The dynamic of the ComicsGate spergs still hasn’t changed, three years later, long since the group has become largely irrelevant to the cultural landscape.
There’s a fundamental flaw in perhaps comic book people where they have obsessive traits that are borderline a super-power, or rather a super-disability. It explains why they latch on so hard to these fan-fiction properties put out by Disney and Warner Brothers where they will buy the books they hate week in and week out just to be upset and do it again the next week.
If it seems insane to pay money to get angry at what you pay money for and then keep doing it, it’s because it is.
But since this is the perspective of the average American Comic Complainer Ecosystem member, there’s no rationalizing with them, no way to steer discussion to good books, other things, no way to get them to stop throwing fits.
We see this continuing with ComicsGate. When a large portion of the audience abandoned Ethan Van Sciver because of the online harassment squads he was operating, these spergs simply moved to the next person in line behind him in order to worship that celebrity with equal fervor.
What you get is the same situation, where people are sitting online waiting for their now mini-celebrity creator to be perceived as “attacked” so they can go all out and harass on their behalves instead of Ethan.
Naturally, as a person who hates this whole concept of worship of creators, I dislike when I see it, I dislike grifts, and I dislike bad amateur work in general. So I end up the target of the harassment of these mini-groups from time to time.
The thing they don’t have that Ethan’s group had is critical mass. A couple of spergs can go at me hard but there’s no overwhelming full feed clutter where it feels like the whole world’s against you. That’s what Ethan managed to develop with a big enough celebrity that these mini-replacements can never have.
It’s a lousy environment out there in the comic world right now, but we are still fighting for change. I truly believe good, professional writing with regular monthly releases will win out, because at the end of the day, normal people will be about the good product – and those are the people we want to court to change culture, not the dregs of society who spend their days online doing this crap.
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