What Would You Do If You Had the Craziest Fanbase on the Planet?

[powerplantanimations]

Just a hypothetical. What would you do if your fanbase was just... the most toxic thing ever (death threats to people who aren't real fans, death threats to corporations when they don't get their way, death threats towards you because ships). You don't know how it happened, it just did. Would you be the type to just try and control everything or would you take the apathetic route and just keep doing what you're doing?

....Or would you take on a new identity and hide out in another country?

[AxemanRifflord]

Squeeze them for every penny they’re worth...

So they wouldn’t have the resources to hurt anyone.

Yeah, completely exploit them finically for reasons that are in no way self serving.

Any dollar spent on overpriced trash is one they could’ve been spent on something bad. Trust me!

[RedLenai]

I think AxemanRifflord provided a very good and exploitable answer.

Personally speaking, I hope to never have a big fandom or something like that, and if it happens then I'll mostly publish and do my work as I usually do. They are free to support it or if they want me to do things their way, they can always pay if I offer the possibility to do it.
I don't mind it if the hatred is towards me, I can simply ignore that and take advantage of the engagement to boost the activity of my platforms, but when it is to other people, there isn't much I can do. Accounts can be reported yet be remade within seconds, so it is kind of meaningless to try to fight that. Blocking, reporting or similar may actually boost someone's entitlement, so the better course of action would be to simply ignore them and avoid any kind of commentary related to the impact, since the others may find that exploitable.

[NickRowler]

I feel like if something bad happened I might attempt some damage control, like discouraging harassment. This was something I noticed with some actors who got harassed by fans for being in bad films or being unpopular characters (Star Wars and that bad Ghostbusters reboot). I was always annoyed when the creators did nothing to actually stand up for the actors and just let fans chase them off social media.

But if they are truly the "craziest", I might just do nothing. Mostly because anything you say will just be used against you. I know some fandoms and drama just eventually die out, like for Dream Daddy. But then you have some anime fans who pride themselves in being some of the worse people on the internet.

[darthmongoose]

I'm a Homestuck voice actor in the most well-known youtube dub of the comic, and have been through the height of that series' popularity, so I know what really intense fandoms are like. I used to have teenagers contacting me through things like my Skype, which wasn't even publicly listed anywhere, kids just gave it a shot to see if my Skype was the same as my usename on other places. They contacted me through google chat using the email address listed on my website for professional commissions... nowhere was safe except my Facebook, which used my unreasonably long full name, not the name I usually go by, and it was a weekly occurrence even for me as one of the voices of a modestly popular character in a fairly popular fandub.

So... I don't know what I'd do if I was in a position with more fame than that in a fandom with fans that intense. You can try to keep your fans in check as much as you can... but if you have a lot of them, you're bound to get these people who will seek you out everywhere. They think they know you, and that you're their friend, and it's really hard to deal with. I feel like I'd mostly become a bit of a recluse and try to wait for the really intense stage of the fandom to blow over

[RobertBMarks]

Just a hypothetical. What would you do if your fanbase was just... the most toxic thing ever (death threats to people who aren't real fans, death threats to corporations when they don't get their way, death threats towards you because ships).

I'm going to address the toxic part - I would never let it get that far in the first place.

(In what has to be one of the most on-point cases of the environment creating an emotional effect I've seen, I am typing this during a thunderstorm...)

Any large group will always have extremist outliers, but the operative word is "outliers" - they're not going to be representative of the whole. So, under normal circumstances when one shows up, you bring it to the attention of the appropriate authority and move on. For that level of toxicity to become the rule, a LOT has to have gone wrong first.

Take the Gamergate tsunami of 2014 (which I don't mention often because it basically drove me into a fetal position watching it). I use the term "tsunami" for a reason - there was a LOT of pressure waiting to be released. Most of the people in the American gaming community had come up in a high school environment in which they faced targeted harassment that was often supported by the very authority figures who should have been stopping it (if you want to know more, feed your nightmares by looking up "Voices from the Hellmouth"). Once they got out of school, they got hit by moral panic after moral panic (I was one of the writers advocating against the one back in 2000-2002). So, by the time the spark hit, it was setting off a community that had been under siege for at least 30 YEARS (if you don't believe me, look up Patricia Pulling).

