The Problems Of Fans & Fandom

[NuclearAbsolutist]

Recently over and over again in conversations I have had with friends, there has been a category a form of subculture that has reared its head over and over it again, like mafias or football hooligans across the globe. When I sit down to talk about the dominant modern arts of video games film and digital art and the conversation turns to audiences there is one group that must be mentioned. Yes the fan and associated fandom. Predating the internet by decades(Perhaps even longer looking at the reception of The Sorrows of Young Werther or the hot water Sir Arthur Doyle landed in killing off Sherlock Holmes) It like other cultural trends exploded with the rise of the internet. What I wish to discuss is that due to various factors I will go into more detail shortly, the mindset of fandom, in various forms has become the default view for looking at all media/art for those who rise to the minimum level of being interested in the subject matter and unpassive in absorbing it-a disaster for culture. 

Here is a image I made as a tldr of how I see it



Starting with literature post 1945 and spreading to all other mediums(Video games would suffer the worse arguably as it would develop after this process had been largely completed) serious criticism and commentary of the arts along with serious artists would be sweep aside by those making art to fit consumer guides and tv brains. By the 1990s this mindset would roost in all nodes of artistic creation merely blooming out from then on with nothing to prune it. Under its shadow totemic thinking has developed for all those who process a interest in the creative. The difference being one of mere tribe and if you are a based member of the community or a stan of it. I consider this to be one of the main issues in culture today, this mindset reduces all to screeching like monkeys and much worse social behaviors. It effects creativity by colonizing the mind and withering any organic understanding. And lastly worst of all it moves to smoother those that do break out of it be it canceling a indie creator or fan work, or claiming George Lucas got Star Wars wrong. At this point it has taken root on almost all levels with no adults in the room so to speak to snap this mindset out on the production or audience level. In my mind it is high time for a examination of it-and perhaps a way out of such errors can be charted. So what do you think of fandom culture in video games, anime, manga, film, literature and music Amarna?

[Guest]

Fandom is the wilful submission of a man into a mass. That it affects creators...is somewhat true. It doesn't affect the important ones. For video games -- see Kojima, or see Nomura. I don't know modern literature or film, but I expect the same there.
The mass will always exist. As will fandoms. But the "keys to the kingdom" were given to the mass when authorities ceased holding onto artistic standards.
You need the academy to be strong. You need to punish those who go against the academy. This is the only thing that works.
Punishment might just be that low works are not allowed to be performed publically. No store-front etc. etc.
Or it might be more.
Anyway, the keys to the kingdom are floating around in the aether. All sorts of strange stuff is happening in every medium. It's temporary, it will burn away. But it will take conscious effort for this to happen.

[Sanae]

The whole notion of a fandom is fake and gay and only faggot nerds care about and use the term "fandom".

In other words, the concept of fandom is a theater-kid-ism

[NuclearAbsolutist]

In other words, the concept of fandom is a theater-kid-ism

I wish for nothing more  for it to have stayed in the minds of such people never moving towards realization but instead it has as I have said burst out from 1970s low rent hotel conference halls to being the default way of interacting with culture on a level beyond couch potato. I consider it then fitting for the matter to be examined in order to find what could be it's origin the cause of it's rise and strangling influnce along with the effects such influence has on wider society. A mere type of human organization rising to hold such a death grip is certainly worth at least some thought.

[Toledo_Keyed]

Fandoms are usually horrible compared to the original product, if the original product is already bad the fandom will be even worse. But as the Great FrenziedFish wisely said "if Trannies started liking Hitler, would it make him coal? Same applies to Fallout New Vegas"

[Illustrious]

It's a cliché but as the masses turn irreligious, they need to fill their need of worship towards something else, and popular IPs fill the void. I know a guy who bought the last Harry Potter game in its collector edition, with a Hogwarts robe and everything, called the game "a dream" since it meant the world for him. The fandom also fulfils the lack of socializing provided by religion long ago, providing the need of having common shared interests with fellow minded fanatics as well. In fact I suspect that most of the fandom types initially don't care that much about the object of what they're fawning over, they're just seeking a group to integrate themselves within and form relationships; this is the genesis of the geeky female nerd rawr, upon failing to integrate themselves into normalfag territory, they turn their sights into random media IPs to form a group and hopefully top the hierarchy. That's how you get dem gals memeing about how le cake is a lie XD yet haven't beaten Portal.

