‘Fandom has toxicifed the world’: Alan Moore is right about fans

We live in a world where certain fans think they’re the ones who control everything. The toxicity that fandom breeds has taken over online spaces and made art almost impossible to make objectively. You have to bend to their will or face the toxic fandom’s wrath.

Alan Moore, known for his work on stories like Watchmen, has been vocal in the past about how the toxicity of fandom can bleed into other aspects of society. When he first made the statement, these fans responded with hatred towards Moore. Now, he is back with another piece, written for The Guardian, that highlights the issues with fandom in the modern world.

“I believe that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture, without which that culture ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies,” Moore wrote in the piece. “At the same time, I’m sure that fandom is sometimes a grotesque blight that poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement.”

Moore is talking about the kind of fandom that attacks creatives. The fandom that is willing to send death threats because of someone else’s opinion. That’s who Moore is calling out. In the article, he even points out that there are healthy subsets of fandom that just love something and are there for other members of said fandom. That’s the kind of fandom I love to operate in. I love to talk to my friends about how little characters and favorite storylines.

Those who fuel the toxic energy of fandom are not people who deserve our respect. Having creatives like Moore call them out does feel good because for years, it has felt like other fans (primarily women) have been trying to warn others about this toxicity.

Moore is right on the power toxic fandom has

People often say “just ignore them” when talking about the toxic fans. The issue is that ignoring them breeds more of them. Their hatred is like a virus, taking over the fandom space and slowly becoming what people think is the “general” consensus on something. So many of us push back, express our love for something, and try to be positive. Those toxic fans respond with more hatred.

Moore pointed out that horrifying online movements like that of Gamergate and Comicsgate is what helped give this toxicity power. He’s 100% right. The people behind Gamergate and Comicsgate allowed the darkness in some fans to finally have a platform. Their hatred spawned into others laying claim to what they thought was “theirs” and theirs alone.

“Unnervingly rapidly, our culture has become a fan-based landscape that the rest of us are merely living in,” Moore wrote. “Our entertainments may be cancelled prematurely through an adverse fan reaction, and we may endure largely misogynist crusades such as Gamergate or Comicsgate from those who think ‘gate’ means ‘conspiracy’, and that Nixon’s disgrace was predicated on a plot involving water, but this is hardly the full extent to which fan attitudes have toxified the world surrounding us, most obviously in our politics.”

Creatives like Moore pushing back at fans like this? I love it. It makes me proud. I just wish none of us had to deal with the toxicity in the first place.