[lmm]

> Most reviews of the album went something like: "If you don't like metal and prog rock, then you probably will hate this album, because it is a tour de force of these relatively unpopular genres. If you like metal and prog rock, then you probably will love it." Because that's pretty much all a reader needs to know.

...

> The point of the review is that if you're a fan of metal, Tool's Lateralus is a 10.0. If you don't like metal, which most people don't like, it is a 0.0. What other commentary about the music do we actually need? So they decided to use it as an opportunity to criticize the fans. It got a ton of attention and sparked a whole wave of meta-criticism about metal and if it is or isn't appropriate to criticize an artist for their fans, which is an eternal question in criticism that we are still having today.

So Pitchfork's review conveys the same thing as other reviews, but in a more obtuse way, and this makes it better?

[Staple_Diet]

A more contemporary example might be Rick and Morty.

Now R&M is an immensely popular show, but we all know there is a subsets of its fanbase who are intolerable and who unironically speak about this cartoon as being for people with high IQs. Now imagine if a contemporary publication published a review of the latest season and chose not too focus on the content but rather parody these fans. Fans of the show will watch the new season regardless of the rating and people who hate it won't, but both would get a chuckle out of a parody of that intolerable fan and for R&M they benefit either way by being mentioned. Further, as stated by previous commenter, this type of review opened up a conversation about whether a fanbase becomes a legitimate reason to dislike an artist/creation.

Also, if unfamiliar with Tool, check out any of their songs on YT and read the comments, you will understand the need for the parody.

[Fluorescence]

> subsets of its fanbase who are intolerable

I hear this relentlessly but I can't say I have ever seen what this is first hand. If R&M comes up on r/television I don't see anything unusual. Where do people run into this fanbase?

[saagarjha]

It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid

[Staple_Diet]

Apologies for the long quote but this goes some way in covering it;

>As fan communities now have endless forums and formats to debate and discuss, there’s been a shift from simply being a fan of something to somehow assuming ownership of it. The combination of Reddit boards and social media means internet die-hards begun viewing their roles not as passive viewers, but as active policers. Some critic doesn’t like the latest Marvel film that you’re pretty sure you’ll love? Get ’em.

>And this curious urge – worse in the sci-fi and superhero genres and infinitely worse in young male fans – has reached its nadir in the young, male sci-fi fandom of Rick And Morty.

>Even mentioning the show my colleagues at GQ provoked a response of mild disgust. They hadn’t seen it, one said, but had always been put off because of the fans. I know exactly what they mean. And it has only gotten worse.

>When, in a joke in the third-series premiere, Rick says his whole motivation isn’t to avenge anyone’s death, but was instead “driven by finding that McNugget sauce. That’s my series arc”, referring to a promotional Szechuan dipping sauce that McDonald’s used to sell in the late 1990s for a promotional tie-in with the movie Mulan, the fans took him at his word and the very next day began online petitions to demand its return. McDonald’s, never one to bypass free PR, announced a few months later the sauce would come back for a limited time. But it didn’t have enough for the demand, so the fans then protested – online and in person – and, in some cases, the police were called. To repeat: McDonald’s dipping sauce.

>If sauce entitlement is one thing, the fans took it to a whole new level by the end of the third series. The Rick And Morty writing room had always been a bro club and so creator Harmon had hired some new female comedy writers to even out the imbalance. The fans, convinced they were the cause of what they saw as a dip in quality in the third series, went after the new female writers online individually, abusing, threatening and slandering them on Twitter and creating Reddit threads just to smear them. They even doxed them, publishing their personal information online.

>And don’t just take my word for it. Even Harmon despises this sector of his own fandom.

>They want, he told Entertainment Weekly, “to protect the content they think they own – and somehow combine that with their need to be proud of something they have, which is often only their race or gender… I’ve made no bones about the fact that I loathe these people. It fucking sucks.”

The full article: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/rick-and-morty...

[imp0cat]

Yes, but obtuse is probably not the right word.