Can I bend your ear for a tick? I have something to say about “communication”

It might just be me- perhaps the recipients really enjoy these comments- but when I go to like or comment on an Instagram pic or facebook post for a celebrity I follow and see comments like below it really disturbs me. Almost scares me.

The constant “follow me” requests or “I love you” and calling an actor only by a character name… it’s a little creepy. I get it though- it would be awesome to have a celebrity you really like follow you back. But what I’ve learned is that if you don’t act like a crazy person, if you communicate, and if you present an interesting and desirable self, those people that you enjoy are more likely to be intrigued by you. And much less likely to be turned off.

For the record- without naming names, I did speak to a few people who receive these kind of responses. The gist was basically that often the comments are sweet, but that they can be scary and frequently lead to minimizing interactions.

I also see a lot of things like this, “Brazil loves you”. Really? You can speak for an entire country? Are you the president? That’s pretty awesome that someone so powerful is an obsessive fan of a TV actor…

OK look- speak for yourself! Don’t be that douche. I get that you want this personality to come visit your country so that you can have the opportunity to meet them. Here’s a better idea- contact the nearest relevant event (convention, etc) and let THEM know you are interested in this person attending. Tell your friends to do the same. It’s a lot more likely to happen if a reputable event reaches out. I know this from experience.

I kind of like seeing the “I love you”’s. The problem though is when you can imagine the poster is screaming it, while collapsing in tears, and they are obviously freaking out like an adolescent girl seeing “One Direction” at their school. These comments make me twitch.

In scrolling for examples for this post, I kept coming across people making what amount to (or weren’t even subtly hidden) “rape” comments and jokes. This actually disturbed me more than the stuff I’ve already mentioned. So I wanted to switch gears for a bit and talk about this- especially as it seems to be such a hot topic in our society these days. But I’ve been mulling over how to say what I want to say for the better part of a week and the words don’t flow right because I am too emotional about it. So I am stepping back from this particular aspect for a bit in order to pull it together. But what I want to be sure to say today is this- it’s people like this commentor and their friend, who think it is OK to make jokes like this, people who think it’s OK to grope or make comments about someone at a convention, people who blame a victim, or say that it’s the nature of men… it’s people like that that keep rape culture alive.

And for the record, the “inside me”, “cum”, “rape” comments were all made by girls on a young male actors photo- one photo.

Tags: Conventions, Fandoms, FanGirls, Fans, Friends, Geekery, Nerdtastic Ramblings, Personal, Psychology, Social Media