Dear Fandom: Grow the Fuck Up

I’ve been in a state of apoplexy for the last 48 hours or so, because a) I’m still in recovery mode from Comic Con (short version: it was awesome and overwhelming, more later), and b) coming back from Comic Con has left me maybe hyperaware of all that’s both right and wrong about the entire media-consuming community.

Comic Con itself is an example of what’s right. 100,000+ people took over downtown San Diego for 5 days and there were no riots, nobody got shot, and while there was one unfortunate incident, for the most part things went remarkably well. SDCC felt kind of like Mardi Gras to me, with better costuming but sans vomit, piss, and those assholes who make “Girls Gone Wild” videos. (They might’ve been there, but if so they were on the downlow.)

Things wrong with mediadom, though, include this. And this, which happened at Readercon, same Bat-time but across the continent from SDCC. And holy crap, this, which has been happening for several days but I just found out about it yesterday. (Good linkspam here.)

I just… I don’t… no. No. Bad fandom. BAD! Were you all raised in barns? Did you receive no home training? Where in the lexicon of Acceptable Human Behavior does it say that it’s okay to stalk someone because you like them, or because you want to apologize to them, or because they don’t like something you like, or because they do but not the way you want them to like it? Why do we express ourselves in this way? What the… who the… GRAAAAH.

Look, I know how it feels to love something you’re consuming, or creating. I also know how it feels to hear that other people don’t love it. I’ve been on the receiving end of some really scathing reviews, and I’ve even given in to the urge to respond once or twice — mildly, and briefly. I’ve known how it feels to be the dominant group in a space, and to feel some ownership of a thing, and to feel threatened when “those other” people encroach on it. I really, honestly do get the spark of emotion that lurks at the heart of all these examples of rampant assholism. But.

I am not twelve years old. And thus I do not allow the spark of emotion to flare into a Burning Flame of Righteousness, and certainly I don’t pour gas on it so it’ll blaze into a Bonfire of Frothing Stupidity. Because I am not twelve years old.

If you are reading this, and you are legitimately twelve years old (or under) — GTFO, this is a blog for grownups, your parents should never have let you come here unsupervised. Everyone else, though? If you’ve ever done any of the things the people in these incidents are doing, to any degree? If you’ve thought about doing them? Stop, drop, and grow up.

And once again, I will point you at John Scalzi’s site, where he’s posted his policy on how readers should react to negative reviews of anything he’s affiliated with. Which mostly boils down to, “Don’t.” I feel like I shouldn’t need a policy like this; I feel like it’s stating the obvious. But maybe I do — so rather than reinvent the pixels, I’ll just say “what he said.”

Because, really.