Lamest Fanbase!!! - Page 2

There's a difference between lamest fanbase and most rabid fanbase.

Most rabid goes to LotR, hands down. I'm one of these people....I do the cosplay thing, and really enjoy the books/movies. I also realize that neither one is perfect, and I accept that some people despise them - I have no right to tell these people that they're wrong and that LotR is the best thing to grace the earth. I don't care if somebody likes another movie better. Why should I?

Lamest...of the ones in the original poll, my vote goes to Star Trek fans.

As for the rest, I've had at least had exposure to most of the ones I'm not a part of at conventions and stuff. The only ones I haven't really interacted with are the Vampire fans, but from what I've seen, they're pretty harmless.

Hmmm. Interesting question. I have to say that I'm a part of at least 4 of those fan bases. Hee!

Personally, the one that MYSTIFIES me isn't the sci/fi/RPG/etc its the fan bases for OTHER things - like, say, harlequin romances, or even wierder, TV sitcoms like friends. Just like their SciFi/Fantasy brethren, they write fanfiction, have scarey fan sites, etc etc.

I take it back. I vote Phish!

Originally I was leaning towards anime - cuz I had this roomate once and I am 80% suspicious that his interest in those harcore porn anime movies was dangerously close to a criminal obsession. Nobody should get that horny over a cartoon.

But I know there might be some "cool" anime somewhere.

So I went with those long, ass fantasy books. Because #1 - the thing you are into isn't original at all - I mean they all tlak about the same crap over and over - it's like a literary soap opera of dragons sleeping with elves who kill dwarves, etc.

And #2 - those people should just start putting Fabio on the cover of the books and title them "Danielle Steel for Fantasy Dorks"

So for being a fan of something with little redeemable quality, and then taking it to seriously - they take the prize.

Anyone who has seen Trekkies knows that Star Trek obsessed people are borderline retarted and shouldn't be picked on

They always have two deserts?

Well, I'm not sure if they count as "lame" but if we were going to say "worst," "most frightening," "most deranged," "most hypersensitive," "most likely to form a ritualistic/suicidal cult" I would have to go with Anime/Cosplayers.

One of my most terrifying memory burns is when I saw a MALE Cosplayer dressed as the pink-haired chick from that "FLCL" show at Megacon in Orlando last year. He had the white-gogo boots (Jesus christ, they were like 3 inches off the ground. That means he practiced walking in them. *shudder*), a yellow leather dress with goggles and belt and PINK PANTY HOSE. I washed my eyes for about five hours afterwards.

The scariest thing that Anime fans recruit young. When I heard a young girl ('bout 11) in Barnes and Noble ask a clerk if they had any "Inuyasha" soundtracks a tiny portion of my soul shriveled and died.

The Whedon fan base thing is peculiar....one thought could be that so much "other fan obsessive" media is written by men for men/boys...I think Whedon approaches, at times, a more femine/feministic perspective and perhaps that draws some allegiance from both men and women. Of course as I write this I think about Whedon apologizing for Buffy season 6...and in many ways...one of the most kick ass seasons...that he was not super close to.... so perhaps this line of reasoning does not follow.

As for the Toad line...really who cares...one line should not define a career.

There are extreme Fans for Whedon, however there are just as zealous anti-Whedon types. Interesting that he inspires such passion from people...

Having reacently seen "Trekkies" I vote for Star Trek

I had to go with Star Trek. Plain and simple...its just one thing I could never understand being a big fan of. As an aside, I am appauled that Phish was an option. No I did not sign up bc of this thread, it was just coincidence, but seriously...what is wrong with Phish? They're a quality group of musicians who have a ridiculously huge adoring fan base. That has to be worth a nod.

Phish's "jamming" consists of nothing more than noodling with three notes for six hours in the middle of one album track and calling it a day. "Hoist" is a pretty good album but that's where it begins and ends for Phish being decent. And this comes from diehard Dave Matthews Band fan who usually gets grouped in with those Phish freaks. They're not good.

