#soclearly answers

[soclearly]

Why do you think people hate conformitygate as opposed to just not believing in it and moving on with their day?

the most common reason i think is that they really just think the idea is dumb and impossible and pure apophenia/wishful thinking and being the Rational One and making fun of fandom people on the internet is fun and makes them feel cool and smart or powerful or whatever. bullying! just like normies and the rest of the st fandom did to bylers and like, to any other group of shippers and fandom theorists ever.

another reason could be that they feel like they have faced enough disappointment already (either from stranger things or something like tjlc) and feel like they're Protecting the poor internet strangers who believe from feeling that same disappointment and want to make them "see reason," kinda like some johnlock shippers were doing to bylers months ago (they were still wrong cause their ship had little to nothing to do with ours, and tjlc is not so similar to conformitygate either), a johnlock shipper once literally told me "we're just trying to protect you guys" lmao. some probably see the vision but argue against it to keep themselves from believing so they don't get disappointed again. even if this is like, in good faith, it's really annoying. leave people alone. you don't need to save anyone from a fandom theory on tumblr dot com, mind your business.

besides people not wanting others to get disappointed, i don't believe anyone is genuinely concerned for the SANITY of anyone here. and if someone is... you do not know fandom culture. this is very tame for fandom actually. we're all a little weird and a bit nuts here and most own it. thank you for the ask.

[soclearly]

You’re falling into a cult noooo

brother its a theory about a tv show

[soclearly]

Bro stop w the conspiracies, ur better than this

[soclearly]

As a Conformitygate truther, I understand the resentment from onlookers when it comes to certain things. Like when people were theorizing about MLK day or Bad Bunny’s performance leading to some sort of big reveal about the 9th episode, taking away from the importance of very real people in our world that exist outside of our little bubble of fiction here.

There’s some stuff I won’t engage with because it feels genuinely harmful. A lot of fans are trying to see stuff in everything when really it’s important to remember coincidences do in fact exist in the real world. And I don’t think psychoanalyzing the cast’s each and every move is something the Duffers or Netflix would have intended, as it teeters on dangerous territory, where fans start to treat them like characters in a story and not like real people.

On the other hand, when it comes to fans out here just genuinely analyzing the show and the dialogue, the lighting, the music, and all the details in between, that’s something that should be encouraged and appreciated, regardless of whether you believe there is more to the story or not. Theorizing is fun and I enjoy reading a lot of the posts where people are doing just that. It’s not fair we can’t even simply do that anymore without being seen as crazy or in denial, but still I do get where onlookers are coming when it comes to things that just take it too far.

oh yeah, i agree with you. there is enough in the show itself and in a bunch of promotional material to back the theory up (maya hawke said the duffers do look over the scripts for promotional material so at least the largest pieces of promo can definitely be evidence) and as always people start to look too much into other things and losing the plot a bit. but most of the people up on cg believers' inboxes are only bothered by the fact that they believe, they're not really complaining about this, and the people that very much do not believe have also made some wild assumptions about the cast and crew members, if not more. that is a whole problem in this fandom, honestly.

[soclearly]

Do you still believe in a secret good episode?

i don't love the way you put it but its neutral enough so i will answer you, anon. i am 70-30 on the whole thing. the evidence is real! you can't say people pulled this out of their asses! it is impossible for all that shit in the show to be all a coincidence! there is no way every single department in that production decided to give up at the eleventh hour and just do whatever! all that + the weird things out of the show just make me incapable of looking away, i simply can't get off the bus.

although i don't really think, if the ending really is fake and there's more content coming, that there is a "secret good episode," i think there would be different versions of the existing episodes; a different cut. some episodes being slightly different, some very different, such as the finale. think of the replay in "a higher difficulty" when you first beat the first ghost n goblins game, i think that goddamn game is the most obvious, hard to deny piece of evidence/foreshadowing for this.

