Insulting is not a good thing. It’s even worse with entertainment. Entertainment can come in many forms like Comics and TV shows. When there’s entertainment, they’ll always be critics. Some critics are good and know how to criticize properly and politely. Some are just meatheads who just don’t care how creators feel.

Nowadays with the internet blowing up and all, creators will definitely have an account for social media. So far, this is the most efficient way for creators to communicate with critics and their fans. Going into public to sign autographs and talk one on one is just too inefficient.

Basically the internet makes everything much easier, but there are a few problems. Cyberbullying is a real thing and it happens to creators when people dislike their work. Even a critic’s message can sound like they’re attacking the creators themselves. That’s the problem with the internet; no one sees each other’s faces so it’s hard to tell one’s true intention.

Do these situations actually happen?

They actually do but not very often. Not everyone crosses the line and do such idiotic things. What I mean by this is that some people may complain about it on their own blog or social media page, but they wouldn’t go as far as to mention the creator’s account repeatedly.

An example of this situation is the current controversy behind a

Manga (Japanese comic) called “Domestic Girlfriend”. The story itself recently ended on June 10th, and a lot of people rejected the ending because it was a love-triangle. A love triangle is essentially when two people like / love the same person and that person has a hard time deciding who to go out with. 

Following from my claim and the domestic girlfriend situation, a complaint in a personal blog can be found in the Domestic Girlfriend subreddit. Reddit is basically instagram but split into communities, communities also mean subreddit. A lot of people post about how they’re still upset about how the story ended but they don’t mention the author’s name. See how this relates to my first paragraph on how they’re people who make complaints but on their own blog?

Continuing from the earlier statement on personal blog complaints, If we have a calm and logical community, they’ll always be an opposite. Sometimes there are people who express frustration over the ending abusively and aggressively. 

Domestic Girlfriend creator Kei Sasuga tweeted that she has been receiving “an overwhelming amount of insults, criticisms, and prolonged harassment” from overseas Twitter users. Kei Sasuga herself is grateful for the supportive comments she receives, but she feels like when she blocks an account that attacked her, they come back to attack her again. She stated that the only thing she can do is to brace herself for the hate comments. Kei Sasuga also said that the people who attacked her didn’t even buy her stuff!

In my opinion, people who don’t even buy the creator’s stuff have no right to attack nor criticize anything that the creator does, especially social media. I, as a reader myself, use an illegal website that allows people from foreign countries to read the translated version. The original book / magazine is also written in Japanese, so it’s hard to get an official translated copy for those who’re foreign. 

But I don’t criticize her work because I don’t like posting online about my own life. I only use youtube, line, instagram and reddit to check on other people’s problems. And if I were to complain, I’d keep it to myself or share it with those who share an interest with me in real  life, not online.

Rejecting the ending is normal for stories like Domestic Girlfriend (Love-triangle based stories) because they’ll always be teams for each character, but going as far as abusing the creator might be a bit harsh.

The Filthy Frank is another example of getting attacked. Filthy Frank is a youtuber who quit because of vocal problems and to pursue his singing dreams under the name “Joji”.  Two years after he changed careers, A K-pop stan (Those who like K-pop) tried to boycott him. She claims that he said the “N word” before changing careers. We’ll group the haters as K-pop stans because they are the majority.

Her statement is a form of attacking. The majority of Joji’s fans were from FilthyFrank so the minority were the ones who were disgusted when they found out that Joji and FilthyFrank are the same person. 

People may ask if Joji apologized for being racist, but that isn’t actually the case. Many people were supportive towards Joji including black people because they understood that his content was for comedy purposes. Joji even explained in his FilthyFrank channel that the fiction character he made is an embodiment of what a person SHOULD not be.

At the end of the day, the K-pop stans failed to boycott Joji. People turned their backs on the stans, and even made jokes like “Did you know that Dwayne Johnson and the rock are the same person” or something similar to that. It’s because the majority of the stans didn’t know that Joji and FilthyFrank were the same person.

So why shouldn’t creators be attacked?

Creating entertainment is not an easy task. At this age, the most important thing is to get approval and money. These two are just factors to keep creators from doing stupid things that could possibly make them go bankrupt.

And if creators have to go through that just to get their work published, then giving harsh comments may be a bit too much. We never know how they may feel. Some may argue that they have fame on their side and such comments won’t have an effect on creators. But that rule doesn’t really apply, creators are humans too and as humans we have feelings.

Cyberbullying creators is the whole reason that creators want to avoid social media. If they can handle the harsh criticism, then that’s that. But not everyone is emotionally prepared for these kinds of things. Imagine yourself as a creator and having someone dislike your work to the point that they start bullying you through a social media site. You might start questioning why your work even got published in the first place.

What are the hater’s intentions behind attacking? What do they even gain from complaining, fame?

When something doesn’t go how you imagine it would be, you would be dissatisfied right? Same laws apply to hater’s, the whole reasoning to why people do such things is because of dissatisfaction and by complaining instead of accepting, they gain satisfaction quickly and are not frustrated.  

Think of it this way, when you’re frustrated, you want to get it out of your mind as fast as possible. But this is just my theory on why people abuse, A hater’s true motive may possibly be to have fun as a sadist, but that’s not a topic for me to talk about since A mere human can’t see through one’s motives easily. Unless of course, if they’re easy to read.

Also note that an attacker / abuser is not the same thing as a hater. They’re not the same term, but I use the term hater’s because it is much easier to understand but I strongly believe that the attackers don’t hate the entertainment form itself, they’re just dissatisfied with how things don’t go their way so like I said earlier, this may be a way for them to express frustration.

So what now? Is this even a serious issue to begin with?

No, it is not that big of an issue and there is no way to fix things as they are. People will always be people and toning down criticism is not an easy choice to go with. If we were to hypothetically make a protest not to criticize creators harshly, It would NOT go well. Overall in my opinion, I think we should just leave it the way it is.

Sometimes these kinds of things are a big deal and people may end up killing themselves but what can we do? Creators may end up doing something dumb like suicide but they can do it anywhere and anytime they like. This is just an issue I wanted to personally point out because it happens a few times a year. I just don’t like it when people create drama and it either goes good or bad.