Fan entitlement is nothing new. The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy, who first appeared on the show in 1991, is handy pop culture shorthand for the fan who believes that his in-depth knowledge of a piece of media means that that media must cater to him or be deemed worthless. But while those conversations were once contained within fandom spaces like conventions and comic book stores, the evolution of the internet has led to efforts such as targeted campaigns to lower IMDB ratings and the infamous petitions to HBO to re-produce the final season of Game of Thrones and to Disney to remake The Last Jedi. It does seem like fan entitlement is getting worse... or at least more visible.
"It's great that people are expressive of their views. But this is people's jobs. People worked really, really hard on that thing," Ridley says, with conviction. "I think there's a way of having a discussion that isn't so vicious."
Social media can contribute to "the God complex that some people have," Ridley continues. "Because if you've got however many followers, and you write something that you think is, like, so deep, and a hundred people like it, it's constant reinforcement." But, in her experience, it's not just people sitting behind their laptops and their phones who brazenly share hurtful opinions.
"I was at my friend's birthday," she recalls, "and one of her friends, who I barely know, was like, 'Hey, really liked the first Star Wars. Didn't really like the second one,' and I thought, 'That's rude, dude! That's my job!'"
Daisy Ridley has some interesting comments to Bustle about the growing issues of fan entitlement, in particular relating a personal story of someone rudely going up to her about TLJ and how social media reinforcement is contributing to the problem. Her point about social media fueling the viciousness and reinforcing people into thinking the behavior is acceptable which lead to people to bringing into into real life and up to her personally is pretty apt. As we see with death threats against creatives, the recent Kyoto Animation studio fire...this is a problem that is just getting worse and worse.
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