Fanbase entitlement

[Roz]

@Ganymede Yes, there's a big difference between quizzing people for existing in a certain t-shirt and quizzing people in response to them talking up their knowledge and inviting it. You're right that I was definitely given the impression that you were using this quiz as a sort of opening act for anyone in a Transformers shirt. (And the whole conversation did start from a random example of fandom gatekeeping that does in fact do this as if it's a reasonable method of conversation.) I do still find how you talk about checking your boxes a bit off-putting and judgey (as opposed, I guess, to just being like, "oh nevermind they're not into the specific show I'm into," but maybe that's all your checkboxes mean, idk). I'd be kind of bothered if someone told me that they were like secretly quizzing me to determine if I was enough of a fan of something.

[Thenomain]

@Karmageddon said in Fanbase entitlement:

I still believe that if someone can't name, at the very least, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come As You Are," and player's choice of "In Bloom," "Lithium," "Polly," or "Heart-Shaped Box," they are dipshits for wearing a Nirvana t-shirt.

I'm sorry, can you rephrase that? All I heard was, "I am a judgmental gatekeeper of fun." Maybe I have wasted too much of my life trying to enjoy things.

[Karmageddon]

@Thenomain
If someone can't name three Nirvana songs -- they don't even need to be the singles I listed (well, maybe "Smells Like Teen Spirit" because how the hell can anyone claiming to be a Nirvana fan not know that one?) that still play on many rock and alt-rock radio stations to this day -- I think that person is a dipshit for wearing a Nirvana t-shirt. I will extend that Three Song Rule to anyone wearing a t-shirt of any band, especially if said band minimally was as popular as Nirvana was in their heyday.

TL;DR: I believe if someone can't name three songs from a band that still gets a fair amount of airplay 20+ years later, that person is a poser, and I believe posers are dipshits.

ETA: Forgot a word. I also forgot "All Apologies" in my initial list of singles a few posts back, it looks like. Bring on the shaming!

[surreality]

@Ganymede said in Fanbase entitlement:

However, there was a time that the litmus test to figure out who to trust or not revolved around this sort of lore. You know, back in the day when some of us banded together to avoid the wrath of bullies and other sorts of ne'er-do-wells. We didn't have much pride in ourselves, but we knew who belonged and who didn't based on what they knew about esoteric topics.

I recall these days. At the same time... the level of obsession people demand these days is just not something compatible with my real life (or capacity to remember shit, generally).

In ye olden times, it was easy to tell without a litmus test. You gushed about a thing and if somebody joined in, they were of the tribe. It was pretty simple. It never seemed to require a quiz.

I remember when you knew which stores on your coast sold anime anything (and you made frickin' pilgrimages to those obscure locations), not which ones in your town had everything under the sun, and I was still not anywhere near what that link suggests for obsession.

[Karmageddon]

@surreality
Perhaps there were fewer-to-no quizzes back then because it took much more effort to acquire certain things. I remember importing cds from the UK and paying beaucoup bucks every week to get copies of NME and Melody Maker. My brother had to order anime from fans who would do their own English subtitles of what they got from Japan.

[Thenomain]

@Karmageddon said in Fanbase entitlement:

(well, maybe "Smells Like Teen Spirit" because how the hell can anyone claiming to be a Nirvana fan not know that one?)

Because the song does not contain any of the words in the title.

Maybe they're not a "fan". Maybe they're just someone who likes the music and loves the Nevermind album art.

It's good art.

That baby has graduated and is working in advertising, by the way. (edit: Maybe graphic design? It's been a while since I heard that tidbit, so he probably also has a family by now.)

I believe posers are dipshits.

And I believe people who are pedantic in attempt to make a general point are missing the forest for the trees.

Unless you're really bending over backwards trying to say how people can't like Nirvana without being able to name three songs, in which case I'm still going to label you "Fun Police". I'm also going to make fun of you for cherry-picking one point in my larger argument just so you can nit-pick it down to this obtusely pedantic level.

Also, that song is called Come As You Are. DUH.

[surreality]

@Karmageddon That's definitely a thing, as in 'if you even know it exists, you're ahead of the game'. But that's for stuff that's pretty obscure, in the era of the internet. And that's... hipster territory.

[Karmageddon]

@Thenomain
You asked me to clarify my dipshit comment. I did. I can (and do) think certain behavior is dipshit behavior without making a Big Deal about it. I stopped being bent out of shape about that crap back in my 20s.

I actually wrote a whole reply about the history of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and why anyone liking Nirvana enough to advertise that like by wearing a t-shirt would know what the song is called, but then I realized it was too much effort to reply to what was presented, to me, as your cherry-picking, mouthfrothing butthurt.

