The Divided Fandom

posted here since I refuse to return to RTX...

The RT fandom is divided because not everyone can respect the opinions and thoughts of others, instead of treating them in a respectful manner, they resort to petty name calling and idiotic trolling. Yes it's easy to say "just ignore them", but really how can you if they do not stop?
Or worse, how do you react from being hated simply because of your own opinions? Or in worse cases, banned from expressing them, branded a hater.

The fandom will remain divided as long as those individuals are stuck on that mindset
they can't change your thoughts, and you can't change theirs.

It's sad, but it's just the way it is.

I've been battling that sort of crap since 1995. First, the RRG (though they didn't call themselves that at the time), kept trying to use circular arguments to prove their timeline (that later got bastardized into the robotech.com timeline, after the RRG was sucked dry and cast aside by the Yunes). I got banned from the Robotech ML for daring to use the series and HG's own words to disprove their case. This came about after the assistant moderator sent me a private email flaming me for a post, in such a manner that the reply went to the ML when I responded to it (And it appeared from the headers to have come from the ML).

One of the things they especially loathed me for was that I was willing to argue each different take on Robotech, its content, and its chronology, on their own merits. I could debate someone on the novels, without trying to force the series' events into them, or vice-versa; or the RPG; or even the Comico and Eternity/Malibu comics. The fact that I WOULDN'T bow down to their fatally flawed fanfic timeline made me an enemy of the state. This was especially true on Usenet, where they repeatedly posted and linked to their site as if it was the sole source of canon, all the while claiming they did not do so, citing a home page for their site that no one ever was actually sent to by them (except to try to misrepresent their critics), that proclaimed that their page was originally fan material for an RPG scenario and fanfics (especially interesting since a number of their "Robotech" ships were conversions of the UC Gundam original TV/Movie, 00xx and Zeta/ZZ ships).

When finally called on it, they changed their name to make it even MORE likely that their fanfic data would be misrepresented as canon (Going from "Robotech Technical Files" to "Robotech REFERENCE Files"). In one notorious usenet flamefest, I systematically, POLITELY, dismantled one of their arguments - only to have the respondent DELETE EVERY SINGLE BIT of my data from his counter as irrelevant, then proceed to denounce me as some sort of mental midget for claiming things WITH NO PROOF?!?!?!? - then had a bunch of his fanboys and a couple of his alts act as yes-men, acting as if my complete reply never occurred (I reposted my reply several times, and each time a reply was given, THE SAME LINES OF PROOF were always deleted, leaving only his arguments).

They constantly tried to pigeonhole me as some fruitcake RPG nut (even when all my evidence was from the series and official HG material not associated with the RPG, Novels or comics), so eventually I started just ignoring them. In all, it was just two bad apples in their organization (whose first names are variations of the same name), as I've never had trouble calmly debating, even sitting around in RL and goofing off, with everyone else.

But, as much damage as they did to fandom, directly or indirectly, no one's done more than the current HG staff. Everyone who was working with them that dared to point out the Emperor's lack of clothing, trying to convince them that their ideas just COULD NOT WORK, got terminated. This ranged from some of the competitors of the RRG, who were tapped for information, to long-time HG associates/employees trying to mitigate the damage, to even the RRG people they had brought in to give (usually bad, as in too grounded in OSM to work in Robotech) information that they didn't want to research themselves. All one has to do is look at the state of politics on the robotech.com forums to see that nothing resembling rational thought in debates over the series will be tolerated, if it challenges the new status quo. The Brothers and their forum lackies really ought to see if Hugo Boss has any of those spiffy looking black suits left that Hugo himself created for a special service group of the German government in the 1930s, because they sure act the part. And, they still try to deny the existence of the poll they did during beta for robotech.com, AFTER Animeigo got the rights to Macross (proving that it was NOT what was being discussed, despite their claims otherwise), that indicated by the questions asked that their original intent for Shadow Chronicles involved the adaptation of an existing series, not something new (hence the long delay, once they found that their license with Tatsunoko did not cover that mid-1990s series from Big West). Note that they also stated, in the same time period, that there would be NOTHING in it related to The End of the Circle in TSC - strange how that changed, isn't it? It's also interesting to note that one HG employee was terminated shortly after spending time at a convention with several of HG's critics, as a friend we'd known for years (And have had polite debate with, even if that debate almost always ended with "well, we're going to stick with our current take on the series, despite your input").

