Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Why I don't hang out with film music fans online anymore

On a lark I decided to drop by the FSM boards just now -- why, I have no idea, as I have little functional interest in film music these days other than what I hear myself along the way, and certainly none at all in discussing it -- and I saw a thread called something like "Daniel Craig's message for Bond fans". The lead post in thread is a photo of Craig offering an extended middle finger to the camera -- he's dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and a ball cap, so I assume he was flipping off some intrusive photographer while he was on holiday -- and then the thread turns into a big "We hate Daniel Craig" circle-jerk, with a few people who don't hate Craig chiming in, but not taking it all that seriously.

This is a truly representative comment, cut-and-pasted verbatim from the site:

Daniel Craig gets to use the name, but he is not playing James Bond. He's playing something else. If he read all the books, he couldn't begin to tell you who and what James Bond is because he doesn't get it. He is not Bond, and he will never be Bond. If he is reincarnated as a Sean Connery / George Lazenby / Roger Moore / Timothy Dalton / Pierce Brosnan look-alike, he will still not be James Bond. The deconstructed, politically-corrected, Mother-fixated, pug-ugly character played by Craig is a Mad Magazine version of Bond. When it's all added up by historians and the fans in the near future, Craig's films will have dated the fastest, and his performance will be recognized for the false ejaculation that it is. The franchise makes money no matter who plays the role, so don't take the financial success of Craig's films as some kind of endorsement. If a different actor had worn the suit in the same films they would have earned the same amount of money. Your idolatry for this pathetic actor and his pathetic Bond films tell us more about you than it does about the franchise. Your farting on this board is exactly what I would expect from a Daniel Craig fan. You have the same mentality in common: crass and with no class.

Yeah. And the funniest part is that a few posts prior to this, the same poster indicates that he isn't all that personally invested in the topic. Not as much as others, you see.

In truth, this isn't just film music fans. I don't hang out on any fandom sites of any kind. Drill down far enough, and it gets really ugly. And yes, I hate things too, and I occasionally post about stuff I hate in this space, but at least this is my space.

6 comments:

Geoff Valentine said...

This is spot on, and it highlights why I tend to shy away from discourse on the internet in general. I have backed away from Facebook, nearly abandoned my blog (though I did just recently post again in my ongoing desire to write regularly for pleasure), and have tweeted only infrequently and innocuously. I am no technophobe, but there are times when I think I may have been born in the wrong century. That being said, I bet that there were plenty of hardheaded, shallow thinking, opinionated jackasses frequenting, say, Viennese coffeehouses in the eighteenth century.

I seem to have written a slightly less innocuous comment than I expected here...

Jason said...

The thing that finally drove me out of the online fan scene (and, to a certain extent, fandom in general) was the endless hysteria over the Star Wars prequels. For a few years there, it simply was not possible to discuss any aspect of Star Wars without it instantly deteriorating into the "Jar Jar went back in time and destroyed my childhood happiness" nonsense. Granted, I've done my fair share of bitching about some of Uncle George's creative and business decisions, but I eventually just got tired of having my dander up all the time.

These days, I find it much, much easier to just say, "eh, you've got your opinion, I've got mine, and ultimately it's all subjective anyhow, isn't it?" I miss the pre-Internet days when SW and, to a lesser extent, Star Trek were kind of a lingua franca for our generation -- Just met somebody? Need a topic for small talk? Star Wars! -- but the endless bickering just sucked all the fun out of it.

fillyjonk said...

Exactly.

I just want to enjoy the stuff I enjoy, without dealing with the people who would pick it to death.

Unknown said...

I don't do all that much discussion (film) music or movies or whatever on the net either... it is time consuming, and time is the one thing these days I do not have aplenty (well, that and unlimited supplies of money, while we're at it).

In any case, I think these discussions can be fun, and even hyperbole can be fun, but personally, I try to spend most of my time more with things I enjoy and that matter to me, and not so much with things that don't. That means: if I didn't like Daniel Craig as Bond (I do, but if I didn't), I'd just skip his movies and watch something else.

Anonymous said...

I don't think that many fans understand the overuse and misuse of the Best Thing Ever label. Once something is crowned as such, some will take shots that they would have passed on before, partially in defense of whatever they think is the BTE.

Other times, one can sour on someone else's BTE from hearing about it. An old friend of mine practically ruined prog rock for a few years by declaring King Crimson (and others) as the BTE and so much better than the "sh!t" I was listening to...and it took years for me to enjoy King Crimson again on their merits without such baggage.

I know people who avoid Dr. Who because of DW fans.

And I know that we sometimes disagree about films, teevee and tunes, but certainly not to this ridiculous degree. At worst, I think it's a shame that you don't take to something I like because I had looked forward to reading what you might write about it.

Roger Owen Green said...

Hated the Grateful Dead for years because of Deadheads.