Jack Liu
Fandom, as a huge group of consumers of subculture, has undoubtedly revitalize the economy and contribute to the entire anime and manga industries. While fans create community to interconnect to and socialize with other like-minded people, too much of any good things can turn sour. The current anime fan culture has been perturbed by winds of malice. Let’s take a look at the dark side of fandom.
The Japanese term “Flaming” symbolize the act of posting insults, often including profanity or other offensive language on the internet. These flames are not limited between fans and fans, but also be involved between fans and the creators. Recently, a popular anime “Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation” had been incited the “flame” about the polygamy in its plots. The fans had criticized the ethics have been taken too far, which offended the morality in our civic society, which… I think it does make sense because the whole story setting is under an isekai (different world)! Eventually, the author was forced to rewrite into other substitute contents.
In Hong Kong, another unique community consuming with Flaming is called “Anime Taliban”. While people recently pursue the utmost importance of “local culture”, the Anime Taliban extraordinarily discredit the localized post-production, ranging from Chinese theme song, voice acting to the selection of broadcast anime from local TV stations. The Anime Taliban blindly aspire and embrace the "fundamentalism" of original anime production. Utilizing the name of “anime fans”, they ubiquitously launch the “flame war” to those oppose to their stands, implementing autocracy within their gathering forums.
The Anime Taliban always regards them as the representatives of anime fans, and “my way or the highway” is their objective. This tends to happen when they feel like they are the only "true" fans, and other people are labelled as fake, poseurs, or casual fans. Their hobbies lie on speaking some derogatory word for them, bring out the illusion to others that they're part of an elite club.
Remember my first time (also my last time) I expressed my views in an anime fandom group on Facebook, praising the down-to-earth Chinese translation affording me a sense of belonging even in a foreign production. My innocent comment was immediately met by someone in Anime Taliban, censuring “You definitely are not a true fan of this anime, dumbxxx”. My reaction was like… what!? Since then, I swore off discussions in any fandom groups. This interaction Inevitably led me to think about fandoms’ tendency to spiral into a cesspool of hatred and toxicity. Good fans build trust within a collaborative community, and toxic fandom is the opposite, an abusive fandom party which they are not here to celebrate the content that they are obsessed with, but to control it and neg it.
It is unavoidable we may confront toxic fandom. Ignoring them might probably be the best policy, to save our sanity. Confrontation may result in circular, nightmarish and endless argument, or lead to them wrongfully harassing and bullying you. Instead, realizing that jerks are everywhere, we don't have to respond to everyone who has a different opinion than you. Let’s blow the flame out of the fandom!
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