I, sadly, agree with you. I’ve gotten to the point where if I am reading a thread or forum and the comments turn into nothing but criticism about things that I don’t personally feel deserve the time to read or apply energy to, I close it and never look back. I don’t mind constructive criticism, but I don’t make these things (like TNG or Andromeda) so it’s never practically constructive for me to endure the critique.
Speaking of Mass Effect: Andromeda, I was really enjoying that game when it came out and then I made the mistake of reading threads on Reddit and they were so fucking negative and hateful that it actually soured the experience for me. My own fault for letting it drag down the thing I was enjoying, but there was just so much vitriol that it got under my skin even though I didn’t really agree with the majority of it. My general rule now is to stay away from the fanbases of anything I truly enjoy and care about. Which obviously sucks. Somewhere along the line it became the norm for internet discourse to become an echo chamber of hate.
I generally agree with you, but then there are also situations where massive negativity is warranted.
The Witcher and Halo TV series for instance recently. They both deviated so far from the source material that it was clear the writers wanted to make their own story and couldn’t get that approved, so they instead hijacked an existing IP and still tries to write what they wanted anyway.
For viewers that didn’t know the source material that would probably be fine, but they decided to go with two very large IPs with very devoted fanbases and a lot of established lore. Interviews with the showrunners for Halo that mentioned the negativity just resulted in answers that showed clear contempt for the fanbase, shifting blame anywhere but with the writers/showrunners, and no actual attempt to understand what they might be complaining about. Or in the case of The Witcher, attempted to shift all blame to the one person the fans loved, and the only person that was keeping many people watching the show, Henry Cavill, trying to smear him personally. A person they were avoiding to cast for over two years before seemingly running out of options. It is my personal theory that this was solely because they knew he was a huge fan of The Witcher, and he would be advocating to make sure it was as accurate as possible, which would be an issue with them doing whatever they wanted with it. Cavill said publicly he was on board for 7 seasons if they kept it accurate to the books, and we clearly saw them make major changes immediately in the first season fundamentally changing main character personalities and core interactions, making it impossible to follow the original storyline well.
There are situations where overwhelming negativity is valid, the issue is that so many times it’s overwhelming negativity for small issues blown way out of proportion by fans.
I, sadly, agree with you. I’ve gotten to the point where if I am reading a thread or forum and the comments turn into nothing but criticism about things that I don’t personally feel deserve the time to read or apply energy to, I close it and never look back. I don’t mind constructive criticism, but I don’t make these things (like TNG or Andromeda) so it’s never practically constructive for me to endure the critique.
Speaking of Mass Effect: Andromeda, I was really enjoying that game when it came out and then I made the mistake of reading threads on Reddit and they were so fucking negative and hateful that it actually soured the experience for me. My own fault for letting it drag down the thing I was enjoying, but there was just so much vitriol that it got under my skin even though I didn’t really agree with the majority of it. My general rule now is to stay away from the fanbases of anything I truly enjoy and care about. Which obviously sucks. Somewhere along the line it became the norm for internet discourse to become an echo chamber of hate.
I generally agree with you, but then there are also situations where massive negativity is warranted.
The Witcher and Halo TV series for instance recently. They both deviated so far from the source material that it was clear the writers wanted to make their own story and couldn’t get that approved, so they instead hijacked an existing IP and still tries to write what they wanted anyway.
For viewers that didn’t know the source material that would probably be fine, but they decided to go with two very large IPs with very devoted fanbases and a lot of established lore. Interviews with the showrunners for Halo that mentioned the negativity just resulted in answers that showed clear contempt for the fanbase, shifting blame anywhere but with the writers/showrunners, and no actual attempt to understand what they might be complaining about. Or in the case of The Witcher, attempted to shift all blame to the one person the fans loved, and the only person that was keeping many people watching the show, Henry Cavill, trying to smear him personally. A person they were avoiding to cast for over two years before seemingly running out of options. It is my personal theory that this was solely because they knew he was a huge fan of The Witcher, and he would be advocating to make sure it was as accurate as possible, which would be an issue with them doing whatever they wanted with it. Cavill said publicly he was on board for 7 seasons if they kept it accurate to the books, and we clearly saw them make major changes immediately in the first season fundamentally changing main character personalities and core interactions, making it impossible to follow the original storyline well.
There are situations where overwhelming negativity is valid, the issue is that so many times it’s overwhelming negativity for small issues blown way out of proportion by fans.