Was The #SnyderCut Campaign Just #GamerGate All Over Again?

When the wrong fans join together in a consumer-driven movement, it's nothing more than a harassment campaign.

In a lengthy piece about the origins of Zack Snyder’s Justice League over at Vox, Aja Romano writes:

[I]t’s important to understand what’s on the other side of so much of the film’s praise. Namely, four years of toxic harassment and a parade of troubling online behavior from male fans that has far more in common with abusive right-wing campaigns like Gamergate than with most of mainstream geek culture in 2021.

This is an interesting claim and one that curiously isn’t actually backed up with any real evidence in the article itself. That there was bad behavior, trolling and harassment of some form is undoubtedly true. There is in virtually every fandom. But a narrative has grown up around the movement that is, of course, less about facts than it is about spin.

The article claims that the #SnyderCut movement consisted of four years of toxic harassment (as opposed to non-toxic harassment?) from specifically “male fans” and has more to do with “abusive right-wing” campaigns like #GamerGate than contemporary “mainstream geek culture” (whatever that is).

Sounds pretty bad.

Red Flags

It is true that different properties have different types of fans, and I’ve little doubt that a majority of Zack Snyder fans are male—simply because, historically, men and boys have been bigger fans of superhero stuff, comic books, video games etc.

Still, plenty of women are fans of these movies as well and in my experience, online harassment (even toxic online harassment) can come from both sexes. Mostly it comes from randoms on Twitter with avatars of their favorite anime character or celebrity and handles like @IHeartCarolTWDForeverBeotch.

If Snyder fans are predominantly male, Olicity Arrowverse fans or Carol TWD fans are predominantly female and believe you me, oh thou droogies of mine, these women are very well versed in the art of online bullying and dogpiling.

Also, what on earth is “mainstream geek culture”? Is it so very different in 2021 than it was in 2014 or 2004? Did all those silly “gamers are dead” articles purge the fandom of toxic geeks who are now consigned to the edges of the “mainstream?” Or are there just the geeks and fans we like and the geeks and fans we don’t like depending on our own point of view and social clique?

There seems to be a concerted effort to claim geekdom for a very specific progressive-educated-elite group that’s been going on for years now in the name of “inclusivity” that relies on pushing out more traditional “geeks” and this effort, I believe, is very much at the center of this type of hit-piece.

Curiously, said hit-piece hinges on the accounts of one anonymous entertainment journalist who is quoted as saying:

“I’ve had terrible experiences with Snyder Cut fandom, but they’re really just the loudest and most well-organized example of a much deeper rot.”

Let me guess, they’re about to talk about GamerGate aren’t they?

Yep:

“We’ve seen over the past few years what happened when industries essentially ignored barrages of hate disguised as fan enthusiasm: Gamergate, the Hugo Award Sad Puppies, the Ghostbusters reboot, everything related to The Last Jedi, and, of course, the Snyder Cut.”

Everything—everything!—related to The Last Jedi.

Okay, so this is fun.

Journalist A speaks with anonymous Journalist B so that anonymous Journalist B can confirm what Journalist A already believes. Now there’s a story in it—again, without any specific examples whatsoever—for Journalist A to write. Curiouser and curiouser.

The article does mention how #SnyderCut fans raised money for charity—but doesn’t mention any specific instances of actual harassment. Instead, it dives headlong into numerous other controversies and speculation.

Romano speculates that if a female-driven fandom tried to get a new Twilight ending or a 60 Shades Of Grey movie made, the media would mock these efforts—but as we’ve seen, the media has plenty of scorn for #SnyderCut fans or Star Wars fans who didn’t like The Last Jedi.

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Narrative-Building

Vox isn’t the first to push this same argument about toxic fandom and the #SnyderCut. It’s part of a larger narrative designed to cast shade on a fandom woke media strongly disapproves of. Snyder fans—predominantly toxic male geeks, we are told—are not part of the Holy Cult of Wokedom. And wokedom wants very badly to take over all aspects of our culture, from gaming to entertainment to journalism to public education. The unholy must be purged.

