Over the last couple of months, the comic book community on the internet has really rubbed me the wrong way. The negative vocal minority has seemed even louder than usual, and that’s the main reason I haven’t been updating this blog more frequently. OK, that’s not true. The main reason is I’ve been extremely busy at my day job, and very lazy on top of that. But the negativity on the internet has definitely contributed to my lack of creativity.
Every time I sat down to write a column, two or three paragraphs into the thing, I’d realize I was writing a rebuttal to a negative blogger or internet poster, and not wanting to add fuel to the fire, I’d close the document and delete it. Kinda following the old “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” guidelines.
Unfortunately, not enough people follow that rule as the internet hater-ade has definitely become louder throughout the last couple of months – and yes I fully see the double-standard of me using an internet posting to complain about the prolific complaining on the internet, so there’s no need to point that out to me.
Just off the top of my head, I can think of the following examples of extreme, and irrational, negativity:
A ridiculous number of “Final Crisis sucks” or the more general “Dan Didio has destroyed DC” posts on just about every message board out there.
A new blogger claiming to be a person in the know, posting destructive and distasteful rumors about real people using their real names.
A popular blogger freaking out and quitting on numerous occasions due to readers posting comments in opposition to the blogger’s opinion, only to return a week later with business as usual. Shampoo, rinse, and repeat.
More and more columnists on newer websites using the “hypercritical for the sake of being hypercritical” shtick to get noticed.
It’s all very silly, and it reminds me of the evolution the online professional wrestling community experienced in the late 90s and early 00s. As some of you know, I wrote a somewhat satirical column for a wrestling fansite from about 1998-2001. For those of you who know your wrestling history, that was during the height, and eventual downfall, of the Monday Night wars, and the WWF vs. WCW debate was certainly the equal of the Marvel vs. DC debate.
When the online community was new, all of us writers were just writing for the fun of it. Hell, most of us were incredibly stoked to be writing for a website. Remember, ten years ago, blogging and other self-publishing methods were essentially unheard of. In the beginning, it was all about good-natured laughs and creativity. But after a few years, as the community increased in population, different voices with more negative opinions became the loudest.
The behind the scenes creative processes and politics started being widely reported as insiders hit the internet. We soon knew the names and personalities of those involved in the writing and production of the shows. We learned which performers had creative control clauses written into their contracts. Then, armchair quarterbacks emerged. And most important to the topic at hand, reports, some rumor and some factual, popped up regarding which performers held sway over the creative team and who was sleeping with who.
Everything seemed to reach a point of super-saturation, and it just took one last particulate, one final angry know-it-all to cause everything to fall out of suspension in my eyes. Keeping up the website, for which I had become the owner and webmaster, turned into a chore, and I bowed-out shortly there after because participating in the online wrestling community was no longer fun.
Look, I’m not one to proclaim the sky is falling. I didn’t believe the predictions of $200/barrel oil, nor do I believe the current state of the economy is evidence that we’re all doomed. Everything is cyclical. Just as the price of oil and the housing bubbled corrected themselves (actually, they over-corrected), so too will the economy and the behavior of folks within the online comic book community. You just gotta ride it out and not overreact.
So while the online comic book community is giving me the same offsetting feelings as the wrestling community did a decade ago, we have the advantage of a much larger and more diverse internet. There are a lot more places for people to vent the typical negativity, and there are still a few places left for people who don’t want to read that negativity to still have fun. And that’s what I’m going to try to do more of with this blog; make things fun again.
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