Donny Cates and fandom

[JKtheMac]

I just get so much second-hand embarrassment when I see stuff like this. I love my favorite characters. There are some months when I spend over $50 on comics. But fictional characters are never, ever more important than real, live people and their safety. I’ll never understand why anyone thinks it’s okay to do stuff like this to creators (or anyone). Even though I have a Twitter and a Facebook I sometimes think social media was a mistake.

Indeed Social Media has been an utter disaster. We have allowed companies to feed on our passions for financial gain, and by a process of positive feedback those passions have been amplified. Anger is suddenly a commodity.

[charliehustle415]

Indeed Social Media has been an utter disaster. We have allowed companies to feed on our passions for financial gain, and by a process of positive feedback those passions have been amplified. Anger is suddenly a commodity.

Preach brother.

Because of the access we have to creators people think that they have a say in the creative process.

[U.N. Owen]

All I see are people who don't understand that just because you put time, energy, and resources into something, you do not own it.

If that's the case, then I own an entire school system based on the amount of hours I spent doing volunteer work.

[skyvolt2000]

All I see are people who don't understand that just because you put time, energy, and resources into something, you do not own it.

If that's the case, then I own an entire school system based on the amount of hours I spent doing volunteer work.

The issue is not enough folks putting their FOOT down and stopping this mess from day one.

We have seen too much of one set of folks getting attacked and getting ignored for so long that the group attacking feels ENTITLED to go after whoever they want.

I’ll never understand why anyone thinks it’s okay to do stuff like this to creators (or anyone). Even though I have a Twitter and a Facebook I sometimes think social media was a mistake.

Because they KEEP seeing it done to others to little of no consequences.

Because those others are not deem important.

[Shadowcat]

Oof. The incels are in full force right now on Cates. They keep shooting themselves in their Ken doll fronts.

[Steroid]

This is straight up pathetic. Death threats over a comic story is truly sad. Cates damn sure doesn't deserve it and I for one love his work.

[Celgress]

Pathetic, disgusting, moronic, indecent, inhuman, appalling, hateful, there are not enough negative adjectives to describe how I feel about these actions by "fans".

Edit - Also, shipping any human being with an alien jellyfish who needs a host to thrive is simply put perverse and then doing it to the put you contemplate killing someone over it is utterly insane. Oh, and did I mention these are fictional characters, jeez...

[Celgress]

...Simply stop reading it, and read the stories you have loved in the past and wait until the creator finishes their run.

That's what I did with Spider-Man after OMD (not because I was an ardent Peter/MJ shipper rather because I hated how the character had essentially been regressed to just after his high school days). I returned to the franchise during Superior Spider-Man because the concept intrigued me.

[Drops Of Venus]

From what I understand, it's because he doesn't romanticize the relationship between Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote to actual romantic levels (it's a shipping thing), nor does he portray Eddie and the symbiote meeting and becoming Venom as an inherently great thing. I think a lot of this is fed by the recent movie, which changed their dynamic to more about two kindred spirits meeting and becoming essentially the best thing to happen to them, with them being Venom only having positive consequences for the world at large as they save it. Contrast this to the actual books, where they were often a negative force, killing people and making the world more dangerous as their relationship was built on a shared delusion and hatred for Spider-Man.

Oh. It's a case of people being upset about non-movie synergy that's more concerned about actual continuity. Ironic.

Of all the ships in the world, are you telling me people are sending death threats over Venom/Eddie?

[chamber-music]

I really think there are probably a few comic fans out there that are full on Annie Wilkes (the crazy obsessed fan from Stephen King book/movie Misery)

If you don't like something then don't buy it. Threatening anyone with physical harm because of fictional characters is crazy.

[Jekyll]

Social media has been and is a complete cancer on our society.

[JKtheMac]

Social media has been and is a complete cancer on our society.

Perhaps, but we should see it for what it is. Adam Curtis once said “In our age of individualism, we see computers as ways through which we can express our individuality. But the truth is that the computers are really good at spotting the very opposite. The computers can see how similar we are, and they then have the ability to agglomerate us together into groups that have the same behaviours.”

When you look at it like this it’s becomes very apparent that this kind of group mentality is just an unintended consequence of marketing. Social media mainly focuses on our shopping habits and occasionally on our voting habits. It doesn’t really learn much about us. But it is really good at encouraging groups to come together and be ‘advertised at’.

Who cares if some people group together and ship Eddie and Venom. They are not doing anyone any harm right? They are just like any other self selected group, we can sell them stuff. Then all of a sudden we realise that collecting people into narrow groups is actually quite unnatural. It seems to encourage radical behaviour. Who’s fault is that?

Maybe if we stopped telling the internet our shopping and voting habits we could avoid this strange phenomenon. Would people with unusual likes and dislikes still find each other? Perhaps, but they wouldn’t have a huge machine pushing them together for the sake of marketing, so maybe those groups would be less artificial and would feel less like they need to prove themselves to each other. They wouldn’t be force fed each other’s views in a desperate attempt to create unities and divisions, by an uncaring computer algorithm trying to work out what music we might like, or what clothes we are likely to buy.

[Huntsman Spider]

The issue is not enough folks putting their FOOT down and stopping this mess from day one.

We have seen too much of one set of folks getting attacked and getting ignored for so long that the group attacking feels ENTITLED to go after whoever they want.




Because they KEEP seeing it done to others to little of no consequences.

Because those others are not deem important.

Good point, actually. As bad as this is, stuff like this was happening to other creators --- other people, period --- across the board beforehand and the corporations that created and owned these platforms did nothing (meaningful) to crack down on the abuse and threats (some of which even crossing over into real life) being hurled around with reckless abandon because A) "it's just free speech, man!" and more importantly B) the people most frequently and/or viciously targeted by said abuse and threats were "others" viewed or deemed "too abnormal" for certain spaces in the digital public sphere. It's not free speech if someone is threatening someone else's life over how that person exercises his or her or their right to self-expression, whether it's Donny Cates or one of those "others" having been previously threatened by the same kind of entitled jack@$$es running wild on the Internet in general and social media in particular.