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Your Fandom Is Not The Only Fandom | |
Posted Apr 12, 2012 - 14:09:15
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 For those unaware, the Hulu Best In Show poll was a neck and neck race between Community and The Walking Dead. Community won (yay!), and for some reason a small percentage of The Walking Dead fandom has been declaring the voting "rigged." Seriously, search Tumblr for The Walking Dead and I'm sure you'll find some examples -- here's one I found in two seconds.
This amazes me.
Community these days is most famous for it's frighteningly rabid fanbase (which I am a member of). It's the kind of internet savvy, obsessive fanbase usually unseen in a sitcom audience. And the reason is simple - it's an exceptionally geeky show (as it should be, as it was created by Dead Ale Wives alum Dan "Attacking the Darkness" Harmon).
The show has been in, at least the eyes of the fanbase, endangered - so in these last few months we've all been super energized. And one of the ways we're hoping to help is by rewatching episodes on Hulu.
So lo and behold, when said site has a poll, the fans jump on it. Any time we fell behind in the polls, the call to arms went out across Twitter and Tumblr. We fought tooth and nail through each round - and did so harder in the finals because we knew we were going up a (rather good) genre show. Unlike the sitcoms we'd faced earlier in the competitions, this show had a fandom that would fight to try and win too. Whenever we fell behind though, we didn't think the poll was rigged - we assumed the other fandom was voting a lot.
On the other hand, apparently some Walking Dead fans can't comprehend that there might be another fandom out there that knows how to use the internet as well. Some of them don't have the capacity to understand that a group of people might like something else as much as they like their favorite show.
So this is my message to fans of The Walking Dead who say the poll was rigged: There are other Human Beings (pun only sort of intended) who like other stuff as much as you like your stuff. Other fandoms may just be as passionate as yours, and crying foul because you lost a poll based on internet popularity... it smacks of ridiculousness.
- Traegorn
Recently saw the same thing happen during a webcomic award poll.
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