if you think i'm stupid or wrong for #believing, think whatever you want. i am already calmed down from all this fiasco, and for now i'm just having fun with the theory, i realized the speculation and analysis was always my favorite part of the byler and st fandom. if this ask was in good faith and you'd like to know exactly why i still believe, this is my favorite cg post :)

[soclearly]

Do you think the organic reactions of the actors, especially Noah, Finn, and Millie, to the ending make conformitygate less likely?

well, not exactly. cause at the end of the day, they're actors. the idea is that none of what we saw/are seeing are their organic reactions. if they're pulling a fakeout ending they should make the fake shitty ending seem real at first, but also suspicious, and the cast's reactions are, i think, the main thing for it to work. that would be why they talked about things that never happened in the episodes we saw, or why their attitudes seemed to change (noah still seemed pretty enthusiastic answering questions about will and byler at cons after filming and before the promo tour, and now some say he seems disappointed/pissed off). now you may bring up the fact that millie said she "had opinions" about the ending like a while ago, way before promo iirc, and to that i'd say that if cg really is what's happening, i bet some cast members didn't know until they needed to, but some did since around s4 era (my bet is particularly on millie, and this might be the thing she said she was told not to tell noah about, and finn, and this is might be the "spin off" he had figured out) and they've been planting the seeds for the past three years.

just saying... this may sound outlandish, but famous people do pull a lot of fucking stunts and manage to do a lot of stuff without being found out. this may not be as hard to pull off as you'd think lol

[soclearly]

It’s totally okay to criticize your favorite white boy especially if he did something stupid

... i think you haven't been paying a lot of attention to my blog because i HAVE BEEN criticizing him, anon. i am very annoyed in fact. i have actually been criticizing finn since like, october, because his whole attitude on the tour was pretty obnoxious, and i actually said some very harsh things last night that i regretted and deleted because i am very emotional right now, but i have to control myself. we ALL have to. i am distraught by the whole situation, i don't know exactly what to think. i just think people are freaking out and doing WAY too fucking much and assuming things that are most definitely not true. calling the guy who has supported queer causes since he was very young, was going to pride parades at 14, is friends with a bunch of queer people, has had dating rumors with like 4 different dudes; 2 who are out as queer, and has done a bunch of little things that thousands have read as flagging, a homophobic piece of shit and sending him death threats (and ironically calling him homophobic slurs) because of a joke on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE that was on a sketch he wasn't even in and definitely didn't write, is losing the plot. is all this, in the times we are living in, tone deaf? yes, pretty much. especially after all the s5e7 fiasco. but it could've been LIGHTYEARS worse. i highkey saw this coming, this definitely fits what i had gathered was finn's sense of humor, but i don't want to assume the worst of him, and i don't wanna hop on a hate train for yet another stranger things kid. thanks for the ask.

[soclearly]

I dont think anyone cares about your stance. Why would fanon depress you? Be happy with it and just leave the rest of the people who believe int CG and dont call it bullshit alone. Not rocket science

sorry if that came out as harsh, i didn't mean it. i didn't call it bullshit because the theory itself is bullshit but because the whole thing is exhausting, if its really happening then i think they're dragging it too much and i don't think the execution of the reveal/ARG itself is gonna be any good atp (everyone is welcome to try to convince me otherwise), and the cruelty to fans involved is just really unnecessary.

i thought maybe somebody would be curious because i was really into the theory in january-february. and fanon depresses me because even if i think fandom is one of the coolest things ever and i enjoy mostly just my own fanonized version of other pieces of fiction, i liked stranger things for the show itself and for what i thought it would actually be, and having to rework that insulting and nonsensical ending is what depresses me.

i still think that the "bad on purpose" angle makes more sense than somebody's woker wife ghostwriting everything or them just giving up because how many chances are there that one can fuck up on nearly every single thing including obvious shit like the time travel references and then accidentally foreshadow multiple/a fakeout/alternative/"the villain won" ending(s). but also sometimes things don't make sense and people are just dumb as people tend to be, so who knows. that red dial and ghosts n goblins still have me in a bit of a choke hold.