re: #177 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

The phenomenon of fandom toxicity is under appreciated, I think.

Star Trek
Star Wars
Tolkien

All these creative landscapes now have vast numbers of obnoxiously toxic fans who crap on anything.

Now a non-trivial portion of this is truly incels whining about “wokeness”.

It’s knee-jerk reactionist nonsense.

But I wonder if the deeply troubling changes in our society have forced many young-ish males to truly feel emasculated. They feel a need for manhood but the old ways are now not available for them.

I was involved in the early stages of Star Trek fandom, fanzines and the Welcommittee. But it soon had an influx of libertarian nuts who glorified Ayn Rand and that turned me off of it. Saw Harlan Ellison talk about how he got burned and David Gerrold got blacklisted. Reading the Solow/Justman book really showed a dark side of Roddenberry that just turned me off of all fandom. I saw the same stuff repeat with Dr Who in the 80s. And it got even worse with Star Wars and Tolkien.