Column - Does Social Media Ruin Everything?

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With access to creators only an @ away, does social Media Do more harm than good?

The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Sylvia
Coop, it brings me no pleasure to announce that we have to talk about the internet again. Worse still, we have to talk about the internet while on the internet, thus contributing to more internet. It's a vicious cycle. But we'll have to make do.

Coop

Catching today's Needy Girl Overdose has me more than ready to swim back into the internet muck. Oddly enough, it sounds like the series' themes have been more than a little relevant to a recent story or two concerning creators and their overzealous (to put it kindly) fanbases.

The scrolling sure does feel doom-ridden these days.

And certainly, the phenomena of fandom and specifically online fandom are hardly new developments. We can trawl ancient Usenet texts and find all manner of friendly banter and heated arguments about the nerd activities of that day. Fanbases are made up of people, and people really haven't changed in the amount of time that "fandom" has been around. Nevertheless, it's been particularly bad as of late. Just last week, Syundei, the mangaka behind Go For It, Nakamura-kun!! left Twitter, and both the cause of and reaction to that have been interesting, to say the least.

The illustrations that kicked off this frenzy are included in ANN's video version of the story, and they're more tame (and silly) than the backlash implies. If this all popped up in good faith, I would understand the concern, but this is really just an author having some goofy fun with their characters—not anything super devious from what I can tell. It seems that many of Syundei's peers agree with me.

As they should! In no uncertain terms, I do not believe Syundei did anything remotely wrong. This situation sucks big time. But it does point to some recent and troubling developments in our collective experience online. This first one is exclusive to Twitter, but it may have contributed to the harassment: the brain geniuses in charge of the site very recently turned on auto-translate. I don't know about you, but I certainly do not trust Grok to facilitate the potential linguistic nuances of a cross-cultural debate.

And more generally, it's just one example of many instances in which buggy AI continues to be foisted on the public, quality and consequences be damned. Even if those consequences are "making everybody's lives literally worse."

I'd also hope this is an additional sign for people to leave that hell site. I can almost guarantee that other platforms like Bluesky have played host to similar situations, but that one's not a digital nazi bar like the Everything app is.

There's also another factor of the Nakamura-kun situation I'd like to mention—mainly because this seems to be a recurring problem around adaptations. A part of the harassment toward Syundei appeared to originate from a solid chunk of fans who were upset that the anime wasn't 1:1 to the book.

I'd like to point to this little nugget from anime legend Masao Maruyama on that. He shared many more anecdotes like this when I spoke with him at last year's Animazement, but I think he's scratching at a sense of entitlement that often emerges in stories like this. It's honestly giving me flashbacks to the nonsense Chainsaw Man director Ryū Nakayama allegedly had to deal with.

There's the obvious strain of puritanism that factors into Syundei's harassment, but this "manga puritanism" is arguably more insidious. Fans treat the manga like it's their bible, so any deviation is treated as a grave blasphemy. Lucky for them, most adaptations nowadays do not venture far outside the bounds set by their source material. I don't foresee us getting another Fullmetal Alchemist situation anytime soon. Taken to its extreme, though, this attitude is fundamentally anti-art.

Which is, admittedly, kind of the problem. These fans don't care about art. They care about getting more stuff that resembles the stuff they already enjoy. They want content. There's no room for difficulty, challenge, or envelope-pushing.

And content that meets their exact specifications.

The crew behind The Amazing Digital Circus has been in the crosshairs for having the audacity to... tell its story the way they want to? And take advantage of their momentum to put the final episode in movie theaters in a move that could revolutionize independent animation as we know it?

It's honestly embarrassing when the boss of an indie animation outfit has to get out there and basically say, "Don't be mad at us for taking a big, important swing."

Both anime and cartoon fanbases are united in their inability to be normal about the things they like. We're not so different after all.

I think this most recent kerfuffle with TADC, and with the harassment of its creator, Gooseworx in particular, highlights another pervasive and exacerbating issue: the lack of a divide between artist and audience. While this is somewhat of a two-way street, in that an artist has to opt into interacting with fans on social media and such, I think this becomes less and less of a choice as artists are increasingly expected to wear many hats, including that of their own PR rep. Not to mention that some fanbases' admiration of artists can warp into an expectation of access to those same artists, which may also pressure them into these ultimately toxic relationships.

Wow, what a crazy coincidence!!

I know, right?

This situation also brings Gachiakuta creator Kei Urana's recent social media harassment (also on Twitter; funny that) to mind. Allegedly, a handful of the author's characters didn't fit widely established fan canons, and it got messy from there. Headcanons are fun nonsense to play around with, not something to be shoved in a creator's face. I'd love to link to a further story on this one, but I noticed that the grifter shoutmen types had quickly taken the wheel here. Which also reminds me how there are plenty of bad actors abound who are looking to twist these stories for clicks—especially when discussions of potentially queer characters pop up.

As bad as harassing artists off the internet is on its own, it feels extra gross when these incidents become grist for the reactionary content mill. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for bad-faith charlatans to latch onto any given controversy, play up and/or invent salacious aspects, and turn it into an even bigger deal that breaches the containment of the artist's original niche. Even more unfortunately, because these aforementioned charlatans aren't bound by the rules and regulations of journalism, they can flood the narrative with misleading or outright false information that muddies any hope for a productive discussion.