I don't know if you're just having a bad night. I don't know if someone was super mean to you, once upon a time, because you wore a certain t-shirt. I don't know if you're just spoiling for a fight in some attempt to win points to feel better about life or yourself or whatever. I don't know if you get off on arguing semantics. What I do know is that you come across, to me, as missing the point of what I've said, as well as more interested in winning what seems to be a one-sided argument that I have zero interest in participating.

Also, that song is called Come As You Are. DUH.

As an aside, I have no idea what you mean by that statement. Are you trying to tell me it's supposed to be Come As You Are and not "Come As You Are"? To run the risk of being "obtusely pedantic," as you put it, I will point out that songs titles are, at least by American standards, always in quotation marks. Or maybe you're trying to tell me "All Apologies" isn't called "All Apologies" but is actually called "Come As You Are." Which is also wrong.

You can call me Fun Police. I don't care. Just like I long stopped caring if some poser was wearing [insert whatever here]. I can think poser behavior is dipshit behavior before I move on and give it no further thought. Just like I can think your response to the clarification I gave you (that you snarkily requested) comes across as willfully obtuse, mouthfrothing butthurt. Or maybe you're just bored and bellicose.

Still don't care, and still won't be arsed to engage with you any further once I've hit the submit button. (I'm so anti-fun, I know.)

[Coin]

Oh, it's "talk about posers" time. This brings me back.

I'm not that old. I'm 32. I got into Nirvana after Kurt Cobain died and I wasn't even that into Nirvana, to be fair. Mostly, my friends were grunge and I was like 'yeah, this is cool'. My favorite Nirvana album is Incesticide, because my tastes align more with ska and, more popularly, punk, often of the California hardcore-punk style. I listened to the 90s punk quartet--that's Green Day, The Offspring, Rancid, and NOFX--and was quite happy with that. But I also was down with so many other bands. I've still to meet another person who owns the entire Screeching Weasel discography, including their Ramones cover album (in which they do Ramones covers with such a squeaky voice, it's great) on recorded cassette tapes. Yes. You read right.

I used to call people posers. I never really was a gatekeeper--for some reason i found the right punker community in my city where, when someone didn't know something, we'd--sometimes just a teeny tiny bit condescendingly--learn them about it. We had a dude we called Biblia ("Bible") because he was literally just a repository of punk knowledge. If there was a punk band who had an album and it had been bootlegged internationally, he had listened to it, categorized it, memorized it, and could name all the songs. He was the BEST of us, and his knowledge didn't make him the best of us--his lack of judgment did. When any of us made some mistake--claimed something, whatever--about anything remotely punk, he would just correct it. No 'Actually...' or 'God you guys are dumb, what really happened was...' or 'No, posers, ...' He would just state the fact, and move on. If you didn't care, you didn't care; and he didn't stop passing you the joint or the beer because of it. His measurement of what made you a fan wasn't whether you knew as much as him or even whether you cared about it--it was whether you enjoyed it. That dude was awesome. He died about ten years back. His funeral was punk as fuck.

Further, talking about posers, I know a ton of people who can name every Nirvana song, own every album, know all the lyrics, and still fail to see the forest for the trees when it comes to the messages that Cobain was expressing. People who treat others like fucking crap, people who have told others to "killy ourself", pressured them to drug use, used them, abused them, turned around and blamed Courtney Love for driving Cobain to suicide and then actually gaslit their S.O., and many, many other things that, if you actually listen to Nirvana, consider their social commentary, you would know are pretty fucking incongruent with the band's general message.

Those people are posers. The person who likes the baby and the words 'Nirvana' and 'Nevermind' or got gifted the t-shirt, or whatever? Not a poser. Just a person.

I don't know.

I like to think that if Cobain were alive now, and someone said "You should only be able to wear Nirvana t-shirts if you can name some of their songs" near him, they would be the immediate recipient of his saliva smacking their forehead.

How dare you tell people how to live their lives when they aren't doing shit to you? And how fucking lame is it to have to insult people for shit that is innocuous as fuck?

Have some perspective.

At least get mad at actual idiots, like people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but can't even revolt against their parents. "Viva la revolución, mom, now can you send me my allowance, my Twinky supply is low". Fuck.

[Autumn]

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

At least get mad at actual idiots, like people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but can't even revolt against their parents. "Viva la revolución, mom, now can you send me my allowance, my Twinky supply is low". Fuck.

I am reminded of the guy I once saw wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Che and the caption, "I have no idea who this guy is."

[Coin]

@Autumn said in Fanbase entitlement:

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

At least get mad at actual idiots, like people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but can't even revolt against their parents. "Viva la revolución, mom, now can you send me my allowance, my Twinky supply is low". Fuck.

I am reminded of the guy I once saw wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Che and the caption, "I have no idea who this guy is."

That, I could get behind. At least that's fucking funny.