Of course, big media conglomerates and the elite itself profit from this process and they themselves steer the rabble into these interests. It's useful to have them worry about fiction and not reality, if they end up comparing drumph to Voldemort then mission accomplished.

[Guest]

Fandoms are a natural consequence of low IQ niggers being let into what was previously high culture. If you personally do not have an identity, you either subsume into a group identity (hippies, emos, punks, etc.) or you subsume into a media identity. Most intelligent people I know identify themselves as a *fan* of what they like, but not as part of the fanbase. Critical difference.

[FrenziedFish]

I see it has now become common for people to tattoo things from their favourite pieces of media on to their bodies, now fans are branding themselves like animals. Fitting? 

It's right to have distaste for fandoms as they are a haven of mass man but do not forget what helped kickstart gamergate, a fandom is as good as the taste makers and leaders of it. Hitler cannot be made coal by tr00ns adopting the Hitler fandom, but they could make Hitler II coal. So what is important to see is that fandoms can exert direct pressure and influence upon the creative process, especially in our time where games are released half baked and creatives have so little vision and control of their own. A project or piece of media often becomes a collaboration between the fans and the developers, the latter always attempting to please the former with each update or release. This however isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially when most of this media is void of any real content beyond it's entertainment value, the anger from channels like the Quartering against the woke invasion into their media is no call to anything higher but it is still a defence of some basic values and standards.

[NuclearAbsolutist]

It's right to have distaste for fandoms as they are a haven of mass man but do not forget what helped kickstart gamergate 

I consider the point you raised here, undermined by the point you raised here

the Quartering against the woke invasion into their media is no call to anything higher but it is still a defence of some basic values and standards.

It was debated heavily over on imageboards and the underground of social media what caused gamergate and the like to flatline, and the conclusion came to was what you said there was no call to anything higher. Even on a consumer level these gamers were not the high brow lot or even the exacting media consumer that is the stereotype of anon. They were perfectly fine the endless through until one day there was a rainbow special.  These types even now have not changed their fundamental behavior which indeed is that of a fan, only what colors they raise and catchphrases they say. With a minority who woken up would go on to brighter corners beyond that. I consider such social mores fundamentally bad. I will now bring up another type of fandom to show why using a image created to mock and illustrate it as a jumping off point:





As far as I know other than maybe the term weird core enthusiasts this fandom has no name. But it is one especially if you spend time on such places as the more artsy discord servers tik tok and twitter it is someone/something you have encountered. It is the latest stage of development in fandom, no longer tied to any convention spaces or even a name. Instead the fans take pieces from all other and shut it into boxes if it was a franchise by themselves. The mindset fostered by colleges  modern production and above all the English teacher finds its fullest expression as a mindset that is total and applied constantly. At the same time you can naturally see this is a mess, most of the items there don't truly have ties to each other clearly it is all very fuzzy and loose. This fuzzy looseness is the other side of the coin of the (very)modern fan, irony faux disillusionment and coyness have become main forms of expression along with the queer theory and speculation of fictional mental health issues. Serious engagement beyond that is frowned on, as it kills the vibe and shows the whole network to be founded on lies and mistaken. Which is why naturally such types among others are if you by purpose or mere misfortune to do something in a way they don't like or have a viewpoint that is not kosher may go as far as to ruin your life online and offline. All while being dreary bohemians at 16-46 of course. Or of course there's the mirror image less dox happy standing up for his party of the little(but quite large usually) guy in his pizza greased stained shirt and den of collectables a figure for fun why they don't even care that much about the troons really...

