#maybe it's because i don't interact with the fandom outside of tumblr and reddit though so don't take this to heart

[swagpatrolkitten]

Not trying to start arguments, but i see more people complaining about skk fans and hating on the ship than actual toxic/problematic skk fans. Sure, there is always misscharacterization and a lot of fanon content, but there is a difference between that and harming others by being toxic, and i don't think people realize that.

[marshmallowprotection]

Hi! How are you doing? I wanted to ask since you've been in the fandom for a long time, what are you what are some of your favorite sites to interact with other mystic messenger fans? Do you have any advice on how to deal with fans who are a little too extreme or a bully? I have played MM since it came out but only this year have I interacted with the fandom and I've had so much whiplash compared to other fandom spaces.

So far I think Tumblr is the best. I find the people here are a lot calmer and nice. I like to tweet but I don't have many mutuals there who share my interest and reddit is just... Toxic. Its odd because most of the subs I'm on are very mellow and even if there is a disagreement I don't get downvoted to oblivion but the MM sub can be high tension. There have been times where I say something like "Ray is cute" or I could be saying similar things as others who have upvotes and be in the negatives. I can at least understand more controversial opinions like "I want a Rika route" or something but it feels like once you get a "bad" opinion You're just gonna get downvoted forever even on other threads. It's a shame because I think the format of reddit makes it easier to talk to people but I feel very discouraged. I wanted to give the Amino a shot but I've heard very bad things about it so I've been avoiding it.

In that sense I appreciate your blog. Even if there's a character or a route you don't like youre very nice and understanding and you're very inclusive in your writing. It really makes my day to see your character analysis and head canons. I wish there were more forum sites without a like or upvote/downvote system. I don't want my opinions to be ranked, I just want to blab about my silly little favs. Any advice or words of encouragement would be appreciated. Thanks for your time 🙂 🩷

I interact with people on Tumblr and Discord! Discord can be tough to navigate since you can't check out a community before you join it, however, I can vouch for SapphireIceCream's server if you ever want to join a Discord community. But, outside of that, I'm comfortable in this cozy space on Tumblr! It's quiet, but that's not a bad thing. That isn't a sign of there being nobody in the fandom here, we're just here in our space, relaxing and enjoying the game without worrying about this or that.

I have a Twitter, but I mainly use it retweet other artists. I don't talk on there even though there's an active fan base over there. Sometimes I see debate, but given who I follow, it tends to be warranted analysis and/or criticism as opposed to old themes the fandom already dealt with over the years.

I haven't gone onto Reddit for the game before and I don't intend to, because I don't want to see the same arguments play out fifty times that we've already had here on Tumblr years ago and have settled in a comfortable place of peace and quiet knowing where we all stand in those conversations. I'm not sure about TikTok or who's active there, though I don't post there outside of a cosplay or two, so I can't speak to what goes on there.

I would never suggest Amino. I've heard a lot of horror stories about that place and never tried it myself because of that, not just for this fandom but for many others.

If you want my advice about avoiding conflict in a fandom, start blocking people. I think people feel like blocking is only served for extreme purposes, but that's not the case, block people who annoy you. You don't have to have an explanation as to why you blocked somebody.

They don't even have to be a bad person, maybe you don't like their opinions or what have you, and that's okay. To cultivate a space in a fandom for yourself, you have to make it enjoyable for yourself, and that means using a feature that is there for you to do whatever you want with it. 

Or, if you feel as though it's too extreme to block somebody, just scroll past them. Don't engage with something that makes you upset because it's just going to sully your experience. I can give you a good example, if I see anybody write content where Saeran and Saeyoung are consuming alcohol, I either A) block them or B) scroll past the post because I simply can’t handle seeing someone disrespect the boundaries those boys have with alcohol. It feels like a slap in to the face, especially for someone with similar trauma as them.

Because, unfortunately, when I see it written, it's not somebody doing a character introspective where one of them wants to try a sip of alcohol because they want to better understand why their mother would do everything she did just for a drink that tastes like piss. It's a piece where the characters are at a damn bar and they are happily consuming alcohol with no regard to their trauma as if it was never something to begin with. For my comfort, I block or move past those people.

It's not going to do me any good emotionally to comment or reblog a post like that to start a conflict. So, I either ignore that or block the person who wrote it. After all, I can't tell anybody that they're not allowed to write something, people can create whatever the hell they want to create, but I don't have to consume or see it. That's a part of cultivating a healthy experience in fandom. The old motto: Don't like, don't read. That’s something great about Ao3. I can plug in “Exclude: this, this, this”, and I never have to worry about reading a story where something happens that gives me the ick.