Lately, though, I've had to deal with a once-friend that suddenly started acting the opposite of his old self, when returning to another forum. In fact, he has suddenly become SO pro-HG that I am almost convinced that it ISN'T him, but one of HG's staff having hacked his account, or acquired the information from him. Regardless, my trying to debate rationally with him failed (in fact, he behaved in almost identical ways to the RRG persons mentioned before, in terms of creative editing of my replies), that it eventually led to my being stripped of admin powers there, when I was the only one running the site for most of the last decade, after he disappeared for over 5 years. Given his career history, perhaps it is possible he now works for HG in some manner (in which it would be expected for him to toe the party line) - but unless that is the case, I cannot fathom his personality change, unless his time away was in the sandbox, and something happened to him in uniform to totally screw with his head. Ironically, the week before he reappeared, I was planning on contacting the board host to see if I could somehow shift from being the only active admin to beigng forum owner, in order to revamp the page.

Why is it that being inclusive and tolerant of differing viewpoints is seen by that one (albeit important) faction, as being a hatemonger?

Basara549 wrote:

I've been battling that sort of crap since 1995. First, the RRG (though they didn't call themselves that at the time), kept trying to use circular arguments to prove their timeline (that later got bastardized into the robotech.com timeline, after the RRG was sucked dry and cast aside by the Yunes). I got banned from the Robotech ML for daring to use the series and HG's own words to disprove their case. This came about after the assistant moderator sent me a private email flaming me for a post, in such a manner that the reply went to the ML when I responded to it (And it appeared from the headers to have come from the ML).

One of the things they especially loathed me for was that I was willing to argue each different take on Robotech, its content, and its chronology, on their own merits. I could debate someone on the novels, without trying to force the series' events into them, or vice-versa; or the RPG; or even the Comico and Eternity/Malibu comics. The fact that I WOULDN'T bow down to their fatally flawed fanfic timeline made me an enemy of the state. This was especially true on Usenet, where they repeatedly posted and linked to their site as if it was the sole source of canon, all the while claiming they did not do so, citing a home page for their site that no one ever was actually sent to by them (except to try to misrepresent their critics), that proclaimed that their page was originally fan material for an RPG scenario and fanfics (especially interesting since a number of their "Robotech" ships were conversions of the UC Gundam original TV/Movie, 00xx and Zeta/ZZ ships).

When finally called on it, they changed their name to make it even MORE likely that their fanfic data would be misrepresented as canon (Going from "Robotech Technical Files" to "Robotech REFERENCE Files"). In one notorious usenet flamefest, I systematically, POLITELY, dismantled one of their arguments - only to have the respondent DELETE EVERY SINGLE BIT of my data from his counter as irrelevant, then proceed to denounce me as some sort of mental midget for claiming things WITH NO PROOF?!?!?!? - then had a bunch of his fanboys and a couple of his alts act as yes-men, acting as if my complete reply never occurred (I reposted my reply several times, and each time a reply was given, THE SAME LINES OF PROOF were always deleted, leaving only his arguments).

They constantly tried to pigeonhole me as some fruitcake RPG nut (even when all my evidence was from the series and official HG material not associated with the RPG, Novels or comics), so eventually I started just ignoring them. In all, it was just two bad apples in their organization (whose first names are variations of the same name), as I've never had trouble calmly debating, even sitting around in RL and goofing off, with everyone else.