[Verlion]

It's a cliché but as the masses turn irreligious, they need to fill their need of worship towards something else, and popular IPs fill the void. I know a guy who bought the last Harry Potter game in its collector edition, with a Hogwarts robe and everything, called the game "a dream" since it meant the world for him. The fandom also fulfils the lack of socializing provided by religion long ago, providing the need of having common shared interests with fellow minded fanatics as well. In fact I suspect that most of the fandom types initially don't care that much about the object of what they're fawning over, they're just seeking a group to integrate themselves within and form relationships; this is the genesis of the geeky female nerd rawr, upon failing to integrate themselves into normalfag territory, they turn their sights into random media IPs to form a group and hopefully top the hierarchy. That's how you get dem gals memeing about how le cake is a lie XD yet haven't beaten Portal.

Of course, big media conglomerates and the elite itself profit from this process and they themselves steer the rabble into these interests. It's useful to have them worry about fiction and not reality, if they end up comparing drumph to Voldemort then mission accomplished.

I remember getting shit on by my soy friends (I had to find people to occupy myself with at school, of course) for not wanting to go to their anime conventions. I've always had an immense distaste for forming a """community""" around the art I consume. They are solitary acts kept for the individual. Attempting to form a brotherhood over what shitty shonen you watch is an amazing indicator for one's terrible morality.

[a system is failing]

I don't have much to add, but I have been watching a Paper Mario LP recently and already I can just smell this faint acrid odor of utterly intolerable cummunity sperging emanating from its general direction. One of the worst I have caught a glimpse of in memory.

[JohnnyRomero]

That image reminds me a lot of this meme:

There's a lot of overlap, and I think most things in your original image could be identified down as the most mainstream YouTube trends for the lowest common denominator of the "non-normie" masses. I think it could be identified as being the trends popular among Zoomers who are, in Jungian terms, very high in Extroverted Intuition (Ne). Mostly xNFP's with a strong xNTP presence. People fascinated by and obsessed with endless possibilities, weirdness, imagination, and "what-ifs." I see Whang and Wendigoon in the first image (both of whom I occasionally watch, as they strongly play into the ENTP and INTP ends of the spectrum (no pun intended) here, respectively), but I think that Jerma is another one who certainly fits the milieu of that image, on the more INFP FtM tranny post-tumblr Zoomer side of Lemon Demon, Undertale, analog horror, all the #cores, etc.

I think that the presence of so many things that appeal to high-Ne cognitive types in those circles makes the prevalence of typical "fandom" habits more sensible, as Extroverted Intuition comes with Introverted Sensing, the latter of which leads to a strong desire for sameness, reliability, and creature comforts.

[Verlion]

"I quite like a few weirdcore things, and I'm okay with that."
Jerma is eternal trannie shite though.

---

Thank you Romero for posting that picture by the way. Finally can put my finger to the types who both like Yakuza and MGR.

[Albicacore]

Thank you Romero for posting that picture by the way. Finally can put my finger to the types who both like Yakuza and MGR.

This is due to the youtube faggot know as 'Max0r'.
"This game is SO INTENSE and ACTION PACKED I am going to summarise it and inject my retarded humor."

[Spingebill]

"This game is SO INTENSE and ACTION PACKED I am going to summarise it and inject my retarded humor."

I watched one of his videos, and can say without a speck of doubt that it's the future of Zoomer/Gen Alpha media. A constant barrage of flashing colors, earrape, and capeshit-like jokes all designed to be as stimulating as possible. Subway Surfers in the corners of Tiktok videos seemed bad, but that's only the beginning. The channel may be a more """""niche""""" thing at the moment, but once some media company sees how effective it is, it's gonna be unavoidable.