[Ganymede]

@Roz said in Fanbase entitlement:

I do still find how you talk about checking your boxes a bit off-putting and judgey (as opposed, I guess, to just being like, "oh nevermind they're not into the specific show I'm into," but maybe that's all your checkboxes mean, idk). I'd be kind of bothered if someone told me that they were like secretly quizzing me to determine if I was enough of a fan of something.

I have many faults, and mentally box-checking may be one of them. Those boxes aren't always dichotomous, and I find it useful to narrow conversations to things where there is that sort of mutuality of interest that creates great conversations. The boxes also include things like: "this person clearly knows way more than I do about a particular subject; I may be able to learn something from them."

This scheme is useful for robots. Especially those that are more than meets the eye.

---

@surreality said in Fanbase entitlement:

I recall these days. At the same time... the level of obsession people demand these days is just not something compatible with my real life (or capacity to remember shit, generally).

I have been told I have a remarkable capacity for remembering shit, especially shit that pissed me off enough to remember why. Perhaps, for too long, I lived with the adage of: "forgive, but never fucking forget."

I also remember stupid little bits of geekdom that has no relevance to my real life. Who needs to remember that "Ulugh Beg -- The Watcher" was the Tremere Justicar in Jyhad? Or that, in the same game, Apollonius was the suckiest Brujah that looked like a rip-off of Axl Rose?

Transformers is a bit different for me. Like @Roz, I grew up with a sibling who was also into them. I'm not surprised I missed "Sunstreaker," and it took me a few seconds to recall Ironhide and Ratchet too. I blame this on the fact that my brother and I didn't own them; the others we did, so the memories came back more easily. We still talk about G1 sometimes, even though he's into the new comics (along with his son, my nephew). So, Transformers is a family thing, rather than a mere nerdly obsession.

For many other things, though, buy all the merchandise you want, but if you're going to hold yourself out as a SUPERFAN, please have some knowledge of the band/anime/show. Lots of people do this -- at least, where I live.

Lastly, an exception: economics. Especially politicians. Just don't.

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede said in Fanbase entitlement:

I have been told I have a remarkable capacity for remembering shit, especially shit that pissed me off enough to remember why. Perhaps, for too long, I lived with the adage of: "forgive, but never fucking forget."

Especially for online stuff I find I remember people who pissed me off but not why; the original offence is often lost to time.

At which point, once I realise, I usually let it go because what's the use being pissed off at people for what amounts to no reason?

[Ganymede]

@Arkandel said in Fanbase entitlement:

Especially for online stuff I find I remember people who pissed me off but not why; the original offence is often lost to time.

I wouldn't hold a grudge against someone unless I remembered why I was pissed off at or by them. Perhaps regrettably, I have a long memory when it comes to offenses.

I don't get easily pissed off about anyone, so if I remember the offense, it was probably something quite awful.

[surreality]

@Ganymede said in Fanbase entitlement:

@Arkandel said in Fanbase entitlement:

Especially for online stuff I find I remember people who pissed me off but not why; the original offence is often lost to time.

I wouldn't hold a grudge against someone unless I remembered why I was pissed off at or by them. Perhaps regrettably, I have a long memory when it comes to offenses.

I don't get easily pissed off about anyone, so if I remember the offense, it was probably something quite awful.

...this is me, too. So very much.

I've been doing this for twenty years now. It takes one hell of a lot for somebody to be enough of a shitweasel to even stand out, let alone in a memorable fashion, at this point.

[Cupcake]

Obviously we all need to be playing

[Auspice]

@Cupcake

The one time I played that.. Despite winning...

it stressed me out so much. I don't think I'll ever be in a rush to play again.

[Misadventure]

I need t-shirts with game mechanics on them. That's my nerd.

"Roll Quickness. On a success you draw one card, and one more card per Raise."

And that's downright OBVIOUS folks.

"Subtract Defense Value from Attack Value, if there is a positive value roll Acting Value/5 D6 for Effect."

Awww yeah, that's some sexy stuff right there.

[Cupcake]

@Auspice said in Fanbase entitlement:

@Cupcake

The one time I played that.. Despite winning...

it stressed me out so much. I don't think I'll ever be in a rush to play again.

Unsurprisingly, I love this game. But then again, I don't play gatekeeper for my fandoms outside of playing this game to win it.

(I usually win it. Along with CoH and Risk. Which tells you what kind of person I am.)

[Coin]

@Cupcake said in Fanbase entitlement:

@Auspice said in Fanbase entitlement:

@Cupcake

The one time I played that.. Despite winning...

it stressed me out so much. I don't think I'll ever be in a rush to play again.

Unsurprisingly, I love this game. But then again, I don't play gatekeeper for my fandoms outside of playing this game to win it.

(I usually win it. Along with CoH and Risk. Which tells you what kind of person I am.)

the kind who will one day have to back up all this boasting. [fist shake]