(Note: this is an explanation, not an excuse. What happened during those days was inexcusable, but it DID have an explanation...one that just about everybody ignored in favour of using the harassment campaign as the basis for the next moral panic against the gaming community.)

If you take a step back and look at something like the 2016 Ghostbusters movie, there was a LOT of mutual escalation. Anybody criticizing the movie for any reason was treated as though they were a misogynist by the studio and the movie's supporters (speaking as a centrist, it was baffling to watch, and one of the earlier instances of what I now call "PR seppuku"). Were there actual misogynists in the mix at the beginning? Absolutely - but they weren't nearly as common as the movie's supporters claimed. Instead, you got an ongoing escalation that enabled the worst of the extremists while pushing any moderates out of the picture.

So, the way you avoid this is by setting a positive example for your fans to follow, and maintaining it. Deal with outliers quietly and without impacting the rest. Do that, and toxicity never becomes the rule in the first place. There's an old saying that "you get what you give," and that is very true.

True life example: back around 2016 I wrote a pop culture column for The Escapist that was a revival of my old video games issues column back in 2000-2002. The attitude I took was "let's throw ideas around and see what we get." To make sure that this was maintained, every 7th installment was a feedback installment, where I'd highlight the user comments that presented the best form of the argument both for and against the position I had taken. It worked - the column covered topics like diversity, representation, cultural appropriation, the Puppy Wars, etc., and out of over 50 total installments, with people from both the left and right commenting, the comments for ONE got toxic. I don't have a lot of faith in that approach working in pop culture commentary now, but back then it worked like gangbusters, and it all started with what I put out.

(You can't read it there anymore, however - the Escapist was bought by Enthusiast Gaming, and the new editor defamed everybody there under the bus as alt-right sympathizers - not only were most of us either centrists or leftists, but the Editor-in-Chief while I was there was a former member of the Communist Party), causing me to spend a year fighting a defamation suit against them to save my career...during which time editor removed the column out of apparent spite...and possibly to destroy the evidence. They settled, and I saved my career. The good news is that I retained the rights, so they now exist on Medium, as well as on Amazon as collections published by my little publishing company.)

[DasIstWunderblyat]

You get your own villainous minions? The obvious answer is to rule the world!

(But as a serious answer, I'm wary of an unpredictable dog that can bite me, even if its my own and it has never bit me before)

[kyupol]

They will be my private army and harem.

[Iris-Grimoire]

Disappear except to post new pages or whatever. Calling them out doesn't work, singling them out doesn't work, showing your human side makes it worse because it increases the parasocial aspect. Just make them hollow out like a Klonoa fan pre-last month's remake, until they find something else that feeds their need for attention.

[TroyVSTheWorld]

I would let the power go to my head and send them out as an army against people I don't like

I'd give them a code of ethics to only troll trolls

I would not be a healthy experience for the internet, I imagine

[JaveCraze]

admit defeat.. and keep on posting chapters. there's nothing better for me to do.

[ccmatta]

Are they giving me money? then that's ok.

just kidding. That's complex. I'd try to encourage people to report those who are doing bad things or something like that, but there's not much I can do as a creator, is there? So i'd just focus on doing my work the best I could and keep posting and keep the message that I don't condone those actions, mainly because my work deals with mental health and those kind of actions affects immensily the mental health of people. We as creators can't control our fanbase I think, and nothing I'd do would have any effect, I believe.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Probably laugh, since the theme of understanding one another and how to avoid becoming toxic becomes an increasingly prominent theme as the comic goes on Or cry. Probably both :'D

In all seriousness though, I'll probably try to reason with them a bit but I won't be all like 'play nice kids' or 'harassment is bad mkay?'. I'll try to figure out why they're being toxic and give them suggestions for what to do instead. As per the themes of my comic (So if they're actually fans and not haters, I have a possibly overoptimistic hope that it will in fact go well XD)

... or alternatively I might straight up stop uploading for a while, to see if it dies out. But continue making content behind the scenes. By the time I can post again I'd have a huge buffer

[Aeneas1]

Gleefully relish the attention.

