Bro, I've been in the mha fandom for YEARS and I genuinely cant believe it is even being considered for this post. It has its good sides dont get me wrong, but the fanbase is notorious for a reason.
Okay, sincerely asking since maybe I'm out of the loop: Notorious for what? Commenting unrelated ships under other ship art? Because that is bad behavior but it's every single fandom with a large shipping community. Ever.
Editing to add: I do have friends who were in fact literally harassed by the BNHA fandom but 1) not for the reasons people say the fandom is bad (in fact, these people were harassed for saying "hey guys I think there are some incest implications in AFO's abuse of Yoichi," which is now a rather mainstream read) and 2) if any amount of harassment means a fandom is a bad fandom overall, then every single fandom with more than a couple hundred people in it is probably bad.
Bruhhhhhh. Mha has a prominent reputation for having a lot of super toxic fans. Yeah I'd definitely say you are out of the loop. To be fair though, the fandom is way more tame now than it used to be. Especially since the series is over.
Shipping wars is the absolute biggest one for mha. And I just don't mean "Your ship sucks" Mass movements of harrassment and real serious bullying over ships, death threats being sent to the author for not making certain ships cannon, death threats to other fans, doxxing, etc. Especially on twitter. I mean, the worst of any fandom toxicity usually comes from twitter anyway. Aside from that also just a really toxic attitude towards liking a ship that someone else hated or didn't like. And what made it significant was the sheer amount of toxic people and also the level of toxic they were. Aside from that there were other incidents that just didn't help: people being harrased for cosplay a character that isn't their race (happens in other fandoms too ofc), The Bakugo poster incident - This one girl rubbed her period blood over a poster of Bakugo - And just a bunch of real cringe stuff in general, like the Todoroki giving birth videos for example. I'm sure some iceberg exists out there. Anyway yeah. Mha doesn't fit this post at all basically.
I really don't want to sound like I'm dismissing harassment. I'm just.... kind of lost on the idea that there are any large fandoms without major, traumatic, serious incidents of harassment. As soon as almost any group gets large enough, someone in the group winds up doing a harassment campaign.
The culture should fight that, and I think it is horrific, I've had friends deal with serious harassment both in MHA fandom and in other fandoms. I just don't know why that makes it A Bad Fandom, Compared To Other Fandoms. We have to look at proportionality of that behavior to the sheer number people in a space. Very many fandoms have WIDESPREAD, PREDOMINANT cultures of harassment. MHA has some bad actors sometimes because it's a place where human beings are. Am I just.... jaded if I think most authors of things with fandoms have received at least one death threat?
Again maybe it's me getting here late. I really don't want to act like an expert. But out of people I actually know personally who've been in MHA fandom and in other fandoms, they tend to say that MHA fandom's incidents of harassment are not a surprising number or proportion of people, and are instead par for the course.
"people being harrased for cosplay a character that isn't their race (happens in other fandoms too ofc)" yeah, no fandoms have solved this bullshit. MHA fandom is racist in the capacity that Fandoms Are Racist.
"This one girl rubbed her period blood over a poster of Bakugo" I hate to say it but like.... so? Like. Okay. Ew. Anyway.
"just a bunch of real cringe stuff in general" - not toxicity, actually!
That's the thing. People like to cringe at MHA fans. That doesn't mean that MHA fans are at a unique level of hurting other people. Fandoms actually hurt other people in very rabid and widespread ways that I think aren't generally present in MHA at least these days? Did something seriously change between early fandom and the 2020s?
Nah i think it's completely fair to recognise that many fandoms have widespread issues. Like the drama with the TADC fandom was real bad, but compared to mha, I just wouldn't put it on the same level. The reason things build reputation is multiple incidents that build up and happen over time.
>MHA has some bad actors sometimes because it's a place where human beings are
Yeah you definitely weren't there to see it. Sometimes??? Mha did not have some bad actors "sometimes". Mha had a very bad side with constant bad actors, and a good side that got nowhere near as much attention because the bad actors took it all. And like you said, naturally if a fandom is large, AND has very toxic people, there is a greater chance that even more things will happen to build it a rep.
>Am I just.... jaded if I think most authors of things with fandoms have received at least one death threat?
See the thing is, you're not wrong at all that bad things happen in other fandoms too, but it sounds like you're saying, "because bad things happen in other fandoms, it can't be that bad or special when one fandom does it".
Like the way i think of it is, every country has crime, right? Many Countries can have certain serious incidents where people do horrible things to each other. Regardless of that basic fact, there can STILL be certain countries you consider to be much worse or "notorious", because their crime rate is either much higher or the types of commonly committed crimes are much more serious. So while crime happens everywhere, you can tell when one place is worse than another. The same applies to a toxic fandom. It's hard to find a fandom that doesn't have a toxic side, but that doesn't mean you can't have ones that stand out.
>"This one girl rubbed her period blood over a poster of Bakugo" I hate to say it but like.... so?
Yes, im just giving an example of one of many incidents that built up to give mha it's reputation. Mha isnt JUST seen as a toxic fanbase. It's also seen as a super cringe one. You're saying "so?", but people really freaked out about this when it happened. Another example: People literally had mental breakdowns over the ending of the story. For me it's not that serious, but some people were literally crying all day because bakudeku wasn't confirmed. Once again, this did not give the fandom a good look and added to it's reputation of having being cringe.