Vanity Fair posted a similar thing back when HBO’s announcement dropped, concluding: “In not only giving over to these fans, but using their language—#ReleaseTheSnyderCut–in its official announcement, HBO Max has given legitimacy to all actions of this fandom. Not very heroic of them.”

Other articles push the same narrative and if you follow the bread crumbs you’ll find yourself in something of a revolving door, with articles linking to one another in a messaging merry-go-round or, perhaps more appropriately, an ideological circle jerk.

There are also the hilarious headlines about Warner Media “standing up” to toxic fans. Thank goodness that these big corporations are fighting back against the little guy! That last link points us to a Variety interview with Warner Media CEO Ann Sarnoff in which she’s asked about these toxic fans. She replies:

We’re not tolerating any of that. That behavior is reprehensible no matter what franchise you’re talking about or what business you’re talking about. It’s completely unacceptable. I’m very disappointed in the fans that have chosen to go to that negative place with regard to DC, with regard to some of our executives. It’s just disappointing because we want this to be a safe place to be. We want DC to be a fandom that feels safe and inclusive. We want people to be able to speak up for the things they love, but we don’t want it to be a culture of cancelling things that any small faction isn’t happy with. We are not about that. We are about positivity and celebration.

How very, very brave.

The Variety interview links to this Verge piece which in turn links back to the Vanity Fair piece I quote a few paragraphs back, with the quotation “Critics and reporters received countless death threats and vile slurs” but when you click over to the Vanity Fair piece and search “death threat” you’ll find only one mention of death threats, and that’s a reference to director James Gunn receiving just one after he signed on to direct the Suicide Squad sequel. Even one is too many, obviously, but it’s still a far cry from the portrait of constant, vile harassment these articles are trying to portray.

But also, is this the death threat they’re referring to?

Hmmmm.

Romano describes the origins of the #SnyderCut movement as “a relatively small group of these fans channeled the anger they felt toward Whedon and the film’s studio, Warner Bros., into the belief that the unreleased Snyder cut would have fixed everything they didn’t like about the movie.”

Which brings up another point. An article about completely random “toxic” fans that includes zero examples of toxicity among said fans, also fails to mention the allegations that have been made against Joss Whedon and Warner Bros. There is no mention of Cyborg actor Ray Fisher and his ongoing feud with Warner Bros. or his very public denunciation of Joss Whedon.

Ray Fisher @ray8fisher

Joss Wheadon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable. He was enabled, in many ways, by Geoff Johns and Jon Berg. Accountability>Entertainment

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Fanatics

Look, I get that fandom is fraught with problems. If you’ve ever been on the other end of an angry flock of Olicity fangirls you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I was the victim of “toxic harassment” (on Twitter of all places!) by these angry women with their dreamy Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak Twitter avatars. They said very, very mean things about me. Very mean. Nobody in the history of Twitter has been treated as poorly as me.

Then again, as garbage as Twitter can be, I can always just block people. Or mute them. I can tell people to piss off or respond with snarky gifs. I can ignore their angry, petty crap and the lies they tell, though I admit it isn’t always easy.

I can set down Twitter and walk away.

I can walk away but I do understand that this can be a stressful experience. Getting mobbed on Twitter is never fun.

When people place too much of their own sense of self-worth into a product or a brand or a fictional character, it can lead to irrational behavior. When your identity becomes Xbox or Carol from The Walking Dead or you’re so obsessed with Zack Snyder that The 300 is like a religion, maybe you need to dial it back a little. These are all just corporate products designed to make money and we forget that at our peril. There’s nothing wrong with being a fan of these things—they’re entertaining!—but that fandom isn’t who you are.

Unfortunately, a lot of fans disagree. Writing critical reviews of shows like The Walking Dead and Arrow have certainly opened my eyes to this reality. It’s no different in TV than it is in games except maybe demographically.

I think in some more extreme or obsessive cases, mental health issues involved. It’s also a symptom of social media and uncritical acceptance of capitalistic excesses. Finding meaning in this society can be difficult, and so people turn to movies and comic books and video games.

