I'm now worrying mostly about flooding again (it's higher than last week) but I thought I'd get this out of the way. Last week, someone posted a fanart picture of Applejack as an American slave owner, relaxing on an apple plantation porch, with all the slaves working in the background portrayed as zebras. (The picture was apparently closely based on a scene in Django Unchained, but I haven't seen that film and so I can't comment on that.) And naturally the resulting drama quickly spread to Twitter.
I did not like the picture at all, and I liked it even less once I read some of the comments defending it – which could be boiled down to "It's dark humour and if you don't get that then you're a woke SJW cuck pussy!" (Which is generally code for "I want total free speech but I don't want to face any consequences for what I say.") While I'm not myself especially sensitive, it seemed pretty clear that this pic was going to stir up trouble. I don't know the artist, so I can't say whether they realised this. But I'm damn sure that some of the commenters liked it because it upset people.
Even so, if that picture had been all it was, I would have grimaced a bit and moved on. I'm decidedly not a fan of the 4channy parts of the MLP fandom, and the fact that it largely began there does not mean we all have to venerate the place as some kind of eternal god. I don't and won't. As has been noted, 4chan itself is not the same place it was a decade ago, having noticeably shifted from old-fashioned shitposting to hard-right politics even on boards that used not to have much. But if it had just been that one picture, I'd have ignored it.
The thing is, that picture wasn't all it was. Over the next few days, we saw several examples (with screenshots and so on as evidence) of people in this fandom who were not simply guilty of giggling at a rather racist picture – but were guilty of being racists, plain and simple. One, for example, had been shown to use the n-word several hundred times in their Discord (I think) chats. There were others for whom the admittedly overused "Nazi" designation wasn't far off the mark.
Twitter being what it is, this quickly span out of control in various ways. We had people suggesting that the fandom was poisoned beyond repair and should be put out of its misery, and we also had people suggesting that this was just a case of a couple of bad apples and we were all great really. Anyone who felt like putting a more nuanced case, that there was a significant problem with tolerating racism but that it didn't mean the fandom was rotten to the core, didn't get much of a hearing.
And that's about where I stand. When people are saying, as one fairly prominent professional artist did, that they were planning on stepping back from fandom involvement; when people are feeling that out-and-out racism is being tolerated; and when show staffers are feeling personally insulted by what they've seen, then we have a problem. I do not think the fandom is lost, not by any means. I do not feel we might as well leave it to the jackals and have done with it. I'm damned if I'm going to do that. I've seen this fandom do extraordinary good and change lives – including mine.
But if wanting racism out of my fandom, and feeling that there is a line beyond which free speech is no longer a virtue, makes me a "woke SJW cuck pussy" then I shall wear that badge with pride.
Drama is so wearisome. The tendency for people to either join in, or at least tacitly condone, this nonsense gets me down sometimes, because I'd once naively thought the very nature of our non ironic fandom would have been a barrier to people missing the message. (People STILL subscribe to Emergency Pony, for instance, even after their foul mouthed message directly to Josh Haber for ruining the show.)
ReplyDeleteBut it's also important to remember that this isn't "the fandom". It's not even the majority of the Internet based part of it. The people who just want to draw ponies or write about ponies or react to ponies or visit cons to talk about ponies aren't part of this, never mind the little girls who still buy enough copies of the MLP magazine to keep it stocked in Sainsburys, and go to school wearing their Rainbow Dash ears and mane (for example). And I'm kind of heartened that I had no idea what you were talking about even after your previous reference sent me actively trying to look it up.
I still feel like 4chan could be sucked into the Sun tomorrow and nothing of value would be lost, but the rash of new reactors, artists and writers who've only gotten involved since the show began feel more like the future of the Fandom - in the self important bronies sense - than some idiot who finds the N word inherently funny. So I guess from my perspective, while there's clearly a problem with dipshits, I don't feel it's enough of a problem to push the fandom off its axis, never mind to worry about having to nuke the whole site from orbit as the only way to be sure.
As for the insults, sign me up for one of those badges!
I avoided referencing all this directly on Twitter, which may have been a little cowardly in some people's eyes but was a considered decision. Twitter is so bad for anything approaching serious discussion. So instead I just posted a bunch of cute DA pictures of AJ, which seemed to go down well!
DeletePeople STILL subscribe to Emergency Pony, for instance
I think some of that's inertia, plus there may be others (eg casual Twitterers) who simply don't realise what happened. With Hourly Pony available and apparently doing a good job, though, I have no intention of giving EP any more attention myself.
But it's also important to remember that this isn't "the fandom". It's not even the majority of the Internet based part of it.
