Toxicity within the Frozen fandom
In the weeks leading up to Frozen 2′s release, there was a particularly intense toxicity throughout the fandom. It gave me considerable stress and there were times I could not sleep.
Much of this toxicity came from belligerent people like hereisisa, beingpassionateabout, and a blog whose url was a list of numbers beginning with 9 (I didn’t take time to memorize the jumble of numbers.) These people continually called into question Anna’s capacity as a ruler. They used vulgar language. They accused an Elsa fan of “hating Elsa.” At least one of them has “anti-Kristanna” in their blog description, which makes me roll my eyes so hard. Isa reposted fanart without a link to the source and when people in her own ship called her out for it, she blocked them. It was a mess.
Those three people still have particularly exhausting attitudes, spreading misinformation and outrage. I debated calling them out several weeks ago, but I didn’t want to be on their radar or singled out by them.
But today, I find myself singled out by someone else. Apparently jackkristanna made a callout post about me and I just got an anon message about “blocking someone for no reason.” So I want to explain:
Jackkristanna first contacted me a while back after he had been banned from a Frozen Discord server with a focus on Frohana/Snow Sisters, asking me to intercede on his behalf. He seemed unassuming and nice at that point, so I went on the server and asked what had happened.
I learned from the people there that he had behaved belligerently and even went so far as to accuse Snow Sisters fans of shipping Elsanna… which got people rather mad.
Because Jack was acting vulnerable and it was very late when I had to deal with all this, I kept sticking up for him for a while because maybe this had all been some misunderstanding. Maybe he was just overly dramatic and didn’t realize what he was doing.
Then he started getting hotly antagonistic towards me. Moreover, he engaged with one of the toxic people I mentioned earlier, angrily snapping at them. I tried to warn him that that toxic cluster of people was incredibly harsh and that, for his own well-being, he shouldn’t provoke them. That got him angry and at one point he was even accusing me of things.
But after a while, it seemed like he had calmed him down and things went back to normal.
Until today, when he accused a friend of mine of being a “secret Elsanna shipper” because that friend didn’t like his antagonistic nature.
And I thought about how I told Jack that lashing wildly at people only creates a more draining fandom environment… and how he hadn’t listened… and so I blocked him.
I also thought back to how he manipulated me into sticking up for him until I knew the whole story before.
I know my model of responding to things is “try to ignore the drama, remain neutral, and just privately vent to friends when things become too draining.” That’s what I did when I felt Isa and others were getting exhausting, but maybe bottling things up isn’t the way.
And since I got that anon, I just want to defend myself and explain. Thank you. And to Jack, I’m sorry. I’m not saying you’re wrong to have strong feelings, but if you antagonize others needlessly, you become as bad as other toxic people.