It was a nice chill summer day when I decided that I should expand my horizons on twitter. Since December of 2011, I pretty much just interacted with people who I knew in real life or what twitter calls them, "locals." Yes, it was nice overall and I felt that (and still do today) the overall fast pace feeling of twitter was just great. I could update people in real time about stuff that was on my mind without feeling like I was being bother some as if i was on facebook. However, I felt that after awhile I wanted to interact with more people than just locals and actually talk to other people about things that interested me, mainly anime.
Luckily, April of 2012 happened which is a memorable moment for a lot of Anime fans in America. Toonami, the popular action block that went off the air back in 2008, mysteriously appeared on the air as an April fools joke. I missed it unfortunately but woke up to find it trending and found out via the tweets that a part of my childhood had returned. I was ecstatic (a long side feeling down that i missed it). But still, It happened! Soon after, I was informed about the #Bringbacktoonami movement and I began using the hash tag to just show support and tweet how I wanted Toonami to come back. I then figured that I might as well follow fellow #Toonamifaithfuls who were down for the cause as well. Doing this was one of the best decisions ever, I was now interacting with a lot more people than just locals and best of all, we could talk about Anime and things related to it.
Once Saturday night Toonami returned, I couldn't wait to get on twitter to talk to friends and tweet/share thoughts about the shows that were airing. I couldn't ask for anything more actually. I had finally found a place that I could call home on twitter and not worry about if I was spamming peoples timelines with things that didn't interest them. I found my Nirvana on twitter.
Well months, and a year or so has gone by and in that time things started happening. Well for one, through a mutual understanding between a lot of the mutual users I followed, the anime community that we were familiar with had gotten its name, Anime twitter or Anitwitter. Cool. Its nice that we now had an identification. The second thing that happened is that groups in Anime twitter began to form amongst the users. The notable ones are the Guild which In my opinion has been prospering and has recruited a lot of members since its debut. A lot of the guys in that group really do their best to promote anime and other various things to show their love and support for the genre. The next is ATF. While I've had my fair share of issues with a few of their members and such, I cant deny the fact that they are indeed prospering as well and at the end of the guys are people who just see/talk about Anime in a different way and are having fun. There are a few other groups that have started to come out as well but those two are the ones that are more active. And its no secret that there's been clashes between said groups but from what I can see its died down a lot. As a whole, I guess the concept of having groups in such a large community other than the #Toonamifaithful is pretty sweet.
Normally with such a large community and different sub groups that ultimately enjoy the same thing at the end of the day, you'd figure that there'd be some kind of civility. As of lately, that's gone out the window. There's a trend of things that I and I'm pretty sure a lot of others have noticed. These trends have been the cause of nonstep arguments and mass take overs of hostility on peoples timelines. What happened to anime bringing us together?
I'll just start off with the first and major issue that seems to be plaguing Anitwitter today. Immaturity when it comes to differing opinions. Since we've all been introduced to anime (starting from different times for different people), we've seen the birth of many genres and with that, a variety of different Anime that people can pick and choose from. Some people prefer ecchi, while some, prefer slice of life, shonen, ane etc. And of course there's the well known popular titles that everyone is familiar with or has watched. We all have different tastes and preferences REGARDLESS of when it came out. We're human and it would be a pretty dull world if we all liked and agreed on the same things. Apparently, this isn't the case for many people on Anitwitter. What I've noticed, especially with the some of the popular accounts is that its somehow wrong for you to to the following:
1. Like certain titles or have them in your 'top 5 or 10.'
2. Have a differing opinion on popular titles.
3. ..........................Like DBZ (This one is so stupid...)
What I've seen as a result of one violating these oh so sacred rules is just flat out disrespect. Peoples opinions on anime are somehow voided and considered irrelevant and they will be attacked out of pure spite because someone or a group of people don't know how to settle disagreements in a proper manner. Unfortunately some of the victims of these actions don't know how to handle an immature attack on them and instead of just being the bigger person and walking away or just unfollow or block their aggressor, they play right into their hands by going back and fourth with them. Some of the time (especially since there's a lot of close friends on twitter) more people will jump in or "aid" their comrades in the dispute. In the end, a simple disagreement turns into an all out war on the timelines. Your opinion or popularity is not a cause to feel extremely superior to make others feel like crap or attack them because their views are different than yours. Its no wonder that because of this, I wouldn't be surprised if people just decided not to voice their opinions on certain things regarding Anime at all because of what they see happen weekly, or daily on twitter.
Another trend I see a lot of the time is people attacking non anime fans on twitter. Remember when I spoke about how the world would be boring place if everyone liked the same things and such regarding anime? The same applies. Yes, Anime has been a part of our lives for many years now and we have a lot of proud and great memories with it and we consider it something special. Hell, its pretty much mainstream now. This isn't the case for a lot of other people. There's people who just don't like Anime for whatever reason and they are entitled to that. There isn't a law that says that everyone should like anime. Hell, if you follow me on twitter, you can see that I'm a huge metal/J-rock fan and yes it does suck that people don't like those types of music but its alright. Somethings are just not for certain people like some genres of Anime and interests aren't for many on Anitwitter. What Id see is a group of 2-3 people just spam someones mentions with insults and nonsense just because they said they didn't like or 'insulted' anime. Now if someone who didn't like anime even considered getting into it later down the line, chances are they'd associate Anime with overly obsessed and immature individuals who act like kids thanks to a few kids from Anitwitter who thought they were "defending" Anime by attacking them. It doesn't help when a lot of people have anime characters as avi's or have anime characters in their avis as well.
Those two main things, a long side a lot of other nonsense, has made being an Anime fan on twitter as of recently not pleasurable as it once was. Its like everyone has to be on their toes when discussing anything anime. A simple retweet of something that''s not popular or taboo can send people spiraling out of control which honestly isn't necessary at all. I'm not saying that we have to agree on certain things or anything like that but lets be honest here, a lot of us have common sense at the end of the day. But "just because its twitter" doesn't mean that goes outside the window and its open season to act like idiots. I'm sure that a large chunk of Anitwitter goes to cons where there's a lot of people who are strangers to each other similar to how a lot of us are online. The people at conventions and such know how to talk and disagree or agree with one another without bickering. Its not too much to try and do the same here. As we can see, things aren't going anywhere with all of this madness going on. I can only imagine how new people getting into twitter and are Anime fans would feel if they seen the anime community here interact with one another. At times while It can be chill, but a lot of the times it resembles Naruto forums (you should know what I'm talking about).
A lot of people probably won't read this or will and or just think its rubbish. Maybe some will read and realize and take a second to think and recall the things I spoke about. Hopefully things'll change but I'm personally not counting on it. I just felt like expressing my opinion on this.
Later.
