Why does fandom get so toxic?

Misunderstandings, vendettas, snobbery, real-world prejudices affecting fiction... You can usually tell a particularly vile party by the context of the rhetoric use, tossing around terms like "millennials" or "casuals" as if they were offensive ethnic slurs. I'm sure people can very easily think of something that people mistake for applying to their demographic, there's a lot of loose thinking about.

Putting aside sincere misunderstandings (which are frequently resolved with admissions of confusion), I suspect that a big part of it stems from a fundamental misunderstanding in how to talk with another human being in an ordinary context. They use fiction as a medium for blindsiding others who feel different, probably as a means of releasing the dissatisfaction with their own lives beyond the internet (slogans are usual). Another big factor is the notion that "confrontation must equal violence", so any argument must be met with the kind of savagery you'd often see in petty street gangs. An idea which is not only a logical fallacy, but also extremely detrimental to any meaningful discussion, which kind of defeats the point of fandoms in general really. Creation. Celebration. It's about people being and making others happy, not miserable.

The reason it gets so noxious, I think, has a lot to do with what people expect from fan culture. My advice is to never follow a group or individual that demands that you hate someone else to be accepted and, most importantly, immediately converts you to an enemy when you refuse to comply. The war hawks without self-reproach, nor admission of wrongdoing who are so lazy to believe that hating is so much easier than actually contributing anything of value. When they are considered the norm, that is when a following of people coming together to celebrate stops and an insubstantial rabble of fanatics begins. It moves haphazardly from a funfair into a book burning.

Fortunately, there's no actual need for toxicity in fandom. It's certainly never perfect, but a constructive atmosphere is achievable. What largely makes it possible is a combination self-awareness, awareness of others and an understanding that what you are reading may not be precisely what they're saying. Get enough people like that together and it becomes viable. Those who go to great lengths to try and prove otherwise are likely there to try and prey on others using tactics you'd see in a tribal warlord and often don't tend to stay very long as with no fear or anger, they feel they have no power. They depart, unable to find any recruits and people get on with what they were doing previously. Creation. Celebration. Being and making others happy.

Another reason to be thankful for this place!

It doesn't really.

The internet gets toxic. Fandom is only one of the elements of online life this exhibits in.

It's always the vocal minority. But then, when they stop shouting, that's when the measured majority should step in and say what exactly the fandom is really all about. In the case of Doctor Who, it's been inclusivity (First coming to accept and care for Ian and Barbara), tolerance (Third doesn't approve of the Brigadier's more militaristic ways, but does respect him all the same) and above all -- change (any incarnation in any period really).

That's certainly something I can relate to. Believe me I know. I prefer to look at it this way to reconcile the idea in a general sense...

It damn well hurts, there are no two ways about that. In the same way that getting hit with rocks in the schoolyard certainly hurts, but I find it's far more satisfying to be able to say that the malefactors and bullies weren't able to change my opinion. More than that. I was able to sway others to mine without ever having to resort to their methods. To paraphrase Lawrence, the trick of the Internet is not minding that it hurts. The road may melt the soles of your shoes and the wind snap blood from your face, but I guarantee you have more important things to worry about than the weather.

If the toxic elements, who exist only to jeer and sneer, shrink so far behind anonymity to be as indistinguishable as motes of sand in the breeze, why should they be treated elsewise? We plan for these conditions, we guard ourselves against them and when they do get too heady -- when a storm becomes a hurricane -- we wait and seek other places to go in the interim. If an opinion is not welcome because the frequent majority in question are simply not open to a conversation, then that conversation must go elsewhere. To those who are willing to listen. There's always somewhere else, particularly when people tell you that there isn't.

And because I'm in a quoting mood, I'm reminded of a set of lines from The Professionals, which applies really well to Internet murkiness in general:

Important question then: Why air this in a social setting that has been deliberately constructed around the idea of fandom? Particularly in a setting like this where empathy and camaraderie are encouraged amongst those who share a common interest? What does soliloquising its faults contribute? *shrug* Why be here?