[Crackrobatty]

The Amarnite sat hunched over, typing away furiously as his mind and body were fueled by impotent rage. He had sacrificed so much: his education, his relationship with his family, and generally any chance at a sustainable life outside of the internet, but he knew in his heart that he was superior. A bold Aryan soul victimized by People Liking Things He Didn't Like.

He and so many others like him had to continue this fight, for it was their cross to bear. Their struggle to rid the world of People Liking Things They Didn't Like.

[Lohengrin]

The Amarnite sat hunched over, typing away furiously as his mind and body were fueled by impotent rage. He had sacrificed so much: his education, his relationship with his family, and generally any chance at a sustainable life outside of the internet, but he knew in his heart that he was superior. A bold Aryan soul victimized by People Liking Things He Didn't Like.

He and so many others like him had to continue this fight, for it was their cross to bear. Their struggle to rid the world of People Liking Things They Didn't Like.

"It's the way they like it I disagree with."

[NuclearAbsolutist]

The Amarnite sat hunched over, typing away furiously as his mind and body were fueled by impotent rage. He had sacrificed so much: his education, his relationship with his family, and generally any chance at a sustainable life outside of the internet, but he knew in his heart that he was superior. A bold Aryan soul victimized by People Liking Things He Didn't Like.

He and so many others like him had to continue this fight, for it was their cross to bear. Their struggle to rid the world of People Liking Things They Didn't Like.

"Who are you quoting? I have never met this Amarnite fellow or seen him here."



That out of the way Crackrobatty, I would like to see a better defense of fandom culture than they just like things that you don't like, as that argument falls flat seeing I and others in this thread have noted items they like with fandoms they hate. For one I love lain, but cannot say its inclusion in the image I posted earlier was a mistaken target.

[anthony]

"imagine if a cool nigger saw you caring"

Indeed. Much to think about.

[NuclearAbsolutist]

A comment I have seen has tackled some of the issues I touched on in the OP in a most excellent matter, which I will now share with you along with the video it was made in response to.

You are completely right... within your revolting mental ghetto which you believe is the entire universe.

On the barest and least interesting level of talking about these works like they're arcade games created solely around the aim of providing predictable and masterable challenges, yes, the original is better. But they aren't and never were that.

You keep quoting the IGN review. Maybe a cynical move because IGN are retards and use "game" focused lingo because they're a bunch of tools incapable of evolving who are forced to write in certain terms they don't understand or care about forever. By contrasting your own genuine neurosis over "gameplay" with theirs yes you get to make lots of corrections and so on. But IGN are basically a decades long scam. None of them give a shit about anything they're saying. Nobody does. They're like RT. They exist so their numbers can be screenshotted and talked about.

This game does not sell because of weighted opinions on its "game design". The first level on which something like this sells, the lowest level, is that the name just exists and is recognised due to time and inertia. This is enormously valuable even if nothing anybody has truly cared about has ever come of it. The 'Tomb Raider' brand was sold for hundreds of millions despite being a cheap, hollow, napkin scrawl idea that was obviously just a bare minimum justification for doing novel things (indiana jones with polygon tits). Normal people will buy a new advertised thing called 'Tomb Raider' just because if something endures long enough for the name to stick there's a familiarity that emerges which can then be activated in the natural mass consumer class on command. Games directed to this level tend to be very one-size fits all because the thing is already going to sell, all you have to do is not disrupt the rhythm of consumption by scaring people with something weird. Achieve victory, then go to war.

But that's not all that's going on here. Not a sufficient explanation of how we got to a remake of Resident Evil 4. No, there doesn't appear to be meaningful saving of money or effort in reusing the ingenious premise of "man in spain shoots people" or the "succession of rooms full of people to shoot" 'level design'. That's not why this happens.