This is a tough vote, though. I mean, LOTR nerds combine a lot of the worst aspects of the other groups. Cosplay, unwilling to see the books might not be the best thing ever (they are certainly good, though), willing to learn and speak languages used nowhere on the planet, etc... But the anime/cosplay people might have them beat because, first off, most anime is crap and, secondly, the costume thing is just creepy. And then there are the Buffy freaks. I can count on one hand the number of these people who appear sane. That's not a very good ratio of normals-to-nutjobs.

Can I write in die-hard fans of Dr. Who & Dark Shadows? Those people are creepy!

And as an anime fan, I'm a little disturbed that they are so far in the lead as the lamest group of fans out there. Granted I have no arguement for the contrary, but the subject matter is varied enough to have different types of people as fans, as are comic book readers, which up to this post had zero votes.

My vote was mainly in regard to the cosplay component. I've got no problem with the standard issue anime fan.

A lot of you seem to be making your 'lamest fanbase' decision as anime, based on the cosplay. Did you know that these other groups use cosplay/crossplay as well? It's not only limited to anime. I've seen cosplayers from all of the groups listed in the poll except Phish. Most people associate cosplay with anime, but it's a much broader category. People were dressing up as Jedi, wearing Spock ears, and pretending to be their favorite character long before anime became so popular.

I would say the trek fans for Voyager and Enterprise.

Anyone fanbase or group of people that thinks they are somehow better than another. (See Bobclark)

The absolute topper on the list is pro-sports fanatics. The endless, futile and incrediably fucking boring talk of my team is better than yours. The faceless, 'I have no idea who you are, but I love you because you can run fast . Where does this lame ass loyalty to a team member come from?

The useless, no-one-gives-a-fuck stats, the beer swilling, the dick-swinging, macho-bullshit that goes along with it. Not to mention the brain-dead boredom that goes along with watching a game itself.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.


Would Furries count?

Don't forget Deadheads. More crappy music that needs to go away.

Harry Potter fans,

More speciffically people who write Harry Potter fan fic. I had the misfortune recently to come across a tirade by someone who wrote Harry Potter fan fic who was critisizing other peoples fan fic as "not being in keeping with the book" Now unless its written by the author (or approved by her) none of if is in keeping with the book.

There are the people that write such gems and Hermione and Ginny Weasly being lesibians and Lord Voldermolt is Harrys Real father. But the absolute cream of the crop is the theory that Ron Weasley is in fact Dumbledoore.


Can we say obsessive?

so i'm not a catholic... i'm a big fan of jesus? hmm...

Having been a fairly hardcore fan of things in the past, I feel that general accusations of lameness simply because they're fans are pretty pointless. If you really like something, and are so into it that you want to share it, to meet others through it, to celebrate it in whatever way - that's not lame at all, as far as I'm concerned. That's awesome.

What I'd consider the only truly stupid aspect to any fanbase is the number of people within it who hate the the thing they're about. That's lame.

Star Wars fans who hate the prequels (and SEs), Trek fans who hate Enterprise, Buffy fans who hate seasons 4/5/whatever, comic fans who hate comics, videogame fans who hate videogames -- but who can't let them go. The people who feel compelled to butt into every conversation with "TOO BAD THE PREQUELS SUCK!", who hang around forums and groups years after their fandom went sour, just so they can voice their 'opinion' whenever they feel too much praise is being given, or too much positive feeling is going round. People so emotionally-scarred, so betrayed that every possible chance for even the slightest vengeance is pounced on, gobbled up greedily and then spewed up for all to endure, over and over again, for years.

Terrible creatures.

So, I'd say, whichever of those has the highest fan : omg-betrayed-4eva-dollar-signs-instead-of-letter-s idiot ratio, then. Star Wars?

Any fanbase that automatically raises lesser efforts to the worth of the best is suspect. You read some of the SW threads here... delusions of grandeur indeed. Fans are often like drug addicts, unfortunately, and you see it with all groups, they'll take the weakest stuff simply because it's gives them their fix. I don't get giving up taste for the sake of loyalty.