But, as much damage as they did to fandom, directly or indirectly, no one's done more than the current HG staff. Everyone who was working with them that dared to point out the Emperor's lack of clothing, trying to convince them that their ideas just COULD NOT WORK, got terminated. This ranged from some of the competitors of the RRG, who were tapped for information, to long-time HG associates/employees trying to mitigate the damage, to even the RRG people they had brought in to give (usually bad, as in too grounded in OSM to work in Robotech) information that they didn't want to research themselves. All one has to do is look at the state of politics on the robotech.com forums to see that nothing resembling rational thought in debates over the series will be tolerated, if it challenges the new status quo. The Brothers and their forum lackies really ought to see if Hugo Boss has any of those spiffy looking black suits left that Hugo himself created for a special service group of the German government in the 1930s, because they sure act the part. And, they still try to deny the existence of the poll they did during beta for robotech.com, AFTER Animeigo got the rights to Macross (proving that it was NOT what was being discussed, despite their claims otherwise), that indicated by the questions asked that their original intent for Shadow Chronicles involved the adaptation of an existing series, not something new (hence the long delay, once they found that their license with Tatsunoko did not cover that mid-1990s series from Big West). Note that they also stated, in the same time period, that there would be NOTHING in it related to The End of the Circle in TSC - strange how that changed, isn't it? It's also interesting to note that one HG employee was terminated shortly after spending time at a convention with several of HG's critics, as a friend we'd known for years (And have had polite debate with, even if that debate almost always ended with "well, we're going to stick with our current take on the series, despite your input").

Lately, though, I've had to deal with a once-friend that suddenly started acting the opposite of his old self, when returning to another forum. In fact, he has suddenly become SO pro-HG that I am almost convinced that it ISN'T him, but one of HG's staff having hacked his account, or acquired the information from him. Regardless, my trying to debate rationally with him failed (in fact, he behaved in almost identical ways to the RRG persons mentioned before, in terms of creative editing of my replies), that it eventually led to my being stripped of admin powers there, when I was the only one running the site for most of the last decade, after he disappeared for over 5 years. Given his career history, perhaps it is possible he now works for HG in some manner (in which it would be expected for him to toe the party line) - but unless that is the case, I cannot fathom his personality change, unless his time away was in the sandbox, and something happened to him in uniform to totally screw with his head. Ironically, the week before he reappeared, I was planning on contacting the board host to see if I could somehow shift from being the only active admin to beigng forum owner, in order to revamp the page.

Why is it that being inclusive and tolerant of differing viewpoints is seen by that one (albeit important) faction, as being a hatemonger?

Man it sounds like you really put up with a lot of shit over the years especially HG's typical ignorance and stupidity. Hard to believe that such individuals are handling our robotech, but like you I was also unhappy about how they decided to dismiss the comics and novels as canon yet still managed to use some elements from them in their own shitty fanfic (yes that's right TSC is nothing more but a fanfic with a budget!) They also won't even come out and say what rights they do have when it comes to the macross saga.

Instead they are letting their moderators handle that mess, and of course said moderators are acting like your typical controlling asses, banning anyone who dares to counter their argument with the solid facts that HG can not use the macross designs.
When it's just a simple yes or no question, they can't even tell the fans but then again that's expected of them. I mean this is HG we're talking about here, they'll steal ideas and take the credit for someone else's hard work. Which they've done with a lot of fans, and are STILL doing, but some people are just too damn gullible and blind to realize it.

Overall, I don't what the hell is wrong with these people, or their followers (who are just as ignorant and stupid) But they've managed to kill the robotech franchise with their shitty ideas, and the only ones still latching on are those who have been so desperate for something for so long, they just don't give a shit how awful or half assed it is, to them it's ROBOTECH so they accept it. I also like how they tend to argue with the dissatisfied fans using such retorts as "But it's better than nothing at all" wrong, it's crap and you know it, you're just letting your blind fanboyism do all the thinking for you.

So with that, you and I and everyone else who dares to speak against HG's decisions or creative attempts, are labeled as "haters". We're not considered true fans because we don't worship the ground HG walks on, nor do we let them walk all over us either.