Capcom did not hire IGN to sell their game to people. They got Sphere Hunter. Think about that and you can see why this remake actually happened (not politics, relax). Yes, the point about one size fits all "game design" is accurate, but it's incidental. The real essence of what's going on is understood if you understand what Sphere Hunter is selling. SH is a brand ambassador of "cool Japanese stuff". What the Japanese have learned and understood better than Hollywood is that most people are not connoisseurs, they don't appreciate what they think they're into. They enjoy *participating*. Beyond the barest act of habitual consumption buying Resident Evil 4 is an act of consummation. Affirmation of inclusion and participation in Resident Evil fandom. And why is this something desirable which you can sell to people? Because Sphere Hunter and the rest exist.

Sphere Hunter's value to Capcom is in creating and maintaining brand image. SH and an army of 90s-2000s cool aesthetics accounts creating this nostalgia-trap simulacra of an age of watching Evangelion VHS tapes on a CRT in a room covered in poppy anime posters. Each customer doesn't have to be into that or any other image specifically, but what matters is this sense of a weight of history behind the consumer which is a source of anxiety. A learned helplessness towards old media paired with a sense of having missed out on the good time which the game is a totem of.  This is where a remake comes in. You get to have your own experience of cool old person golden age history.

What Capcom have successfully done here is what Hollywood keeps failing to do. Star Wars 7, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Jurassic World. They stoke the idea that they own this incredible thing which was momentous, generation defining in its own time, *and you missed out.*. "But... this summer... [piano doing a tinkly NOSTALGIC opening of the main theme]..."

The idea is perfectly sound. What Hollywood does wrong is is being stuck in old media with no connection between the original audience and youth (kids don't care about the experiences of movie people, nobody aspires to be the old tools who saw A New Hope) and putting women and JJ Abrams in charge instead of Japanese people (full credit to the Japanese, copying success is actually quite difficult).

Why does RE4make exist? To let people both participate in and catch up with something they have been successfully programmed into believing is cool and desirable.

Now onto the substance of your critiques, how it plays as a contrived challenge. Or that revolting word, "gameplay". Again, yes, you are right within your own framings and axioms. Obviously. But you even yourself raise the point which is the seed of refuting you. You concede that it can be "immersive" to include elements like sway, inertia, and generally disrupting fluidity of input. You simultaneously critique this game on its disregard for intentionality of design, while refusing to acknowledge its own intentions. Your problem with RE4make is that it's not RE4. RE4make is a problem because of its "one size fits all" approach to its "game design", but you are also going to judge it by universal (or at least non-particular and foreign) standards. Someone whose problem with RE4 is that it doesn't handle like The Last of Us, Days Gone, and Horizon: Zero Dawn is failing to take it on its own terms. But someone whose problem with RE4make is that it doesn't handle like RE4 is doing the same thing.

Now my real problem with you. I addressed the substance of your critiques above, but I can't properly answer you within those, because the real issues at the heart of Resident Evil and its REmakes are so far above you you can't even see them, let alone be wrong about them.

A good starting point would be the word "art". You use this a lot, and as far as I can tell to you it means something between "very good craft" and "something I like a lot". Where I think your attempt at making sense of the phenomena of RE4make really falls apart is trying to talk "art". With the Kubrick point this could have come together, but instead it completely fell apart. Why was Kubrick an artist..? Because... he was really good and original.

It isn't really surprising to see you say this since you're apparently a *shmup guy*. Into arcade machines and so on. An interest in video games which amounts to seeing them as sensation-dispensers. A flashier and more expensive alternative to doing sudoku puzzles with the same ultimate point. To be contrived challenges which you can endlessly remix and keep yourself occupied with forever so that you never have to actually think or engage with the human condition.

Stanley Kubrick was very good with delivering sensation, and putting care into how things looked. But that was not all that he aspired to do with his work. He was not a dispenser of sensation. If that's all you believe there was there is a rather extreme amount of effort on top of that which you have to explain. Why did he not just fire out a new stock genre film every year? Why did he take the projects he did? What is ultimately the point of it all? If he just wanted people to feel excited through his efforts why didn't he sell cocaine instead of becoming a filmmaker? I've already given away my answer with the above paragraph of course. Stanley Kubrick was interested in people.