Hmm, lets see...

Star Trek fans get alot of flak, though its generally their own fault. However after watching Galaxy Quest, I grew quite fond of them...in the way one grows fond of picking one's nose, like greeting an old green friend. But anyway...

Star Wars fans. Hmm, ever since the prequels they've been labelled apologists alot, which is pretty harsh. But they are cranky whenever you question Lucas's motives and 'talent'...

Buffy. You'll notice I havent called the two fanbases above lame, but I think I can now. Buffy was good up to when Angel started killing people all over the place for the first time, and then....the lameness began. And the fanfiction and fansites began to pile up and it got very pink and purple (i'm sick of pink and purple damnit). Yeah...lame.

Anime fans have cosplays, but its not lame, its just funny and has kitsch going for it. Most anime fans arent in the mainstream I'd say, outside of Japan anyway, they're pretty hard to spot in the high street. Unless they have Pikachu mask stitched to their face like a fucking maniac.

Vampires, lame again. I like the concept, but the fanbase are just so mid-to-late 80's *laughs maniacally and waits for someone to spot the quote*

Comic books. Not lame. Fans can get anal and geeky looking, but I wouldnt go so far to call them lame, come now, lets be good sports.

Fantasy series...hmm, I have to say, there are some freaky looking people on the Lord of the Rings documentaries with beards that are alive and nails that need cutting. Yep.

I cant access devincf, so I dont know what the fuck it is.

I guess phish is some hacker l33t thing or angsty band or something, me dont know.


Lamest fanbase? Hmm, tough, tonight I shall vote for: Long sci-fi/fantasy novel series. They have no excuse for not grooming, no excuse whatsoever.

I'm not saying that Whedon fans are necessarily better (and I agree with absolutely every complaint against the fanbase leveled in this thread), but you can't deny that the hot to not hot ratio in our women is superior to any other fanbase.

Disagree.

Funniest damn thing I've read all week.

Still, diehard Ozzy fans and diehard Ronnie James Dio fans represent two of the stupidest fanbases in the world.

I'm not kidding.

Of course, you often a high percentage of retardation at the extremes of any philosophy, but I'd be willing to bet these two camps have an inordinate amount of certifiable idiots. I've never seen anything like it.

But then there's the vastly smaller -- but no less rabid -- subculture of Bruce Campbell fans. Bruce will die at a very old age, leaving a HUGE bank account, mourned by fans the world over, folks who respect and enjoy the work of a man who doesn't take *himself* overly seriously, but takes his work *extremely* seriously, and busts his hump doing the best he possibly can with any silly project he gets his hands on.

Every fan base has insane fan fic/slash fic.

The Whedonites are geeky girls.... Can be cute, and probably better than Cosplay nuts, but...

Cosplay nuts include asian chicks. That's fine by me.

Right now I find myself most amused listening to pissy fans of The O.C. that go out of their way to trash Desperate Housewives for reasons that apply just as much to their show and admit to themselves that what they are really upset about is that unlike The O.C. a lot of people actually watch Desperate Housewives.


Was the French guy Christopher Lambert?

Dammit. I wanted to vote for JJ Abrams fans, but it's not there. So I had to go with LOTR geeks. Which saddens me a bit, as I am one. And I'm quite proud of it. It's just the really hardcore people. The ones who wear costumes and speak elvish and masturbate to hobbit porn. They give us normal geeks a bad name. Actually, all of the above would have been better. Fuck the creeps out there who ruin all the fun shit out there!

Since LOTR fanatics have come up repeatedly I thought this little news blurb would be of interest.

I understand the surprise ending of the movie will involve a small army of "ringers" beating Jeffrey Wells to death.

I don't even think you need to be a fan of LOTR to enjoy seeing that.