People are going to have opinions, and we're not always going to agree about each other's opinions, but you have to make sure that you are in a place where you can engage with other people without feeling like you're going to get an egg thrown at your head. Like, I get people who get very angry at me for trying to understand who Rika Kim is as a person a lot. I get it, she's a controversial character, and you either love her or hate her, there aren't a lot of people who are in-between.

I want to know why she has done what she's done because I think she's interesting as an antagonist, but that doesn’t equate to me condoning or supporting her crimes. Just because you like a specific character who isn’t a good person doesn’t mean you support their wrongdoings.

There seem to be brewing problems with people’s media literacy in that regard as of late. The world isn’t black and white, it's shades of grey. It’s complicated, messy, and difficult in every sense of the word. There is good and evil in this world, and there are times when there is a sense of right and wrong with no middle ground between it—because what was done was either unforgivable and wrong or the right thing to do. But, to apply black and white thinking to every situation you've come across is a detriment to your health and world view.

I think it’s important to say you can hate and judge Rika for committing countless crimes, but it’s okay if you empathize or even sympathize with the trauma she suffered as a child, too. When I think about her as a character, I want her to face as much jail time as she deserves for everything she's done, but I also want her to be able to find a therapist who can help her find peace from what she suffered as a child. I can want her to face justice but also hope that she finds peace someday.

The nuance of Saeran's After Ending can be a minefield when it comes to online discussions and I've seen everything you could possibly think of.

People get angry with him because he decided that he wanted to forgive everyone who hurt him. But, that's another long conversation to be had about what we’re taught about forgiveness. It's also not a case of extreme thinking where you either forgive someone and let them back in or hold onto the anger forever and scorn them. Those are just part of the story of forgiveness and judgment.

Those examples are a part of what people can choose to find peace, but they’re not the only path. Saeran decided to be someone who forgives. He doesn't forgive because he wants to let those people back into his life, he wants to forgive them so that he can learn how to forgive himself, because every ugly, bitter thought and action he committed was an echo of what they had done to him, and if he could find it in himself to forgive them, he could forgive himself for what he did to the player. 

He wants nothing to do with his Saejoong, V, or Rika. He just needed closure by forgiving them and finding peace his own way.

I understand why people feel upset with him because they've been taught that forgiveness is something where the only option is to forgive and forget. He chose to forgive, but he will never forget. He chose to forgive, but he will never allow them the opportunity to hurt him ever again. If you're not the kind of person who would choose to forgive somebody, he would respect you and your decision.

That's the great thing about his after ending compared to what happened to Jihyun, who got the short end of the stick. It makes it abundantly clear that no matter what you decide to do, it is your decision to make as a victim and nobody will ever take away that decision from you or make you feel like you have to choose one thing or another. 

But, you can see how these conversations are filled with a lot of nuance, and it takes a little bit of time and self-reflection to understand why we feel a visceral reaction to these kinds of stories as people. It's easy for a conversation to get carried away when we're talking about something heavy, and it's even easier for us to get angry at other people as we're having these discussions.

I'm sorry you haven't been able to have a lot of fun discussing the game and everything in it, but, if you start posting around here, I'm sure you'll find a sense of comfort and community from those of us who are here. 

Fandom can be hard to get into when you're trying to learn the nuances of how to interact with other people, but make sure that you're making an experience that's created for yourself first and foremost. Don't hesitate to use that block button. 

[anarglitch]

about twitter (or how I learned to get back to worrying and stop loving the bomb)

Maybe a global 'public square' doesn't lead to worldwide empathy, but to a planet-sized arena of miscommunication where a 15 y/o english student with ADHD fights a 53 y/o cuban programmer over the ethics of self-diagnosis with both sides throwing personal anectodes at the other.

I don't wanna think that's the case, I wanna believe in the promise of the internet, but I'm not sure I can point to the algorithm filter bubbles or even the low character limit and state that that's the cause of all our problems.

It makes things *worse* though, don't get me wrong.

Wait, no, my whole point is that you *will* probably get me wrong, cause we probably don't share the same (or are even cognizant of each other's) cultural background, experience, neurodivergences or even mother tongue, twitter is a final fantasy boss designed by Wittgenstein.

All these barriers *can* be crossed if we come from a place of curiosity rather than judgement and take the time to learn about each other, but we're not gonna (and can't) do that to 500 strangers every day, and that sucks, I love the lack of structure in twitter .. in theory.

But maybe tumblr (and even reddit) work a bit better *because* they're more atomized (tumblr isn't as organized, but you're still far less exposed to random stuff from completely outside your circles), the dream of the mega-agora is appealing, and maybe someone somewhere will make a version of it that really will nail it, that will lead to people understanding and valuing their differences, but the versions of it we've had so far just remove all context from everyone we meet, which lead to more and more generalizations, cause that's how we came to think about each other.