If something in Kubrick's work could be called the "art", it's the expressiveness. Stanley Kubrick observes the world and humanity, and then creates his films. Those films are refractions. A little cinematic world-experience as a representation of Kubrick's own perception of us and our wider world. A personal impression of Kubrick can be read not just in how he presents things in front of a camera, but what he chooses to present. Calling Kubrick a filmmaker leads many into error. He could perhaps better be understood as a multimedia artist who was able to work his way up to being able to use the cinema for his own ends. That's the essential point. Kubrick used cinema. Cinema did not use Kubrick.

You may not understand yet why I raised this. My problem with your reading of Kubrick is that you take a few arbitrarily selected points of craft as the "art" and say things that don't do it that way are boring, and not art, or bad art. I say that Kubrick's way of doing things was emergent from Kubrick's views on the world and what he wanted to say in that particular work. And that he was not merely a particularly clever sensation peddler. Now think back to where we started... Resident Evil...

I want to talk about Shinji Mikami. If you were capable of following what I wrote about Kubrick I shouldn't even have to do this. But let's aim for clarity. The existence of Resident Evil cannot be sufficiently explained by appreciating is a well crafted collection of challenges and sensations. It's too idiosyncratic and strange, the approaches to basic video game concepts like firing a gun go beyond novel into lateral. Mikami is not Kubrick, he does not share the same level of interest in the inner lives of people and nations. But Mikami is still a man fascinated by the world who refracts and reflects all of that into his work. These particular tastes and fascinations drive his work. Kubrick was an urban American Jew. Mikami is Japanese. The characters and interests are different, but both are true artists and so their creations reflect their respective characters.

Mikami has a catlike fascination with craft and fine objects. He is more than passingly interested in politics, Americana (David Lynch in particular), he loves watches, particularly their fine working mechanisms. Do you see where we go from here? Resident Evil from the start has contained lots of handling fine things. Rendered as 3D objects and spun around, as though they're in your hands. Why is Racoon City a mountain town? Because of Twin Peaks. Why is there an evil sterile lab under a mansion full of art? Because Japan was on a big bio-horror kick at the time fuelled by a fascination with new science and on top of that Mikami liked nice American stuff. The dynamics that emerged from this contrast were at the heart of this series ever since.

I could go on but I only mean to establish the general point, and believe I've iterated enough. Art, even low pop-art, emanates from character. We cannot speak intelligently about art without consideration of the minds behind the works we want to appreciate. By talking about RE4 and RE4make as though they are sufficiently of a kind to be compared directly you are perpetuating the problem which made this state of affairs possible. If RE4make is "a step down" as you say, then it must be possible to create an RE4make which is "a step up" too. But of course I'm not saying we should want or expect that either. What I'm saying is that we should rediscover the actual source of these great older things which we love so much. Yes, arcade culture was an element, the Japanese understand what feels good in virtual space. But that is not all that's going on. The industry evolved beyond those games for a reason.

Am I happy to see RE4make? No. So why write this comment? Because by hating it wrong you're part of the problem. The problem is not insufficiently fun "game design". The problem is the depersonalised cargo-culting of what were and remain deeply personal creations. People who like RE4make are guilty of this. But so are most original RE4 fans. Including you. The genuinely tragic (yes, tragic) thing about RE4make is the Japanese themselves getting more comfortable with the idea of depersonalised pop-art, which is really no longer art at all. More like well-crafted fodder.

Art is nothing without the humanity that strong creative and expressive will can imbue. It is both boring due to the shallowness of anything which isn't expressing anything, and sterile due to the lack of organic reasons to try anything genuinely new. Henry Ford said that if he asked his customers what they wanted they'd have said "faster horses". RE4make is Capcom delivering faster horses. And your problem with that is that you believe you could have created a faster horse.

I hate video games.