On the Toxicity of Fandoms and the Madness of Crowds
Groucho Marx said, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member,” and over the course of my life I have found this to be sound advice.
I wanted to talk about the recent revelations about Neil Gaiman, then I remembered that I said I was going to focus on nature. Well, today I focus on human nature, specifically the herd mentality of groups. I believe the victims, and if you want to argue otherwise, the unsubscribe button is right below this paragraph. Having worked with the National Association to Protect Children as their Social Media Coordinator1, I learned that people of any political persuasion will defend some celebrity they like, and pillory those they do not. The Catholics defend the priests, the nerds defend the nerds, the right defend the right, the left defends the left. So you are not special if you think the President-Elect is a rapist, but “have questions” about the accusations against someone who wrote something cool.
Moving on.
Groucho Marx said, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member,” and over the course of my life I have found this to be sound advice. I learned this early, when I started going to science fiction conventions. My first was a Creation Con, which at the time was mostly Star Trek fans, but everyone else went because it was what we now call a “safe space,” a term which has been overused to the point of having no meaning. It was not a safe space, and conventions rarely are. I dressed as Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and my friend dressed as Tom Baker’s Doctor Who, and we met a bunch of old nerds and had a good time. When we went out for a Papaya King hotdog, one woman said, “Let’s go freak the mundanes.” Walking the streets of Manhattan, sneering at people who looked at us twice, flaunting our numbers.
I didn’t know what the term “freaking the mundanes” meant, because in the face of bullying at my high school, I decided to let my freak flag fly at full mast. I wore the tiger stripe fatigues that the guys at the VFW coin show gave me, and festooned it with patches, buttons, and a Dead Kennedys back patch, and also wore Borris Vallejo tee-shirts, and occasionally a fox mask. I figured if I was going to be made fun of for being in the National Honors Society yet forgoing the preppies to hang with Dungeons & Dragons nerds, burnouts, metalheads, hippies, and punks, I was going to at least enjoy myself.
What “freak the mundanes” meant was that the nerds had made their own clique, like the jocks who beat them up. Back then, it was a defense mechanism. Getting beaten up for liking comic books was a real thing, and “dudebros” driving around in cars looking for people to harass was the only sport more acceptable than football. (I wrote about getting jumped by three high school jocks in “The Little Gold Colt,” and you can read about it there.) Long before nerds took over the monoculture, their little fiefdoms and fandoms became toxic. Isaac Asimov had fans that were known to bully others at cons; Marion Zimmer Bradley had a rape cult in her house that was allowed to flourish and seek victims; DragonCon had a child rapist on its board, and would not expel him until writers like Joe R. Lansdale refused to be a guest. And most famously, science fiction writer L. Rob Hubbard started his own cult2, of which the Gaiman family were members. You can read all about it in “There Is No Safe Word,” in Vulture magazine, or in print in New York magazine. Needless to say, the guy who mockingly named a book Trigger Warnings needs a trigger warning. Not that any story about sexual assault is easy to stomach, but this one is extreme. You have been warned.
In most human societies, and nonconformity is treated with shame and exclusion, which makes the excluded grasp for stories that make them feel included.
It may seem like I’m bagging on science fiction nerds in particular, but this happens with any exclusive group. Nerds are just as exclusive as jocks; if you work out, and it’s not lightsaber fencing, you may get called a “dudebro,” for example. But enough about them. I’ve been disappointed in fandoms since I was a teenager, and SF fans are not exceptional in this respect. Any fandom that gets large enough can have these problems. There are more rules to being a punk than being a straight. Most fandoms have more unwritten rules than a Homeowners Association.
In most human societies, nonconformity is treated with shame and exclusion, which makes the excluded grasp for stories that make them feel included. Some grasp it so tightly that they see the creator as some sort of magical person, a leader, a savior. It’s easy to dismiss all this as “cultish,” and ignore the alienation that causes it. This isn’t something that weak people do, it’s something that people do, whether they glom onto a preacher, a writer, a movie star, a fictional character, or a persona of their own creation.3
The majority of victims do not go on to become abusers. Those who do are the outliers, and they do not get absolution for having been victims themselves.
As long as this alienation exists, other broken people will take advantage of it. By all means, anyone who abuses this relationship is as broken as the victims, but they are not a victim in that relationship. They may have been victimized themselves, but as survivors of abuse will tell you, there is rarely a “cycle of abuse.” The majority of abused children do not go on to become abusers, whether they have children, or are child-free. The majority of victims do not go on to become abusers. Those who do are the outliers, and they do not get absolution for having been victims themselves. That doesn’t mean you can’t have sympathy. My own sympathy may be a renewable resource, but it is still a limited one, and I save it for the victims. The abuser can have some when they make serious amends to their victims. Anything less is a step away from redemption. Having read Gaiman’s response, my opinion is that he is still playing the harmless nerd facade and will make no amends. He has too much money and power to face any real consequences. The fact that Vulture lists what film projects are “on hiatus,” as if it’s some sort of punishment for raping eight people, shows how little justice we expect powerful men to face. Call me when he’s Diddy’s roommate. I won’t be holding my breath.
Movies, books, and TV shows are the livelihood of millions of people who aren’t rapists.
Before you think I’m trying to guilt you for watching Good Omens, I honestly could not give two shits what media you consume. Roman Polanski is a rapist, and yet I will watch Rosemary’s Baby. I have suspicions that Charles Dodgson was, and I’ll be re-reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland this year. I’m not going to finish reading Norse Mythology because I found it tiresome.4 Movies, books, and TV shows are the livelihood of millions of people who aren’t rapists, and if you want to watch a show that some abuser was involved in, you can assuage your guilt by knowing that you are helping them. It’s up to you to be your own personal Anubis, and weigh your sinful heart against the feather, and decide what you want to do. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
There will be no comment section. Feel free to email me your diatribe about how you are unsubscribing because American Gods made you feel good, and I will gladly never darken your inbox again.
For the record, I only lasted a little over a year. Parasocial relationships are inherently toxic, and people on social media will turn on a child if it means being able to like their TV show without having to think, “oh yeah, that guy rapes kids.”
My friend
has written quite a bit about cults, and I recommend her book Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing, as well as her newsletter, . She also writes about a lot of other things quite well.You can read all about that in my essay, “The Beast in Me.”
Thor’s a dumb jock, Loki is evil, but he’s still cool because he’s Loki. Yawn. Total nerd fan service.