The Brigading of Starfleet Academy
As a sociologist the brigading campaign has been disquieting and I’ve been working on thinking out why. It took me a while to figure out, and it's the interview coding sense I cultivated in grad school. English is too chaotic a language and its users too diverse for 85% of the comments on your posts having the same complaints (as opposed to informed critiques of aspects) in the same sentence structure with about 5 thesaurus variants. I’d like to know if I’m alone in noticing that once the brigading attack began when Star Trek: SFA's first episode aired, there's like a weekly or 1.5 week refresh on the agitprop brigaders trying to drown out any fan who enjoys Trek made after Enterprise? The newest one being Bad Writing/It's [Dren]" "I don't have to justify any of this, by saying I do, you are the bigot!"
The sheer pride from the accounts in not being able to elucidate WHY these accounts (just to cover the organics and bots) yell about considering something objectively bad when it is an expression of personal taste, and their insistence on yucking other fan's yum, is horrifying.
It reminds me of Harlan Ellison's statement that Stupidity or Arrogance can be worked around, but the combination is Immobile. Not saying arrogant stupidity of the Harlan Ellison kind applies to folks who find aspects of Starfleet Academy not to their tastes, but rather those who insist that one or two aspects they outright hate to an irrational level means the whole thing is trash and so are the folks who watch it, even though they keep insisting that "EVERYONE HATES IT".
There is also how many of these accounts demand one accept their subjective view of reality as inherently objective and authoritative, instead of maturely accepting that there are fans of the show, and that doesn't make them morally reprehensible, or artistically stupid. They get meaner and meaner, if you ask them to simply explain why something is "derogatorylowestadjectiveo'choice" without resorting to similarly unspecific adjectival critiques.
The best I've gotten out of them is complaining that the dialogue sounds like someone thinks Gen Z sounds like. (As if we weren't a few years away from the full aging into adulthood for the oldest Alphas). Though more typically it’s complaints, as opposed to critiques, about undergrads acting like undergrads, and demanding truly unrealstic levels of “Professionalism” that not even IRL militaries or any other Trek series has displayed.
While things like Prank Wars are true to a historically accurate tradition between both civilian and institutional undergraduate colleges that often have the implicit approval of each school’s head.Â
The sheer pride from the accounts (just to cover the organics and bots) in not being able to elucidate WHY they yell about considering something objectively bad, combined with the proud/loud insistence on yucking other fan's yum, is horrifying. It reminds me of Harlan Ellison's statement that Stupidity or Arrogance can be worked around, but the combination is Immobile.
Not saying arrogant stupidity of the Harlan Ellison kind applies to folks who find aspects of Starfleet Academy not to their tastes, but rather those who insist that one or two aspects they outright hate to an irrational level means the whole thing is trash and so are the folks who watch it, even though they keep insisting that "EVERYONE HATES IT". Fascinating definition of “everybody/everyone”.
Many demand you accept their subjective view of reality as inherently objective. Instead of accepting that there are fans of the show and that doesn't make them morally reprehensible or artistically stupid. Takes me back to the early days online in the New Atheist days of the late '00s. They get meaner and meaner the more you ask them to simply explain why something is "derogatorylowestadjectiveo'choice" without resorting to similarly unspecific adjectival complaints. The best I've gotten out of them is complaining that the dialogue sounds like someone thinks Gen Z sounds like. (As if we weren't a few years away from the full aging into adulthood for the oldest Alphas).
For a while the dog whistles were:
These are 18-20 year olds, they don't have the experience to inform them how not to be dumbasses. That's the point of their education.
~"GAY KLINGON" "PROM DRESS"
I invited these to go to their local Highland games and tell those in the Caber Toss they were wearing prom skirts
Again, no sh*t Sherlock. Please, the first person who got through their 18-30 range without being a massive dumbass, A LOT, due to not having experience backing your decisions, and hopefully having learned to control for your own biases, throw the first stone!
There is also a strong pattern of general intolerance for disrespect of folks who have time spent learning what it is that they do or are speaking about. Which gets worse the longer you ask them to deal in something other than Sith Absolutes. IDIC after all.
~Constant THIS SUCKS, IT JUST SUCKS, IT'S OBVIOUS, JUST LOOK AT THE AUDIENCE REVIEWS
When a RT Audience review aggregate, or any other data set, contains that high a number of one star reviews with little to nothing in each comment other than PvP multiplayer insults, the dataset is poisoned. It's not a reliable source. That is not me deriding RT Audience Scores, it's me pointing out that Data Sanitization is a thing. It’s a shame that the brigade decided to destroy the usefulness of that metric..
~The current one is either BAD WRITING or FINANCIAL DISASTER
From a artistic perspective Starfleet Academy is rather well written and, speaking as someone who grew up with CW soaps, is so much better in production and writing. It has a few oddities, but so does every other incarnation of Trek.Â
For one thing, Star Trek Starfleet Academy doesn't drag out the drama of being an adult in undergrad for the sake of eyeballs, but actually resolves those dramas in realistic, but quick, ways that are designed to show us instances of character development into better adults and actual officers.
We can't say if it was a financial disaster yet because we don't have the accountancy department's numbers.
However, we can say that finances were not the only considerations, given the political and cultural environment in the United States right now and the r/TheDonald style of lowest tier trolls brigading Starfleet Academy netwide
.
In fact, the tactics strongly remind me of what Reddit experienced during the r/theDonald brigading time period that led to them getting fully banned instead of locked behind a wall.
(Media and Cinematography/Film Analysis has shown me so much of what Trek has done with some truly spectacular cinematography quite often through the entire franchise. I love that folks bitched about the tilted camera on S1 Discovery, only to noticed that only happens when Lorca is on screen, and is a film tactic to indicate something is OFF that is as old as Night of the Hunter , and its frelling FORESHADOWING VIA CAMERA ANGLE THAT IS SO FRELLING COOL!!!!)