[Lensing]

The only positive thing about having fans is money, I would try to avoid everything else the best I can

[Calculus_Homework]

Whoa, this is actually a really excellent thought/question.
I always kinda had a small anxiety about that, just from watching other comics/stories with fine intent develop a toxic fanbase.
Certain things/stories/aesthetics/ships attract certain crowds. So, personally I hope to attract a good crowd as the majority. But I feel like it can be unavoidable sometimes. Never know what'll happen.

What I would do?
I would be persistent on letting my audience know that I do not condone those actions or any negative behavior. I would express that the story is a safe place for ANY and ALL teen+ readers. I would actively discourage harassment.
And I wouldn't care if a fan threatened to leave or stop their patreon sub because I didn't do something they wanted--good riddance. They could go tell their friends how they didn't get their way--I couldn't care less. I care not to associate myself with ego-maniacs. They need to get more productive hobbies if this is how they choose to handle things... or better yet, therapy. I can vouch that therapy is helpful. lol

(Hmm, I would probably ignore publicly calling out any threats to myself tbh and just take it up with the authorities. Because death threats are a serious CRIME. So be sure to take all evidence somewhere, and try to get it sorted out if your life is ever threatened verbally or in writing.)

[Calculus_Homework]

holy shhhh--!!
That is super creepy. It's not like you created the comic, or even ARE the actual character irl. Wow, that's so crazy. Insane lack of common sense and etiquette. Why do some people resort straight to stalker behavior? What goes through their heads? lol
Hope you never go through that kind of thing again! (Though, it must mean you're a pretty damn good voice actor perhaps... lolol)

Curious. Were they young teens mostly? They really shouldn't do that stuff--they can put themselves in danger.

[darthmongoose]

Curious. Were they young teens mostly? They really shouldn't do that stuff--they can put themselves in danger.

Yes, and this was something I had to keep warning them about. I was already 25 when I started voice acting in Homestuck stuff, but voicing a teenage character (it was never a secret though that I'm the oldest member of the cast), and without any effort on my part, in fact generally trying to keep means of privately contacting me limited, I had an influx of underage people desperate to tell me all about themselves and seeking my approval.
Naturally I told the kids who came to me that they shouldn't do that, because there are absolutely people out there who would take advantage of it... and the sad thing was, I was right. We had to remove one or two people from our project because a few years later it turned out they'd been taking advantage of and grooming underage fans who'd come to them. It really sucked.

Unfortunately with fandoms... you can try your best to set a good example and to tell your fans how to behave, but there will always be a significant number of people who think they're special and the rules don't apply. Kids who think they're more mature than other kids and that it's okay for them to talk privately with adults and share personal info, or people who think it's okay to make mean jokes like you would with a close friend because they believe they know you well from reading your tweets and things, or people who have appointed themselves as fandom "protectors" and will do "raids" on other fandoms or police other people's ships. You can never completely stop this stuff, only try to manage it and not to take advantage of the vulnerable.

[UrMom]

I would, no joke, delete all my shit off the internet then start over on new accounts. Maybe exclude my stuff to print, as difficult as that would be. Most likely a majority of the toxic readers would be teens, so they wouldn't be old enough to read my comic anyway, and I wouldn't want to associate with the adults in that bunch either. If any of them find me and get pissy I'll just be straight up with them, like, I don't tolerate that garbage. I'd feel bad for the good readers, but... oh well. I did this on Webtoons once for something similar, if they like my comic enough they'll find it.

[TAMAnnoying]

Ignore the fuck out of them- they want attention. Don't give it to them. Go on with life as per usual.