But the worst offenders in these hashtag campaigns are just randoms who are part of a much larger group of people, usually comprised of mostly normal, mostly well-behaved, well-adjusted people. And these randoms are often likely teenagers or just trolls having a laugh, shitposting to get a reaction.

Is it really a sober assessment to call the #RealeaseTheSnyderCut movement just a massive hate campaign designed to harass people? Do we really want to suggest that these consumer-driven movements, designed to pressure corporations to make changes to their products, are a bad thing?

Toxic Male Entitlement

Vox’s article makes lots of proclamations we’re supposed to simply take as fact. When it notes that Zack Snyder has distanced himself from online harassment, saying “I 100 percent think it’s wrong” it about-faces immediately, undermines Snyder’s own words in the very next sentence with: “Still, the release of the Snyder Cut is a victory not just for Snyder’s vision of Justice League, but for a Snyder-esque view of the world, and the toxic male entitlement that such a worldview seems to invite.”

That link actually, finally points us to an article that includes numerous instances of “toxic” behavior from fans on Twitter, but again—there is nothing there that I find particularly unique compared to the myriad other fandoms I’ve come across on Twitter. Posting screenshots of angry fans on social media is hardly hard-hitting journalism, but this is where I found the James Gunn “death threat” tweet above so . . .

The point, of course, is to paint Snyder himself as an exemplar of “toxic male entitlement.” The white cis-hetero male Snyder with his manly movies about toxic manliness and muscled manly men is the reason his fans are so toxic, because all those basement dwellers idolize his macho masculinity. But words like “toxic” and “entitlement” are bandied about so freely these days that they’re practically meaningless at this point.

Romano complains that the #BuryYourGays social media campaign (started by fans of The 100 angry that a bisexual character was killed) received less media and cultural attention than the #SnyderCut movement. But The 100 is, by its very nature, far less culturally significant than The Justice League. One is a somewhat popular CW TV show; the other is a major movie that’s part of a major DC superhero franchise.

Romano also mentions the controversy surrounding Marvel’s Captain America joins Hydra storyline—with its clunky #SayNoToHydraCap hashtag—and links to two very specific instances of harassment. That second link points to a very scary threat. Nothing in Romano’s Vox article points to anything so frightening or specific in the #SnyderCut campaign.

“The fundamental difference between these three campaigns is that queer fans, Jewish fans, and their allies were not really heard in the same way the Snyder Cut fans were,” writes Romano, conveniently ignoring the fact that a CW show and a comic book (not an MCU movie, mind you) are simply not as mainstream or as popular or as relevant to popular culture as a major blockbuster film that disappointed almost everyone who saw it. Of course the Justice League #SnyderCut campaign was bigger and drew more media attention than these other social media campaigns about products most people have no connection with.

There’s a reason to ignore this fact, of course, if you’re writing with an agenda.

Romano and Journalist B’s big point is that allowing fans to have this kind of influence is dangerous. After all, if there aren’t enough Snyder fans to make back the money that Zack Synder’s Justice League will earn on HBO Max, why is Warner Bros. catering to this small group of angry, toxic fans? Can’t Warner Media and AT&T see how this enables fans everywhere to ask for what they want? Gross!

“When we valorize the Snyder Cut, then, it’s possible that what we’re valorizing is really a patriarchal, cultlike view of geek culture that rewards fans who behave badly and ignores fans who just want to be heard and included,” Romano concludes.

That’s an odd, divisive framing isn’t it? “The consumers I like whose tastes I share and whose viewpoints I agree with should get what they want; the consumers I dislike whose tastes I don’t share and whose views I disagree with are toxic and set a bad precedent.”

I mean, isn’t it weird? Romano links to actual instances of harassment in the Captain America protest, but still acts like that protest was good and pure and was only ignored because some of the people involved were Jewish. CW fans probably engaged in a bit of harassment online as well. This is not a phenomenon that occurs only in some fandoms—it occurs in pretty much all of them. Maybe the Snyder fans are uniquely bad, or maybe there were simply more opportunities for crappy people to show up in a much larger movement.

Or maybe this is a bizarro war over who gets to claim geekdom for themselves, when in reality neither side gets to. Nobody does.

