What is the dumbest case of fandom infighting you have ever seen?

[Canadamus Prime]

I can't say. I tend to avoid fandoms esp. for things I enjoy for just this reason.

 

[spartenX]

sonic 4 using Sonic's modern design. It was amazing how many people were offended by the green eyes

 

[ChristopherT]

The infighting between fandom message boards and forums is my pick. It hasn't stopped, it just keeps going. Years ago I frequented a Resident Evil message board, and while things were mostly under control every now and then you'd get topics popping up about how a different Resi board was full of spammers and flammers, and it was the worst, or this other board was so strict they were banning people left and right, and this place is better, no that place is better. And since I haven't been around message boards much in quite a while I thought it stopped until I realized the crap being spewed about Youtube comments and 4Chan, Reddit, is all the same thing. It's not so much that it's heated, it's not so much that fighting is that intense, because it's not, it's that it doesn't go away, that so many people are involved in it, and that it seems to have come to be normal and accepted.

 

[Saetha]

One that made me recoil was fans trying to start the whole "Team ..." bullshit with The Hunger Games series.

"Are you Team Gale or Team Peeta?"

Screw your team shit! Romance is the least important thing about this story! How in the hell can you watch kids being forced to fight each other to the death and the only thing you take away from it is "Which guy is she gonna end up with? ^.^" It annoys me to no end that the core messages of that series have been completely ignored in favour of the same horse-shit love-triangle that plagues absolutely everything these days.

This. So much of my this. I absolutely hate how there's always that one subset of a fandom - sometimes the entire fandom - that feels the need to make everything in the work about romance. This is actually something that really pisses me off about the Dragon Age fandom. We've been getting a decent amount of information on Inquisition for a while now, seeing the settings it'll be in, the mechanics it might, all these things, and what's the DA community buzzing about?

"Do you think Iron Bull will be an LI? Do you think we can romance that Warden dude? Do you think Varric will be available?"

Yeah. Nice to see your love for the game there, fans, but you seem to have gotten it mixed up with a fantasy-themed dating sim.

I just... really, really hate this. It happens to Dragon Age, it happens to the MCU, it happens to Sherlock - if Tumblr's got it's claws in a fandom, might as well abandon ship, because all they care about is sex and romance and screw what the story's actually about. The slash shippers are even worse. I just don't understand how they can claim to be fans when all they seem to care about are the characters' sex lives.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

The only time I've ever stared at the computer screen in utter disbelief, shock, and disgust is--

This thread would not be complete without a mention of the brony fandom, and all the infighting involved with the Derpy and Alicorn Twilight sagas.

Never mind. Someone beat me to it. Seriously, I love the show and am a brony myself, but I read these articles or the comment sections in some Equestria Daily stuff and my mind is simply blown away. I just don't understand how people who like the same thing I do can be so...like that.

I've seen some serious stuff from Star Wars too. People calling for George's head and death threats and whatnot. And I think to myself, "This is the man you gave you what you love. Star Wars would literally not exist without him, and you're saying all these things about him? What's wrong with you?"

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

MegaTen fans have some of the dumbest instances of in-fighting I've ever seen.

You've got the people who only like the Shin Megami Tensei series and hate all the Persona players...

and then you've got MORE in-fighting amongst the Persona players between people who liked P1/P2 and think those who came in with P3/P4 are ruining the series for everyone...and then you've also got JUST the P4 people who fight against everyone else, ever, trying to claim the the Megami Tensei franchise will never have a more precious jewel than P4.

MegaTen fans are nuts. There are layers upon layers of in-fighting and hatred amongst us. We're like a big onion of hate and hurt feelings.

Spoiler: Video relevant

The Escapist isn't so bad for this, but elsewhere on the internet, you can get a ton of abuse just for liking the whole franchise. Like you have to pick a damned side.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Light Side Sith

You've never seen an argument until you've seen THAT argument.

Evil Paladins.
The passion involved on both sides of these arguments borders on the scary

Are we talking about alignments. Nothing splits a fanbase of a game more than alignment issues. Talk to any D&D player about how to "properly" play chaotic evil and you'll be in for a treat.

 

[WindKnight]

Frenzy is Red, Rumble is blue!
or the other way around.

The whole Windblade kerfuffle comes to mind too. And any time someone says they love a particular toy of a character, someone is going to find reasons to start a flamewar about how another toy of the same character is so much better.

Or how the wrong colour eyes ore some silly decals make an awesome figure Ruined Forever.

 

[Queen Michael]

Whether Aeris should be called Aeris or Aerith. Her name in the actual game is Aeris. Quod erat motherfucking demonstrandum.

 

[Dreadman75]

For me it has to be the fans of Fallout 3 vs. Fans of all the other Fallout games, particularly New Vegas.

Jesus! The arguments I've seen spring up over those games can get pretty spiteful, to the point of some people declaring Fallout 3 non-canon just because of some continuity errors and a Brotherhood of Steel that isn't a set of complete pricks. Christ!

 

[Mangod]

It's never got to anything approaching gaming flamewar levels, but I've seen heated arguments about what colour Legolas' hair should be (Tolkien never explicitly states it). Basically there's a passage that can sometimes be interpreted as showing he has dark hair, but there are equally strong indications that he's blond. Short of finding a hidden manuscript or something, there is literally no way anyone could prove it one way or the other so the whole thing is completely pointless.

While on the subject of Lord of the Rings, there's the never-ceasing argument over wheter or not the Balrog has wings or not. Does it really matter that much? The point is that he kills Gandalf; anything else is tangential to that plot-twist.