My primarily experience with "popular tweets" was seeing broad sweeping statements about "men" or "women", or "incel cryptobros" or "leftist sjws", even sillier labels like "swfties" or "k-pop stans", the average interaction there is trying to figure out which boxes someone fits to speedrun human interaction, and that's... how an algorithm thinks.

I don't even think it's wrong, I did my best to communicate I fit the boxes "anarchist", "adhd", "non-binary", "artist", "retro sci-fi anime fan", I block alt-right weirdos on sight and make fun of checkmarks, I have practically pre-written replies to some kinds of people, but every now and then I feel the slight existential dread of realizing I could program a bot to do *the exact same thing*.

That's not what I wanna use my brain for, I've read big threads of different people fighting in different years play out virtually the exact same way, we're responding to decontextualization by adopting the same generalized signals, and I don't wanna become a bot, man.

What I mean is that neural networks trained to "sound human" are fed countless tweets by random people from all walks of life to try to mimic this amorphous idea of a vague human who doesn't have any of the individual qualities of a person.

And that's what I was doing, too.

I had a tumblr before, ages ago. I was still checking boxes then, mainly about fandoms, and every version of living online will involve some of that. But I believe that there's a healthy version to be achieved, communicating shorthands for who you are and what you like so you can find potentially likeminded people. Maybe I can achieve that here, again.

I think I did once, when I was too young to even realize it, and then I left it all and swam towards the social media event horizon.

See, the thing about working from home, online, is that I never really stopped spending the majority of my time in a computer, more than most of my IRL friends, most of whom have real world jobs and are sure as hell a lot closer to a balance than I am.

I kept thinking of the internet like entertainment, not too different from TV or video-games, so I kept looking to what drew my attention more effectively, just go where the current takes me, why would I put rules on fun? But it hasn't been fun. It hasn't been fun for a while, now. Because I didn't give myself rules, and the "current" metaphor doesn't work when there's an actual poseidon made of code controlling the direction of the currents.

Sometimes, you have to consciously chase the fun.

So, you know, hi.

[greywindys]

I don't.. Think there was a fandom outside of Humanz (like what we see now.) The reason I say this is because Tumblr really wasn't that big of a platform when Plastic Beach came out. (I was using Tumblr at the time) and well, I knew like 3 other Gorillaz fans. I would say the Gorillaz had a pretty small fandom up until the social media boom. (I've been a fan since 2001 and I'd love to go back to the time when I thought I was the only fan yelling into the void about how cool this cartoon band was

I have no idea of specific numbers but my impression from the clicking around I did when I was a new fan was that the community was concentrated on the forums on the band’s official website in the early 2000′s. From what I gathered, threads moved pretty fast there, and even faster when a band member “logged on.” Fans also seemed to branch off to create their own angel fire websites, but none of these sites offered any way to discuss back and forth. Usually they were just like, picture galleries or links to videos/interviews/quotes etc. (I have a bunch of these sites saved because they’re a total time warp + fun to look at haha).

For phase 2-3, the community seemed to be pretty active on Livejournal and the entries during that period received a lot of comments and interaction (reading people freaking over Noodle “dying” was so…wild). There are sources that I even use today from the gorillaz_news. I’m not sure of what the membership was at its peak but as of today, the community still has 728 members despite its dead status.

So…I think a substantial, maybe not huge, community was out there but yeah, not as we know it today (though today’s community also isn’t that big relatively speaking). You can correct me if I’m wrong though!

I’d argue that Tumblr is a crappy platform for fandom because it kinda just shoves us all together and it’s just like…not convenient for discussion (constantly reblogging is so messy looking and can get difficult to read when you’ve reblogged like 5+ times) which is like, instrumental in building connections/friendships etc. Tumblr makes it a lot more difficult for fans who don’t write, make graphics, draw etc. to find their footing whereas in the era of forums this was SO much easier. Overall it’s a lot more..fractured now. You have a certain kind of fan on Tumblr, a certain type of fan on Reddit, discord (which is a bit more “exclusive” since you usually have to be invited or told about it)…then there’s Instagram and Amino, both of which also host their own subcultures which I have NO idea about but seem even less discussion friendly than Tumblr.

But tl;dr and tangent aside, my own personal theory is that what’s affected the fandom, and fandoms in general, most these days is the lack of individual communities via forums and LJ communities which made it easier for like-minded fans to find each other. As a result there are many people from different backgrounds who disagree on things trying to coexist in the same tags and as you said “yelling into the void” until someone agrees with them or argues with them (which, if you aren’t a content creator is sort of what you’re pushed to do to build up any followers/friends etc.). While some of this is good - i.e. social justice, education about power and privilege, I can also see why this might be intimidating for someone new to the fandom or to internet culture in general.