Indeed. I wrote this blog post with almost no editing, and I did so quite deliberately. It's my emotional response to what happened, not a considered and thoughtful essay. I'm sure there are lots and lots of fans like you who are entirely (blissfully) unaware of what's been happening.
while there's clearly a problem with dipshits, I don't feel it's enough of a problem to push the fandom off its axis
That seems a pretty reasonable stance. I also do think, though I rarely say this as it can come over the wrong way, that the UK fandom is generally in a very good place in a way the wider/US fandom may not quite manage. It's very rare that I've seen any specifically British part of the fandom be the catalyst for drama like this. Not unknown, but very rare. I do sometimes wonder whether the lack of a quasi-religious "First Amendment faith" has something to do with that.
(Also 'I hoped that a blog post entitled "Applejack thoughts in brief" would simply read BEST PONY', etc)
ReplyDeleteBest pony? Now come on, you're a great guy and I'm glad to see you comment here -- but that's going too far!
DeleteSo... there was that night I'd gotten back from a wake for an old friend. I was drunk and maudlin and I posted... some rambling thing on FiMFic, which also mentioned another friend who lost his home and business in a hurricane. But in it I made a joke about punching Nazis, which was a tiny fraction of the post.
ReplyDeleteWhat I got back was not sympathy, as a normal empathic human being might expect, but flood of Nazi support... and passive-aggressive Nazi support. ("Anitfa is just as bad.")
People who had never commented on any of my blog posts before showed up to put their swastika-branded oars in.
For whatever reason, this fandom is saturated with out-and-out racist/fascist/sexist/bigoted MFs.
Now, that doesn't mean the majority is such, but it's a significant, and moreover very prominent portion. Enough so, that many people outside the fandom are painting us all with a very broad and ugly brush.
Honestly, I'm on my way out, too. I hate to admit it, and I'm not happy about it, because for damned near a decade, this fandom has given me tons of enjoyment. But for me, the well is running dry.
Or maybe it's been poisoned.
I think you mentioned that before, and it upset me then, too. I wish it had surprised me more. As I said to TC above, my own feelings about the fandom are not as unhappy as yours, perhaps because of my semi-insulated position as a non-American, but neither are they "everything's sunshine and rainbows" by any means.
DeleteI'm sad and embarrassed -- and angry -- that someone like you feels increasingly unwelcome in this fandom. That's not something I can just brush under the carpet and laugh off, and it's why my (near-unedited) post has that underlying anger to it. Do I feel as badly as you do? No, and I hope I won't.
But your position is perfectly valid and I'd be a liar if I said you were the first person I'd seen say similar. Those of us who will be in this for... well, in my case probably for life have work to do.
I just don't understand this fatalism, but maybe it's because I don't hang out socially in very many places. I don't go on Facebook or Twitter, and I'm only in a few small Discord chats. I wouldn't have known about that picture except I did see it posted in one Discord. I gave it a shrug and moved on.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine anyone so inextricably tied to the fandom that a source of drama like this is going to make yo give it all up instead of just the one part. It sure seems extreme.
Oh good, a place to air some thoughts.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I really did not like seeing that image or the comments it inspired. I unfollowed the artist, though I very cowardly did not hide their derpibooru tag because the guy's a fucking genius animator and I could just hide the tags related to the image instead. :B
In fact, without really knowing him personally, I don't put a lot of blame on him for making the image. I mean, yes, one should know in this day and age not to post such things on the internet, but it's really the person he made it for that like... Who wants that for their birthday?
Along with the other artist you mentioned (I don't really know why I was following him on Twitter, I don't like his art that much), I also unfollowed an artist whose reaction was "Oh boy, there's my zebra". He's gone on benders of zebra-focused racist art in the past. And that's kind of part of the problem.
Because what this situation made me realize wasn't "there's a lot of racists in this fandom", but that they've always been here, and we quite frequently have lauded them for their less-offensive contributions thereto. It's not until they slip up or someone realizes, wait a minute, that's literally awful, that we get to watch our idols, as it were, be torn down. Every time that happens, your options are to feel foolish for not seeing the signs or to feel shame for letting less grave offenses pass. Both are painful.
We're not likely to be rid of these people any time soon, though. I hope those who can teach are able to.
Not just here. The lesson of the last few years is that there are a lot of racists EVERYWHERE. Way, way more in the US than I'd thought. I'm completely guilty of thinking we were steadily moving past racism, and I did think that a lot of the so called SJWs were blowing things out of proportion.
DeleteI could not have been more wrong. I'm trying to make up for that now. I'm not sure if it's a pendulum effect and we are on a backswing, or if racism, sexism, etc are just a baseline part of humanity that we will never be totally rid of, or what, but social media has really allowed all of this to come to the forefront again. It's such a tiresome, disgusting time.