*DISCLAIMER: I AM TRYING TO BE AS UNBIASED AS POSSIBLE IN ORDER TO ALLOW OTHERS TO FORM THEIR OWN OPINION. I AM ONLY TRYING TO INFORM, NOT TO PERSUADE.*
Also, this is a long one…
No matter what, every fandom gets its share of hate. Even big fandoms, such as the anime community, first-person shooter fans, and others are disliked, usually from competing fandoms or by people who are against what that fandom stands for. But there are some fandoms that seem to receive a larger amount of hate than others.
While it is hard to find an agreement on what the most disliked fandom is, Bronies seem to be pretty high up on most people’s list. Some dislike it for the “un-manliness” of it, others hate it for, as several people have said, “shoving ponies down everyone’s throat” (not literally, of course). One of the complaints I have heard most is the pornography, but that comes with every fandom. Even Jurassic Park and Call of Duty have pornography located somewhere on the internet. As for shoving ponies down everyone’s throats, every fandom does this to an extent. Bronies do, however, do this more than most other fandoms. As far as the lack of masculinity in being a Brony, most people involved in the fandom consider “manliness” as a stereotype- something that doesn’t apply to everyone in all situations.
Five Nights at Freddy’s, abbreviated as FNAF, is arguably the second-most hated fandom. The main complaint with this one is that it is “taking over the internet” in chat boards, fan art and fiction websites, and other web media. However, Bronies are doing the same thing and have been for some time. While this does not excuse FNAF, it shows that it’s not unique to this fandom. It’s really just an annoyance to people who don’t like the fandom to have FNAF and My Little Pony fan art appear whenever they google anything.
Now that we’ve discussed why people hate fandoms, let’s talk about why people get into these fandoms in the first place. Why do people find interest in “cosplay” or “shipping?” Why do we get involved with these fandoms in the first place? According to one researcher, it has to do with empathy.
Abby Norman of http://www.themarysue.com/ and http://www.notabbynormal.com./ says that “One thing that helps us empathize with family and friends, no matter what our baseline capabilities to do so are, is trying to fill in the details of what we don’t know about their situation. Interestingly enough, this is also more or less what we do with fictional characters; in fact, it’s sometimes easier to empathize with them because we are often given, expositionally, far more detailed and intimate knowledge of a character than we would ever know about someone in our real lives. And, as in life, it’s our nature to fill in the blanks when we’re presented with a character that we haven’t gotten to know very well yet. Fanfiction is one way that we do this on a community level. Headcanons, a term in fandom that refers to what an individual believes to be true about a character, even though it’s not “canon”, are another way that we flesh out the details of these character’s lives as we attempt to understand and, ultimately, feel for them on some level.” Later in the article (I’m referring to the fifth link under “Sources”), Abby goes on to state that we can often connect with these written or drawn worlds almost as much as with the real world. The example she used is that “When we read about the scent of coffee, for instance, the olfactory center of our brain lights up. We can’t really smell it, but we’re familiar with the scent and we can conjure it up.” While we, in our thoughts, know that it’s just a bunch of pixels on a TV or a bunch of words on paper, our minds interpret it as if it’s actually happening. This is especially true with TV and other visual media, as we can actually “see” what’s going on instead of imagining it based on written words. This could explain why movies and TV seem to have more fans than books.
Another point, made by philosopher Kendall Walton, is the idea that emotions we experience during the viewing of a film or book are not “real” emotions, but more like “quasi-emotions,” based not upon reality, but make-believe. For example, when a father pretends to be a dragon or a monster to play with his children, the children have little trouble “believing” that he is a scary beast, but they will have forgotten about their “fear” within an hour. These quasi-emotions are what allow us to have a good laugh after watching a horror film; we almost enjoy being scared, saddened, or whatever other emotions we get from a fictional work.
Tamar Gendler, another philosopher, theorizes that we have two levels of consciousness: Belief (what tell us that fiction is just that- fictional.), and “alief,” the ability to suspend disbelief and tell our subconscious that it is real. This explains why we get so attached to fictional characters; to our mind, they are real.
Anyway, I’ve explained what some common complaints with fandoms are and why people get involved in fandoms, so I’ll just leave it at that for now. I may or may not make a part two to this article, as there is a lot to cover on the topic.
Sources:
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