Aha, good point about JJ Abrhams, and yeah, stick Whedon in too, what the hell is it with the love these guys get!? (especially on AICN talkbacks...) They're not THAT good, and I'm sure we all know what JJ was going to do to Superman by now, yes thats right, Clark was going to be his bitch and get the anal treament.

And that's lame.

This is an interesting topic. I've attended more than my share of science fiction/fantasy/horror conventions, so I've had exposure to most of the candidates represented in the poll. I've seen extreme fans of more genres than I knew existed. Heck, I've catered to such fans by performing in and writing parodies of sci-fi/fantasy films and television series.

Out of my observations at conventions, I have to say the Vampire fan base really is the lamest. Yes, the chicks can be hot. However, this whole, "I'm in the World of Darkness where my life is full of despair and tragic romance" shit gets old REALLY fast. These are people who want to be unhappy and ostracized because that's what drives them. They aren't happy unless they are miserable.

Also, while other fan bases can definitely get swept away by the escapism offered by their obsessions, the Vampire group seems to be the worst offender. These are the folks who, if they don't truly believe they ARE vampires, do a damn fine job of making it seem that way. And that's. . . . . lame.

Hey now, the only concrete news we had on the Abrams superman was Moriarty's review and even he said there were plenty of truly amazing action scenes in there. Plus i hardly ever agree with a word the man writes. it seemed just a really knee-jerk reaction against changes to teh mythos. And, as Slater so eloquently put in his holiday orgy of despair, superman in lame. So let's leave abrams out of this - at least until his fans turn into obsessives of the whedonites' stature.

Now, from my personal experience (which has never been to these convention places), goths are deeply lame.
two little anecdotes:
at the metal club i used to go to when i was a teenager there was a group of goths who turned up who sat around looking miserable in black lace and white face paint, dancing melodramtically to the Cult. when someone would open the door of the pub and let a little sunlight in they would actually hiss and move away from it. One week all the staff were wearing t-shirts that read 'vampires don't exist. grow up.'
the goths never came back.

at the last halloween fancy dress party my flat mate was going to go dressed as a goth but his girlfriend had a massive row with him saying that he couldn't do that because dressing as a goth WASN'T DRESSING UP.

i always quite like the idea of the cosplay as long as it's done for fun (and anyway, it teaches you valuable life skills like sewing, plastic moulding and weapon forging) but lameness begins at the exact moment one starts believing this stuff is a part of your real life.

I thought I was a pretty big Lord of the Rings fan because I read the books pretty often and did a lot of reading on Tolkien, but after the films came out...it became very odd. All these people grew from the burrows of unknown society and started bringing up Lord of the Rings as some sort of grand gesture upon the human race while they strapped on their fake Rohan armor and nuzzled their Sideshow Weta Gandalf figure. I always thought if you were a fan of something you kind of keep it to yourself as your "niche" but not force it upon anyone else. I guess I was wrong when other fans I knew started to get in You Got Served like competitions of geek knowledge.

Every fanbase save for the last two I have had run ins with, and pretty much all of them are just as imposing on their love on indviduals as the next one. I've met people who couldn't comprehend why I didn't love Episode I just as much as I have met people who told me my tastes are juvenile because I disliked most everything about Buffy including the episode called "Hush" that so many praise. I was even roasted by a guy dressed up in Sailor Moon cosplay because I was holding a copy of Watchmen and he thought it was "wank material for the egotistical."

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that all these groups have equally bad qualities. Regardless of the fact that Trekkies and Star Wars fans have had so long to develop, they share similar traits to comic fans and sports fans who pretty much think your a leper if you don't have the deepest knowledge of their loves. It all also comes down to everyone's experiences, because I'm sure many have met in real life the worst of the Whedon lovers but have never met a bad comic fan because either they are one or haven't been in those circles. I'm surprised no one has mentioned the rather demoralizing group of art/film fans who pretty much make you feel like a peasant to their royalty.

Its hard to choose any of these because of the above, so I'll just choose cosplay fans since they creep me out the most...doesn't mean they're any better then the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars fans who say "Our love is in the art of it all...the art trans...holy shit they have a giant pillow of Vader that glows red at night...I have to have that."

