE of a preexisting game to not add the features that were prominent in later releases and remasters of the game. Adding a whole slew of character models, animation, and everything just isn’t cost-effective.
Yes, I’m talking about Persona 3: Reload about how features from the Portable port of the game, like the Female MC, weren’t included in the remake. Don’t even try to point at the FeMC mod that’s out now because it only received a patch that replaces the animated 2D cutscene just a few months ago, now: two years since the first remake was released.
To venture out of Video Games, while its good that some BTS people can communicate with fans but we go back to how SNS has emboldened people because what do you mean a storyboard artist received death threats because she drew a relationship between two characters that the some do not agree with.
This time I’m talking the Lapis X Peridot artist being harassed by Amethyst X Peridot fans.
SNS has connected two unlikely groups of people – the cast and crew of any piece of media and the fans but this connection came with a double-edged sword. This connection has brewed numerous death threats, harassment, libelous claims, etc. over the cast and crew because for one reason or another.
It doesn’t stop there, if the shippers are bad for drawing a ship art for the ship that the harassers do not prefer, it gets worst. The actors themselves received death threats for daring to be in a relationship with the character they played opposite to. If the shippers before have an irrational hatred for certain characters for “getting in the way of the ship” this is a natural devolution of that.
I’m talking about ABC’s 9-1-1. The moment Evan Buckley was confirmed to be into boys, no official label is associated with him but he’s into both boys and girls, got together with a different man, Tommy Kinnard, Tommy’s actor received death threats. It’s not just his actor, Eddie Diaz’s actor was also sent death threats because his character dared to become close to Evan Buckley.
It’s not just shipping, the Japanese actor, Sato Ryuga also received death threats over his performance as a man who crashed out after losing his sister. His character was a deuteragonist to the show Kamen Rider Geats, and people really did not like how he supposedly crashed out.
Those are only some of the many examples about how people, especially the supposed fans, have become emboldened by SNS to be entitled people over any piece of media.
Social Networking Sites are good in terms of constructive fandom feedback, testing the waters if a certain scene works or not. However, this connection is oftentimes abused by people who felt entitled to pieces of media that they feel they can demand anything for something that they want to happen.
This write-up does not even cover the whole #SnyderCut and #RestoreTheSnyderVerse debacle, a prominent example of how a fandom movement can evolve into an environment that breeds hostility. What began as a campaign to see Zack Snyder's vision completed eventually became associated with pressure campaigns, harassment, and increasingly antagonistic behavior toward critics, actors and studio personnel.
Ironically these types of fans were represented in Kamen Rider Geats and the show doesn’t paint a pretty picture for these types of fans.
Criticisms, discussion, playing in the sandbox that they created is inevitable in any fandom, but no amount of supposed love for a piece of media warrants harassment and death threats over writing and crew decisions.
