Toxic fandom encompasses a range of negative, abusive, and antisocial behaviors by fans, usually via social media.

It’s time I adressed this…

I’ll be honest with you, I’ve tried to stay away from this topic as I try to keep things as positive as possible, as I’m sure many of you will agree with me that the internet is full of enough negativity. I try my best no to add to that.

However it has come to the point that I just see too much of it and I need to vent about it before it becomes something that I engage in and start responding to these people. It seems to be everywhere I look and I’m just sick of it.

Now I’m not going to bring politics into this but we all have different opinions, different likes, different interests. It’s like my Grandad says – “If we all liked the same thing then life would be boring”, but some people seem to be triggered by this and I don’t understand.

Whilst it’s something that’s always been around, there’s no denying that social media has made it much more rampant (and that’s an understatement!). It amazes me how much of if I see and the lengths people will go to, to prove they’re opinion is right

It can all start with someone sharing their opinion and the next thing you know all hell breaks loose and now you have a full blown argument and it’s not just between two people, now there are others chiming in and offering their opinions too.

I’m all for a good debate, in fact I enjoy them, but these are a real rarity these days as people seem to think their opinions are facts. Something. somewhere has gone wrong and it seems there’s no way of fixing it, I just can’t understand it.

It’s quite sad really but nowadays I don’t like to post my opinion on line, good or bad, as I just don’t want the hassle of it all. I even find it tiring and depressing reading some comments that usually end up going too far,

Though I will admit to having something of a morbid curioity of what it would be like if these people met up in real life. How would they act toward each other? Would it become violent or would they actually be able to have an adult conversation?

I know I’m ranting again and I sound like an old man shouting at a cloud but I seriously just don’t get it, it’s the same withy this whole ‘gatekeeping’ concept, another thing I just can’t wrapo my head around at all, it’s a seriously alien concept to me.

Why would you try and keep people out of your interests or even try and limit and control information about it all?! I love introducing and recommending people to films and such and I also love it when people recommend me stuff, it’s how a fanbase grows and supoorts itself.

I mean, why would you not want to share that film you discovered randomly one night that no one seems to know about?! Or get mad at some kid because he discovered who ‘Freddy Kreuger’ is through an episode of “The Goldbergs”?! It’s so weird!

Even telling someone that what they like is rubbish and then get mad at them if they say that they didn’t like something that they liked. Whatever happened to the days of having different opinions and that being okay, I really am that old man now hahaha.

This whole toxic fandom, elitist gatekeeping and what not is just unacceptable to me. Unfortunately all this toxicity only seems to be on the rise and sadly I’ve noticed it spilling over into our beloved Horror genre, hopefully it won’t flood into it.