When Standoms ATTACK!!!

[cestuneblague]

Get Out your... Pitchforks

EDIT: okay that was all a bit cheesy, but jfc some areas of fandoms have literally descended into Pagan-sacrifice territory, just for a review that's one or two points below where they think it should be. Maybe it's just the extended lockdown, but I don't think all dem marbles are coming back anytime soon...

[babyBlueSedan]

I'm not on Twitter, but learning more about these types of fandoms was the final nail in the coffin of me ever deciding to join. I learned recently that fans call people who like more than one artist multis, because apparently the default is to only like one artist? It boggles my mind that as much as I enjoy certain artist I'll never be as obsessed with them as some of these people are.

Obviously a lot of these people are very young - at least I assume / hope so! - but regardless no one should feel the need to send death threats over something like this. It must be super stressful to care so much about something you have no control over like a Metacritic average (I say as a big fan of baseball and other sports that I also have no control over but live and die by anyway).
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And it's hard to be a human being. And it's harder as anything else.

[cestuneblague]

I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it. Fuckin-a. And I mean it was all over a positive review, not some sort of smarmy take-down, but as I said I guess considering it "very good" instead of "handjob-from-jesus" tier means they're coming for your head. I mean I don't know where exactly this section of the fandom is, and I mean yes those who went so far as to post the editor's address and (jfc) pictures of their home probably have their own serious issues, but this was... not handled well by Taylor, even if it was just silence, I think you can spend two seconds saying that this is not okay while still not going after her fans personally (and yes I know this is just a very small but very very intense portion of the fanbase), cuz this is getting into geniunely dangerous territory if it signals that if you write a review some of the fans don't like you'll literally be targeted.

[babyBlueSedan]

It sounded like fans got angry because they wanted the album's Metacritic average to stay over 90 and an 8/10 obviously lowered it. I doubt any of them actually read the review, and the same review with a little 9 in the corner probably wouldn't have caused any fuss. Pretty ridiculous, and of course the biggest irony is that Pitchfork writers don't even choose the album scores, they're decided by committee.

And yeah, Taylor definitely needs to say something even if it's a small minority of fans, otherwise they may think she condones this.
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And it's hard to be a human being. And it's harder as anything else.

[cestuneblague]

To be honest I highly highly doubt anybody's actually going to go after this pitchfork editor in the real world (goddammit this is making me defend Conde Nast, isn't it?), but it's still troubling no matter how you look at it, a particularly creepy form of reactionary intimidation. And if all this is about how a certain critical algorithim is finalized... I mean fucking really?? Again, I'm not going after each Swiftie personally and I'm sure most of them would be appalled about the whole address/home photo leak, but even knowing how much of a fucking geiger counter social media is that something like... this... can still happen is, stultifying. I guess welcome to the 2020s, boomer