Vanity Fair: When Fandoms Stop Playing Nice

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Pop culture used to unite people. Now Star Wars, DC, and Marvel have all been plagued by vicious behavior. Can we fix this?

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More than two decades later, during which time fan culture has become bigger, stronger, and far more contentious, those words seem prophetic, not just for Star Wars but for other franchises with epic fandoms such as DC, Marvel, and Harry Potter. Discord and division have become a problem for nearly every major studio. Social media is partly, if not entirely, to blame. It took a notoriously dark turn over the past half dozen years, and a new breed of fans evolved known as stans, a more relentless, excessive kind of admirer. Now every franchise deals with a subset of “fans” who see their devotion as a license to make threats, use racist and sexist language, and engage in Twitter dogpiles.

Sometimes the negativity is fomented by influencers and media figures who want clout or clicks. But some admirers can also go radioactive if they don’t like the direction a story goes, or if an onscreen romance they’re hoping for never happens.

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Star Wars actors John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran, who endured years of hatred hurled at them merely for doing their part to expand representation in the galaxy, have openly pushed back on the haters. (As Boyega has tweeted, “I don’t frick with you no more.”) Fan coordinators—who used to build hype by organizing events and sending out newsletters—now find themselves sparring with rowdy hordes online. What’s a franchise to do? “The loss of some of the movement is not as important as getting rid of the bad apples,” says a source who helps stage pop culture events. “Most of the big players would rather stay out of it, but they’re starting not to be so idle.”

In the past, franchises tried a hands-off approach with regard to toxic fans, thinking that feeding the trolls nourished them and that defending someone under attack could exacerbate the situation. But left unchecked, conflict can metastasize into abuse. The example cited by many in Hollywood is the following surrounding filmmaker Zack Snyder’s films for DC. That contingent cleverly lobbied Warner Bros. to release Snyder’s cut of Justice League but were soon overshadowed by a subset of fans who sometimes menaced critics and studio executives alike with violent words and imagery. Snyder, who had focused on fans who did real-world good deeds like raising money for suicide prevention, has denounced the bad actors to V.F., though the troll element remains.

Right now Hollywood is trying to nurture healthier followings rather than just growing them as large as possible. The fans don’t always have to like the movies, TV shows, or books, and they are welcome to disagree with each other. Debate is part of the fun. But the goal is to be more reasonable, and maybe even kinder. Getting older fans to drop their toxicity is trickier than ensuring new fans never travel down that path, so some are trying to teach “good fandom,” just like schools once taught good citizenship.

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