As much as I'm loath to admit it, the machinery of Gamergate remains as well-oiled as ever.

Thinking about many of the problems can be boiled down to weird dudes (derogatory) who take out their frustrations on other people instead of confronting their own problems.

And rolling back to the era of that weird dude (derogatory) percolation, the mid-2010s, the vitriol around series such as Voltron: Legendary Defender and Steven Universe are unfortunately perfect examples of the kind of fandom toxicity we're talking about here. Be it getting upset at the show runners for not leaning into ships or allegedly pushing a fan to the point of self-harm for going against the shipping flow. A fan, mind you, who was apparently off in their own corner, having fun. You might be able to see why the fan communities of both titles have been labeled as "radioactive." A lot of that cartoon and anime fan behavior overlap you mentioned, Sylvia.

One might imagine that this is an inevitable consequence in any media property that accumulates a large enough fanbase. You put that many people together, the topic of conversation almost doesn't even matter—they are going to form factions and foster drama no matter what. Swifties do it. MCU fans do it. Heck, even The Pitt has been prompting headlines about certain vocal sections of its fandom.

I mean, just read this passage. You could write this about Syundei, Gooseworx, or any number of creators who have found themselves in the internet's crosshairs.

It unfortunately reminds me of how many audiences feel the need to have answers to every question posed by a work, but that's a conversation for another column.

It feels as if wide swathes of these viewing audiences are convinced that they're owed this art. They must have the latest JoJo now, or they'll explode into a childish tantrum or go on about how they were right about being preemptively upset over a work. Once a work is put out in the world, it belongs to everyone. However, that's not the case when it's being made. Creators owe the audience nothing outside of simply putting their vision out there. If they don't like that vision, there are plenty of other works out there. Pitching a fit will do no good. Perhaps an influencer will make money off that fit, but that just ends up swirling the same old shit around. Does anyone remember that old anecdote about flies, bees, and spreading honey? Maybe it's time to put that into practice a bit more often.

I wish fans across the board could take a chill pill, but regrettably, I think the root of the problem is systemic. Fandom spaces were, at one time, siloed into their own forums, web rings, or IRCs. These weren't perfect either, but at least they could provide containment. Then social media turned into the internet's public square—importantly, the only public square—and fandom moved into this wide-open space that possessed neither the tools nor the willingness to prevent vitriol and brigading. Because those were activities that drove traffic. And worse, once artists and creators joined, they were an at-sign away from anyone. Literally anyone. That's not a bug; that's a feature.

Numbers go up, eh? There's been an old quote attributed to Bleach's Tite Kubo floating around lately that brutally sums up my feelings on the whole thing. But thinking about how I saw this on social media and that it might've been posted in hopes of utilizing those features has me taking a pause.

Makes me think quite a bit about the intentions behind every post (ours included), even if I like the spirit of this quote. There was a lot of talk around the quote itself, rather than a specific sourced link. Maybe a little heady for this topic, but I think it fits in there somewhere.

It's worth clarifying that it is, indeed, okay to have critiques of a work or be otherwise disappointed by it. And of course I'm going to say that. I am a critic. I write about anime I like, anime I don't like, and everything in between. Criticism, in a way, is my creative outlet for processing the complicated thoughts and feelings I get from any given work, and if you ask me, it's a healthy and rewarding one. And notably, it's a far cry from screaming directly at somebody who made a thing that happened to rub me the wrong way. I might write a vitriolic reaction or scathing review of an anime, but I'd never seek out the director and @ them a list of complaints with the expectation they comply in 30 days or less.

I absolutely agree! It's perfectly fine to dislike or even utterly despise a work, but getting right up in a creative's face ain't it, chief. At the end of the day, it's just a cartoon. No big deal if you or I don't like it—there's other stuff out there too.

And a compounding problem with expressing that shit on social media instead is the game of telephone that happens. As you demonstrated up there, this is a machine built to strip context and add accelerant to the most fiery statements. That's how you get incensed accusations out of Syundei, drawing silly bonus illustrations. People stop caring about—or aren't even aware of—the original context. They just fall in line behind the loudest voices.

Criticism, when done right (or at least done the way I like it), means you're interrogating yourself alongside the work. A modicum of self-reflection goes a long way towards stopping the impulse to brigade, bandwagon, and brandish the torches and pitchforks.

Before you can move mountains, you have to move your mind!

Truer words have never been spoken. Or sung.

Maybe once we've done that, we can Try Again.

Trying again is, seriously, probably our only recourse. I mean, how do we fix this? I don't know. I think Syundei made the right move to skedaddle off Twitter. But that is often not a real option for smaller and more marginalized creators whose livelihoods might rely on being active online. Anyone who's remotely queer or "alternative" rolls the dice every day. Maybe they'll get two sixes and eke out a modest living catering to a small but dedicated audience. Maybe they'll roll snake eyes and become the main character of the day, withstanding insults and death threats until it becomes too much. I wish I had a solution, but I feel like many more fundamental issues with our modern world need to be addressed before we'll ever see the internet mellow out.

Which is, I know, a bummer of a note to end on. Them's the breaks! Internet bad.