Episode 93: Alienating Your Own Fans

"Stay out of politics/stay on the fence/stay out of all of it to keep half your fans."

                                            -AJR, "3 O'Clock Things"

   As someone who likes a lot of bands and movies and shows, I've evolved in a lot of fanbases. Thus, I've seen a lot of new material come out and have witnessed the fan reactions to these things. Let's look back to ten years ago, 2013, and think about the artists I liked then, or in surrounding close years, that are still making new music now (or at least were up to recently): Bastille, The Killers, Fall Out Boy, Green Day, Imagine Dragons, and Panic! At The Disco. I'll lower the discussion down to just Fall Out Boy to not make this episode super long.

   The newest Fall Out Boy album when I got into them was 2013's Save Rock and Roll. Now, this was their first new album after their 3-ish-year-long break-up (that was a lot of hyphens). It also marked a sort of change in their sound, becoming more poppy and trying to be more mainstream. I personally love the album and it remains today in my top ten albums of all time. But I remember a girl in high school saying that she didn't like their newer stuff because they'd become "too poppy". Which, I don't understand that complaint - a lot of rock fans act like pop is inherently bad, which just isn't true. 

    Her opinion speaks to the main reason I'm writing this blog - I've wrote before about bands "selling out" and changing their sound and getting backlash because of it. A lot of fans feel betrayed when a band changes their sound - they feel like that band has alienated them. "Oh, you like us for this sound we have - well, we're gonna do something else now." 

   To an extent, I can understand not liking when a band you like changes their sound. Especially if it's to genres you don't enjoy. But I don't understand giving hate to them or thinking negatively of them personally. They are human beings, and just like you they grow and change and don't wanna be playing the exact same style of music their whole lives. Plus, it's not like the music they made that you like will disappear. You'll always have that music to enjoy whenever you like. 

   And I personally think that if you truly love a band, you will keep enjoying them no matter the sound changes. Don't be so narrow-minded that a little change in genre makes you cease something you were passionate about. 

   It's also like with superheroes, particularly Marvel and even more specifically the MCU. Movies like Captain Marvel and Black Panther. Some people acted like the lead being a woman in Captain Marvel was alienating male fans. Bro, it's a woman. They exist. Go outside. But I also don't like the mentality some people have of "if you didn't like the movie, you must be sexist". I think it's a fine movie, not a very good MCU movie, but a not-very-good MCU movie is still a pretty good movie. And my opinion on it has nothing to do with the fact that the main character has a vagina.

   As with Black Panther - a black main character does not alienate white fans. Blue Beetle did not have Hispanic characters to alienate white fans. You don't have to be a certain race to like a movie. But, I think people got a little too carried away with all the diversity and culture in Black Panther and blew it out of proportion. It's a great movie. I'm not arguing against that. I just don't think it's the epic, artistic revolution that some make it out to be. It's a really good superhero film. I even think the sequel was excellent. 

   I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes people do alienate their own fans - but don't think that a change of style or an expression of diversity is a case of the creator of the art alienating you or trying to exclude you from enjoying something. That's a really cynical worldview. Just enjoy what you enjoy, but don't get mad at artists for the harmless stuff they make, also don't belittle others for enjoying what you don't. 

Here's an ablieben.

Anyway, see you next week!