See, I actually think the people that write crazy fan fiction, or organize roleplaying games based on these properties, or even make their own cosplay costumes, those people are kind of cool. Weird, and probably annoying, but at least they're doing something creative. I find that kind of interesting. The people who just collect every toy related to the property, and keep them all in the boxes, and act like Nigel Tuffnel showing off his guitars (no, don't even point at it!) are just lame and sad.

"Weird, and probably annoying, but at least they're doing something creative"
Fan Fiction is Creative??????
Almost all of it I have read is bad, derivitive, cliched, hackwork writing. Not what I would call creative.

"It's a blast watching people enjoy themselves. As long as they're all having fun while maintaining a grip on reality then it's all good, but then again... there are people who make this stuff a way of life.."

Exactly. It's the fans who lose their grip on reality and those that take themselves too seriously that scare the hell out of me. Fandom can be a fun hobby but it really sucks as a way of life.
And, sadly, as somebody who has been a Tolkien fan since I read the books back in Junior High in the early 80's, I have to agree that much of LOTR fandom has become just plain ridiculous. One thing that make LOTR fandom a bit worse then others is the amount of wannabeism there is. It is amazing to me how many LOTR fanboys talk about medieval literature (a understanding of which is necessary to any deep appreciation of Prof. Tolkien's work) without having read a damn word of it, and fake a knowledge based on other post or essays. And we won't get into the people who have seen the movies but never read the books and then try to comment on Tolkien's work. LOTR fandom is more prone then most to the curse of Phony Intellectualism..although some of the "Cambellian Archtypes" Star Wars Geeks can get pretty bad.

I enjoyed "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" but find a lot of the Whedon Worship to be just plain silly.

That might be a dividing point between intelligent nerdom and the idiots. An ability to judge things on a individual basis, and not think just because a certain guy writes it or it had the name "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" on a book, movie of TV SHow it 's automatically good. This whole "like everything or you are not a true fan" is just about the dumbest attitude I have ever seen. And here the "Star Wars" fans take the cake away from the LOTR fans. As mentioned, as least the Trekkies generally admit that some of the movies and TV epidsodes are bad.

Oxymoron of the day!

Way to fucking generalise.

Most published fiction is bad, derivitive, cliched hackwork writing. I mean, either you can write well or you can't but the act of writing, even if it's bad, is more creative and productive than spending money on toys.

My cat has been licking its feet for over 4 minutes.

I've BEEN saying that

The delusion usually comes in two forms:

1. They're convinced the movies carry more weight and more importance than they do, artistically.
2. They're convinced they have a better understanding of story and plotting than they really do.

I'm going to catch shit for that, but seriously, those are the main two issues at the core of Star Wars fandom becoming this ridiculously annoying, self-important, diapers-filled crybaby fanbase. Everyone seems to know exactly how the story should go, which typically ends up being described as some sort of weird mishmash of Battlestar Galactica, RoboCop, The Empire Strikes Back and Krull. And then they just heap entirely too much analysis, sociological weight and importance onto what is, at it's heart, fluff, and you top that off with a healthy portion of rose-tinted nostalgia and fierce loyalty and deep emotion, and voila--a schizophrenic, loud, unbending collection of fans who all have their own manifesto regarding what has been done, what should be done, and what could be done better to improve the fictional world they want so badly to live in.

Myself included, of course.

They also have to defend films which aren't particularly good for the sake of their fandom.

Well, that's pretty much my reason #1, aint it?

If they didn't devote so much time and emotion (time and emotion most people don't allot to their extended family or even their housepets) to something that isn't exactly built for that level of devotion, then would they feel the need to "Defend," or on the other hand, mercilessly shit upon, these movies in order to ensure to themselves that they really HAVEN'T wasted a lot of their life playing in someone else's fictional world under false pretenses?

This is typically where the double-edged sword of Empire Strikes Back Worship plays a big role.

