quick warning: this is going to be a long post, so if you’re not wanting to read a lot of text, keep scrolling!
You know what I’m sick of? People coming into fandom spaces with no knowledge of fandom culture and disrespecting or calling it ‘cringey’.
I, like a lot of people on this site, have been in and am part of many fandoms, and I have noticed this sort of behaviour time and time again, however it seems to be becoming more popular, or at least more noticable. Maybe this is due to the rise in popularity of Tik Tok and the abundance of fandom related culture and posts cropping up on the app, and the accessibility of creators on Tik Tok to spread whatever they believe to be ‘cringeworthy’ if they so believe it to be.
For example, I am in the MHA fandom, which for a while has gained a lot of heat on Tik Tok, for certain behaviours of fans, which is actually really common in most fandoms. While I agree on some points that certain ships are completely disgusting and should have no content made for them, blaming all shippers or shipping to be ‘ruining the fandom’ or ‘ruining the show’ is complete bullshit. Most people claiming this probably have never been in an actual fandom before and lack the knowledge of fandom culture, and criticize it from the outside, lacking actual knowledge of what being in a fandom actually means.
Another complaint that has cropped up regularly is that cosplayers are annoying and cringey. Cosplay is a huge part of the fandom community across many different pieces of media, especially for anime and comic characters. While it can, admittedly, be strange for those who are not used to cosplay, especially for people who like to act in character, it’s not really as weird as people make it out to be. While normally people will only see it at cons, cosplay has become more accessible due to the rise of social media platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, Tik Tok, and of course Tumblr.
Many people during the pandemic have discovered fandoms and cosplay through these sites, and have joined the community, which is wonderful! But what isn’t wonderful is the people who discovered it and immediately decided it was ‘cringe’ without doing any research or caring to look into anything at all. Then, instead of deciding that if it wasn’t for them, they’d just not interact with it, they decided to show all the world what they had found and thought was annoying or weird.
If you take a look at the majority of people doing this, you’ll see that it’s mainly men, fully grown men. Which, y’know, is really weird because a lot of the creators of this call out videos are often big fans of anime or comics themselves. This is not at all to say that men are exclusively the problem, cause I’ve seen so many different types of people do it, but it does add to my theory. This is just a new form of gross gatekeeping that has become really easy for people to do, and sometimes even anonymously. Instead of asking people to name facts or say that they’re ‘fake fans’, they’ll just say that you’re ‘just in it for the ships’ or that you ‘make everything gay and gross’. These sort of videos and fans tend to scare away newer fans to both the pieces of media and to fandom itself, which sucks because fandoms are supposed to be a safe place where people can talk about their interests and create content based in and around it.
This just goes to show that people have always despised younger, newer fans, and people who like the piece of media and create media related to it that doesn’t fit the bill of being perfect and ‘normal’ (which is just something people use to be homophobic). This doesn’t even cover the sheer amount of shit people get just for saying they like something thats cringey too! Because it’s not just limited to fandoms, it’s extended to all different things, like fashion or music or hobbies, etc. It’s just... frustrating.
also I believe half of this just stems from like deep-rooted ableism, sexism and racism, but that’s a whole nother thing
btw pls don’t come into my notes saying that you think the mha fandom is cringe or annoying. 1, I know we have problems and there is some really shitty stuff in the fandom but I don’t condone any of it and 2, you missed the entire point of this post and/or skipped it to complain about the fandom. Please fuck off.
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