So, you know we had that Board Theory thread awhile back, and I've got one that's been repeatedly validated on every forum I've ever been on. It's basically this - a forum is created for a specific purpose. To talk about a band, to talk about a game company, to talk about a webcomic. People join the forums to discuss those things, initially.
But some people's tastes change and they might go from the type of person who would join an online community over their enthusiasm for a single artist, to the type of person who either doesn't care enough about the single artist to justify time put into the forum or doesn't care at all. And one of two things happens - Either they leave, or they band together with like-minded people and self-segregate from the "purely" dedicated fans. And that's where forums like this one, which is tangentially related to QC but only sort of really, come from. But that element of pure, enthusiastic fandom never really goes away. In almost all cases the breakaway group tends to be put off by the sorts of people who don't just join the forum to make a few posts in a Q&A or express their appreciation, but stick around for years. Artists (especially musicians) will tend to attract stalker-level interest from fans, or people who will unselfconsciously post or say things that are outlandish or creepy.
A lot of times it doesn't feel exactly right to mock such people. I imagine for most of us our first few years of forum were marked by a stunning lack of knowledge about forum etiquette. A lot of us made total asses of ourselves before we grew up a little and found some acceptance. But there are cases that go beyond the pale. The Bioware Social forums are a good example of this. Once upon a time they were no different from your average gaming-focused forum - not particularly awful but given to circular, undying arguments and the occasional shipper (for those not down with the TV lingo, the "ship" in "shipper" stands for "relationship", as shippers are way too intensely caught up in the made up relations of made up characters). When EA bought out Bioware they condensed their site into what is now the Bioware Social site - a streamlined system that allows users to tie registrations of any Bioware game they own on any platform to their profile. For whatever reason, this change seemed to tip the balance of forum types decidedly in the shipper direction, and it's now famous for its extreme and volatile nature - there are roving bands of "factions" devoted to the obsessive fandom of a particular Bioware character (usually female) who is either romanceable already or whose availability for romance is demanded (the classic example is the "talimancer" group, who successfully lobbied Bioware to make the ultra-femenine, biosuit-clad alien fuckable in
Mass Effect 2). The terrible fanfic and fanart is endless. There are (short-lived, due to mod interference) threads dedicated to petitioning Bioware to allow player characters to romance siblings. It goes on and on, and it's just as pervasive as I make it out to be. Threads reach dozens, hundreds, of pages.
It's actually really fascinating to me because I feel like it's part of some confirmation bias that a lot of people like myself seem to have about the average person on the internet - it's like how you can easily forget as an indie rock kid that most people have probably never had the opportunity to hear about Arcade Fire or Broken Social Scene. Take a hard look at the internet as a whole and you'll find that people are usually casually bigoted, judgmental, proudly conservative. Class activity - check out the comments section of your local paper's website. More than likely, you will be revolted. You need to do stuff like this once in awhile, else you lose sight completely of the fact that a lot of people will vote Republican, and will hate you or your friends or your family for no real reason at all. It certainly keeps you from having a disposition that's too sunny.
So it's sort of a window into an apparently sizable portion of society we often think of as marginal. There are questions to be asked, of course. Foremost among them is whether the internet isn't just a big echo chamber. Maybe the same thing that makes you think normal people are reasonable is what makes repugnant idiocy seem so prominent. Maybe the majority of Bioware fans aren't creepy shut-ins, and it's just this minority of rabid weirdos who are running the forum show.
Maybe you can tell me about the dark corners of the internet you've encountered. Maybe you'd like to make this thread about Charlie Sheen or that anti-semitic Dior guy or what a massive douche Shia Lebouf is. I don't know, just make it entertaining.
I was ultimately spurred to make this thread because I didn't want to muck up the immaculate Dragon Age 2 thread. I lurk in the Bioboards on occasion, out of morbid curiosity for the sideshow-quality posters that seem to fit in quite well. Perhaps the oddest thing about the Bioboards is the love/hate relationship the developers have with the shipper hivemind, the only entity that seems interested in or capable of engaging in dialog with them. Exchanges are often snotty on the fan side and passive-aggressive on the dev side. A lot of times they will participate in the speculation and fanfic-building. I'm not sure how much you should expect a developer or artist to castigate their fanbase, but I don't think this is the way to do it. There's been a lot of argument about Bioware emphasizing romances more and more because of the forums, but I'm not sure there's truth to that.
Here is the DA2 thread post and the stuff dredged from the Bioboards to illustrate what a shithole it is.
God help me do I ever want to see that chart (of fan speculation over the taste of various Mass Effect characters' sweat). Wowza
I couldn't find it but here are some other things
(Just one of several thousand fanarts, many of which include mary sue characters the "artist" made in-game)
Some of the signature .gifs for the various Bioboard fan factions.
Sort of similar is the recent Gawker Media redesign, which is meant to better facilitate video advertising, but the change in format and the malfunction of the commenting system during the transition has caused a mass exodus of long-time readers and commenters, and early reports suggested it was seriously hurting Gawker's pageview count, but more recent metrics seem to suggest it wasn't that bad.
I'm sure there are other examples I'm not thinking of. I remember being part of a Nine Inch Nails board and hearing about people who would road trip out to New Orleans to just stand outside Trent Reznor's house for awhile. People do that sometimes.