Another problem is a lot of Star Wars fans speak from an experience that holds only "Star Wars Movies" and "Things that Remind Me of Star Wars" so the discussions don't have a very wide playing field to take place on. It's why almost everything instantly devolves into Jar-Jar/Luca$/It's His Films/He's Lost it level one-liners and page long manifestos (like this one) because it's almost easier to just pick a side and throw darts as hard as you fucking can.

Nothing is worse than the devincf.com fanfic.

I'm not saying SW fans don't do it, I'm just saying not all of them do it.

For instance, I'm fed up of being lumped in with those guys, especially IRL. I love Star Wars but I can still tell the difference between a crap SW film and a good one, and admit it as well.

Sorry, I did not to mean to generalize, Charlie B. I probably should have stated "more extreme Star Wars Fans".
"They also have to defend films which aren't particularly good for the sake of their fandom."
Exactly. SOme of the more militant fans seem to want to defend every aspect of the Star Wars films, and to deny that all of them have flaws. (All films...even the best...have flaws). They end up looking silly trying to defend things like Jar Jar and the Padme/Anakin love scenes. There is an old military adage "If you try to defend everything, you end up defending nothing" that fans would do well to heed.
For example in AOTC, admit the love scenes in AOTC were atrocious but then list the good stuff in the film that outweighs the bad. But trying to defend stuff as crappy as the dialogue in the Padme/Anakin scenes just weakens your case.
For the record, I overall liked AOTC but hated TPM.

To be fair, the Mystic River people set themselves up big time for this. They were trying really hard to create a Lord of the Rings backlash, touting itself as a pure, personal, genre-free expression of filmmaking, and doing so, sort of made an attack on most of the fanbases listed on the poll. I myself was angry that Peter Travers had done so with the list, not because he listed a LOTR film as number two (he did that the year before with Gangs of New York), but for the snobby, political reasons he did so.

I'm not going feel bad that it backfired on them.

I agree that the Mystic River people made a big mistake in the Oscar race by trying to create a LOTR backlash. Granted, they don't have much control over what the LOTR haters like Jefferey Wells do in their columns and websites, but they could have been a lot more subtle about it. As it was, River won the Acting Categories they were expected to win, but got nothing else..even Best Adapted Screenplay which they were expected to win as a kind of consolation prize.
I' m surprised that Eastwood made such a rookie mistake. Part of it was that Jackson came with very good indie film credentials ("Heavenly Creatures", a film that echoes many of the themes that Eastwood is fascinated with).
Travers is not nearly as bad as Jeffrey Wells , though. Travers at least recognized That LOTR was a quality film, whereas Wells just badmouthed it from FOTR on, and he did it for snobby, political reasons that make Travers look reasonable in comparasion. It was pathetic the way that Welles kept on promoting one film after another as the LOTR killer. First it was Cold Mountian and when that flopped he switched to "Mystic River" a film which intially he was not that enthisaistic about. What a load.

Wow, you can totally apply that to LOTR fanatics too.

Just substitute GL with PJ, MH with EW, and HF with VM.

Legend-
GL= George Lucas
PJ= Peter Jackson
MH= Mark Hamill
EW= Elijah Wood
HF= Harrison Ford
VM= Viggo Mortensen (sp)

Hell, if one wanted to, you could basically parallel everything in the LOTR films to the Star Wars films, including the fanatic followers.

So, do be ready to generalize anyone like that, sir, like the good man Charles B said.

For deadheads, it's not really about the music, it's about the excellent drugs that can be scored in the parking lot. Any deadhead that says it is really about the music is either, A) retarded, B) tone-deaf or C) has done waaaaaay too many of those excellent parking lot drugs.

Anime folks scare me.............seriosuly the guy next to me in my multimedia class last year drew/colored in his pictures all the time..........some had nudity.........and no one but me seemed to notice how stupid it all was.

Drawing naked chicks in a blow off class seems stupid to you?

Who's the delusional one here I wonder? :-)