 

[Cooperblack]

Technology : Star Wars Vs. Star trek - those dabates always ends in tears'n'rage.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Do Balrogs have wings or don't they have wings? Do they have them but cannot use them? Can they use them but won't they? Won't they use them because they don't get a chance? The source of conflict comes from the Khazad-dûm chapter where the Balrog's shadow "reached out like two vast wings" and, further down the text, "its wings were spread from wall to wall", leaving it unclear whether this is a continuation of the shadow metaphor or it is truly deploying wings. The fact that a lot of Balrogs seem to plummet to their deaths (Glorfindel vs. Balrog, Gandalf vs. Durin's Bane) doesn't help the wing scenario. To further confuse things, Tolkien described the Balrogs in The Silmarillion as moving "with winged speed" (is their speed "winged" because it's really fast, or because there are literal wings?).

 

[mitchell271]

If you think any of the stuff mentioned is bad, have a look at the in-fighting in the metal community. Holy shit, do people get pissed easily there. Go to a place like Metal Injection, Metal Hammer, Loudwire, really doesn't matter, and you'll see people bitching about how band X isn't metal, how you have to act as a metalhead, how some legends are and have always been shit, and finally, the one I don't understand at all, the use of "liberal/leftist" and "vegan" as insults.

If you step back and look at it, it's hilarious because of all the people getting legitimately worked up over someone calling a deathcore band like Whitechapel metal. Deathcore is literally a subgenre of metal!

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Just about everything between Bioware fans... which may seem hypocritical, as I usually get involved in it. In my defense, though, I mostly try to get everyone to get along, and only really argue against the really dumb things they say (Such as "DURE, STARCHILD'S LOGIC IS BAD, MUST BE PROBLEM WIT DA ENDING... AND NOT, YOU KNOW, DA FACT DAT HE'S DA VILLAIN AND SUPPOSED TO HAVE LOGIC YOU DISAGREE WITH, HURE.")

 

[Legion]

Just about everything between Bioware fans... which may seem hypocritical, as I usually get involved in it. In my defense, though, I mostly try to get everyone to get along, and only really argue against the really dumb things they say (Such as "DURE, STARCHILD'S LOGIC IS BAD, MUST BE PROBLEM WIT DA ENDING... AND NOT, YOU KNOW, DA FACT DAT HE'S DA VILLAIN AND SUPPOSED TO HAVE LOGIC YOU DISAGREE WITH, HURE.")

From what I have seen, most peoples issue wasn't that it's logic was bad, but that Shepard made practically no effort to refute it. The problem was that the game originally never gave you an option to do anything but go along with it. Considering this wasn't the case with Sovereign or The Harbinger, it made little sense that Shepard would suddenly meekly follow it without a fight.

 

[Darren716]

I think the dumbest, yet most hilarious, case of infighting was with MLP and making Twilight a princess, now I don't engage with the community too much and it is mostly because of the amount of drama they kick up over the slightest thing which is pretty funny to watch from a distance. We knew about the change months before hand because of info from episode synopses and it was impossible to avoid spoilers for the season 3 finale where she does become a princess. Before the episode even aired massive amount of people stopped watching the show out of fear of how much it would change, despite assurance from the creators that the status-quo would be maintained. Fast forward a few months to season 4 and absolutely nothing has changed for the most part, hell in most episodes during season 4 you could have removed Twilight's princess-hood entirely and nothing would be different from the episode.

 

[JayRPG]

It's never got to anything approaching gaming flamewar levels, but I've seen heated arguments about what colour Legolas' hair should be (Tolkien never explicitly states it). Basically there's a passage that can sometimes be interpreted as showing he has dark hair, but there are equally strong indications that he's blond. Short of finding a hidden manuscript or something, there is literally no way anyone could prove it one way or the other so the whole thing is completely pointless.

It's so true.

He is a Sindar but that only means his hair color can be dark or silver.

The only thing one can logically assume is that he definitely *could* have had blonde hair, just like his Father Thranduil who definitely had blonde hair.

I like to think his hair is blonde/silver, all the coolest elves have blonde/silver hair.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I try really, REALLY hard to avoid fandoms but if we consider The Escapist as a whole as fans of entertainment in general, I have one example. A few years back when Extra Credits left it felt like a lot of regulars here on the forums were either siding with the site as a whole or, EC. If I recall right a lot of people left with EC.

Oh wait, I got another one! The Sonic Boom reveal though that was a lot funnier than anything...and I don't think there are many people who defend the new character designs...never mind.

 

[Fox12]

Shipping is the cancer that kills fan love.

Pretty much this, it can get pretty ridiculous. I guess I can understand it if the story doesn't have any romance (in which case it doesn't really matter anyway) but there are situations where the fans disagree with the AUTHOR of all people.

Also, great Avatar.

Do Balrogs have wings or don't they have wings? Do they have them but cannot use them? Can they use them but won't they? Won't they use them because they don't get a chance? The source of conflict comes from the Khazad-dûm chapter where the Balrog's shadow "reached out like two vast wings" and, further down the text, "its wings were spread from wall to wall", leaving it unclear whether this is a continuation of the shadow metaphor or it is truly deploying wings. The fact that a lot of Balrogs seem to plummet to their deaths (Glorfindel vs. Balrog, Gandalf vs. Durin's Bane) doesn't help the wing scenario. To further confuse things, Tolkien described the Balrogs in The Silmarillion as moving "with winged speed" (is their speed "winged" because it's really fast, or because there are literal wings?).

I'm fairly certain that they would have to have wings, since Morgoth called them to fight ungoliant (I'm such a geek) in the mountains. Or maybe their like Sauron, and can take on multiple forms. Didn't the Balrog change forms when he fought Gandalf in the books?