I completely understand what you mean when you say "tiresome". But it's important to realize that this isn't the argument many people are actually using when they oppose disagreement to their ideas. Their words are instead some form of: "Your criticism is
ruining my ability to enjoy this." And, as I have stated before, hearing and engaging with criticism should only
improve a person's enjoyment when something is truly good. And if you like something that's bad and has serious issues (I admit I do it from time to time), just accept that reality and continue enjoying it all you want, no matter what some words on a screen from an unreal online virtual world try to tell you.
Also, let me press "X" to doubt that the vast majority of people are "tired" of dealing with the same repeated criticism, since I most often hear these kinds of "don't ruin my fun" appeals within a short time after something new has just been released. Seriously, that's not enough time for a criticism to become "tiresome". Instead, that's only marketers and corporations and Stans wanting to suppress honest debate from deflating their hypenosis balloons. If something is genuinely well made, it will be a success and recognized as such because people can and do recognize and appreciate quality art. So once again, I contend that only bad products fear criticism and try to limit its reach.
Now this may sound strange to some, but I don't even think that "stuck in the mud tiresome positions" are an actual problem, since your reaction to them is something you have control over just as much as ignoring other people's personal likes and dislikes. Here's my advice:
- Start off any conversation in good faith and realize that not everyone is as familiar with a subject as you are, and that everyone has a first time for everything.
- Don't argue to convince the other person; form your replies to try and sway the 95% of people who are just reading, because they are the ones who are open to hearing your point of view.
- Choose to debate in order to hone and practice your critical thinking skills.
If you modify your approach to create constructive conversations based around the things you control, you never get discouraged, since when you choose to engage you always feel productive in doing so. You alone decide whether you feel tired or not. Other people or their thoughts are never "tiresome", unless you choose to interpret them as such.
This accusation of "toxic fandoms" has been taken
way too far I think, and it's well past the point of reasonableness at this time. Yes, when emotions get high and discussions dissolve into personal insults, that is unproductive and unhealthy. This is especially true when it comes to people's "best girls" in an adult VN, since being attracted to Elspeth or Amrit or Kana carries with it a shit-ton of emotional desire and personal investment. I get that. After all, I rock an "Elspeth Exclusive" save path as my canon story. However, well-moderated discussions already do not allow for direct personal attacks, and F95zone is no exception to removing that kind of comment. So why is everything suddenly so "toxic"? The rules are already in place to deal with the problems that lead to unhealthy behaviour, so what gives? Well, the main emerging issue I see is that some people make their fandom for something a core part of their "identity". For example, if someone really loves Noir detective movies, and is a "cinema aficionado", you might be able to predict how they tend to dress, their tastes in music, or even their political views. Because of this, a comment simply expressing a general dislike for the genre of Noir cinema will get interpreted as a personal attack on a person's core sense of identity, and they will often respond with very strong emotions to the simple existence of another person who isn't exactly like them. But that's not rational, to put it mildly. And this is the point where "being respectful" crosses a line nowadays and gets taken way too far in the other direction. Simply expressing my own likes and dislikes is not a personal attack on anyone, nor does it create a "toxic fandom", and that should not even be a reasonable thought that crosses anyone's mind.
The meme of "living rent-free inside someone's head" has become popular recently, and I think that says something about the general mental state of the online world. Because people don't seem to have the tools anymore for dealing well with peer pressure, and so they instead require constant "affirmation" and "coddling" to "feel safe". This kind of obsession with imagined slights and externalizing phobias has become the real problem in online interactions IMO, and it is getting expressed by the observation that someone is "living rent-free" inside another person's mind.
Feelings of safety are something you have personal ownership of, in the end, and they are not something that anyone else controls except you.
Hopefully that explains why I try to promote
more debate and criticism, not less, when it comes to important and interesting ideas. And human sexual desire is a damn fun subject to explore in every depth imaginable.