But when you’re building a narrative about Bad Gamers or Bad Snyder Fans and that narrative is really more about Toxic Male Entitlement, you have to find a spin. Narratives are like basket balls perched spinning on your pointer finger. Stop the spin and the ball will fall.

Isn’t it more sensible to frame this discussion as consumers versus the machine? Groups of normal people fighting back against giant movie studios, game publishers and heartless corporations?

Snyder’s version of The Justice League becoming a reality doesn’t set a bad precedent, it shows us that normal people can achieve something by working together, that their collective voices can be heard. Most of these fans know perfectly well that this kind of bad behavior makes everyone look bad. Most people don’t approve of or engage in this kind of thing.

It’s the same as the Retake Mass Effect movement, the first time a real collective, organized group of gamers/consumers banded together to demand a better ending to a beloved franchise. Those gamers were described in much the same manner by the gaming press. Entitled, toxic, homophobic, etc.

But collective action isn’t a bad thing even if sometimes—all the time?—bad apples will do and say bad things, whether this is an online campaign or a real-world protest.

The real problem with GamerGate wasn’t the original backlash against video game journalism and online censorship, but the way the movement was rapidly taken over by right-wing astroturfers who could care less about video games and were simply trying to score political points. The video game press did their part as well, alienating as many readers as possible and fanning the flames, all while pushing them into the arms of Milo, Breitbart and various YouTubers.

The Fandom Strikes Back

Fans and consumers have a right to demand better from corporations and the media. Hopefully they do so in a calm, rational way, but realistically that’s not always going to happen. These movements are often leaderless and carried out on social media, where anybody—including drive-by trolls—can make their voices heard.

I’ll quote Geralt of Rivia himself.

When Henry Cavill was asked about “toxic” fans he replied:

“I understand what you’re saying, but when it comes to fans, it’s a fan’s right to have whatever opinion they want to have. And people are going to be upset because, especially when we’re talking about books or games, because you’re never going to be the exact person who they had in their head or who they played on Witcher 3 for example. I don’t necessarily consider that toxic, I just consider that passion.”

“Passionate Fans” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, though, does it? Toxic is so much more effective when you’re using words as weapons.

When Warcraft 3 Reforged came out and was stomped into the dust by angry fans on Metacritic, I wrote about how review-bombing a game was one way consumers could speak collectively and have their voices heard by a game publisher. Sure, some of these fans are angry and some of them are “toxic” or use bad language (including those who lashed out at me when completely misreading my argument). There are toxic, shitty people in every community including the queer community, the SJW community, the anti-SJW community, the knitting community, among sports fans and CCG fans and fans of every politician under the sun. This is not some revelatory statement. People are people and sometimes people suck.

In the end, the release of the Snyder Cut was a business decision made by Warner Bros. to promote HBO Max. Content for the streaming service is required to compete with Netflix, Amazon and Disney Plus. Something like this drives hype and media attention. The marketing is already baked in. This big, viral internet thing that’s been little more than a pipedream for years? Hey voila presto we’re actually doing it! Fans go wild, the internet is abuzz, the headlines write themselves.

It’s not the result of a harassment campaign, it’s the result of a fan campaign that went viral and a business decision to tap into that virality. Will they make their money back? Does it matter?

How do we even calculate this kind of thing when it comes to streaming services? Netflix spends billions on original content in the hope it will at once retain subscribers and, more importantly, bring in new paying customers. Without a box office or Nielsen ratings, it’s pretty hard to say whether any given film or series is “profitable” on its own. That’s not the point and it’s obviously not the point. Warner Bros. wants people to come for the #SnyderCut and then stay for Watchmen or finally get into The Sopranos and The Wire. It’s not a theatrical release.

Bashing consumer movements is silly and condescending. I’ve been saying this for years, since game journos were calling gamers “entitled” because they didn’t like the end of Mass Effect 3. It’s arrogant, pretentious nonsense. Of course some fans are going to suck, but most people—most TV fans, gamers, foodies, whatever—are decent and mean well.

You certainly are, my dearest droogies. Even if you are a touch diabolical.

Peace out.

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