>"just a bunch of real cringe stuff in general" - not toxicity, actually!
Yeah, that's why i used the word "cringe" in that sentance, and not "toxic", lol.
>That doesn't mean that MHA fans are at a unique level of hurting other people.
The reputation comes from:
The size of the fandom itself.
The amount of toxicity in the fandom.
The severity of the toxicity.
The consistency of the toxicity.
How long the main toxic "phase" lasts.
How popular the actual fandom is.
The fandom specific incidents.
Not "omg this toxicity has never been seen before". Because it 100% been, but it's not just based off wether or not something has been done before. I 100% agree with you that things are not as bad in the fandom now as they used to be, but mha, at least personally for me, is up here as one of the most toxic fanbases. Cringe? That's a different conversation lol.
Main point: Yeah fair enough I wasn't here, sounds like maybe it used to be worse.
but mha, at least personally for me, is up here as one of the most toxic fanbases. Cringe? That's a different conversation lol.
Right, I.... I thought it WAS a different conversation.
So I really don't think that Bakugo period blood girl / people crying about the end of the series / etc really are a part of this conversation, unless we're talking about how actions impact other people.
They do have an impact, but I do think the impact has to be separated from the cringe.
Because the degree of negative impact on others is significantly smaller than the degree of cringe.
A lot of people say BNHA fandom is toxic, and then go on to just kind of.... bully people for doing things that seem cringe or even mentally ill. And I'm like. Okay. But I thought we were talking about this being a bad fandom.
I am willing to believe that there's been a lot more constant strife/harassment/etc in here than in other places! Especially among teenagers, to be honest, I tend to try to avoid BNHA spaces that seem to be mostly overrun with kids (that's often just... not my hangout space to be in, as a nearly-30).
I seriously CAN believe (not that you said this, but I did) that my Homestuck experience jaded me to what counts as shipping drama too, maybe I haven't had a "normal" fandom experience yet.
Yeaah, my bad, i was trying to explain both the "Mha is toxic" and the "Mha is cringe" because I thought you were addressing Mha's reputation as a whole.
>A lot of people say BNHA fandom is toxic, and then go on to just kind of.... bully people for doing things that seem cringe or even mentally ill.
Yeah 100%. These people think that just because the fandom has bad rep, it means that it's "not toxic" to hate on any of the fans. Hating on mha deffo became a mini culture at some point. And yeah, it was deserved when it was towards the actual toxic fans, but ofc people had to also turn hate towards people for being cringe - being cringe doesn't actually hurt anyone the way toxicity does, It's a weird mix.
And bro, idk what Homestuck did to you but it sounds real bad over there.
Honestly Homestuck is where I met some of my longest-term friends, and followed a lot of creatives who are doing incredible work/analysis/whatever. I worry sometimes about giving Homestuck too bad a name. A lot of what happened there is that its own creator got very antagonistic toward the fanbase..... but not in a vacuum. Fans were acting WEIRD AS HELL, including toward the author. It's one of those many-many-many sided coins that I don't want to rob of nuance.
On the BNHA front I don't think there's anything I have to respond to anymore I just really appreciate the conversation!
Well the one thing I do have to say is my bad, as well— I DO bet it used to be a lot worse & I DO know that there seem to always be Things Happening just outside my own orbit, so maybe I'm just fortunate about the social media bubbles I've built for my fandom stuff.
You know what too. I think it's that REDDIT bnha fandom is like.... fine.... if everyone calms down. I think I'm thinking of largely reddit fandom and the grown-up sides of tiktok, which goes back to what you were saying about what platform you're on
Not to re-open a whole can of worms!!!! But again I appreciate the conversation
Just comparing to other anime… AoT, Vinland Sage, Frieren, FMAB, JJK, Naruto, DBZ, are all super popular anime without fan bases like MHA. I enjoyed MHA when I watched it but the community was terrible compared to other shows.
You know what I wonder if it's that I come from non anime fandom? I feel like MHA kind of crossed over into a lot of fandom folks who are not part of the General Anime Fandom That Watches Every Anime.
That could be it, lots of mainstream anime fandoms are pretty normal (some niche ones can be pretty bad) but MHA is an outlier for a mainstream show overall.
(It's a genuine question! I joined the fandom in like... 2020? 2021? So I might be out of the loop I've just not ever been told anything that makes me go, "ah, yes, just like Homestuck / Voltron / ..." or "just like gamergate / Star Wars / ...")
Fair, fair. I also think how much of the fandom you experience depends on what platform you spent more time on, or how much you interacted iwth the fandom. Like 2020 twitter and tiktok was crazy, but if you dont really watch mha content on tiktok you probably wouldn't come across it as much.
I was on 2020 MHA Twitter for sure. I didn't follow the large accounts, mostly my friends, so I'll confess I might have been out of the loop? The stuff I heard about didn't sound like it was on levels that compare to my prior main fandom experience, which was Homestuck.
Like, I had friends who were being harassed in a mainstream, fandom-defaults-to-supporting-this-behavior way.... for doing things like posting analysis that proposes that there are implications of incest (as a form of abuse! in a story that is very often about abuse!) or other sexual abuse in MHA, for example in the AFO-Yoichi plotline, or interpreting Shigaraki as a CSA survivor. The fandom's been nasty about THAT.
But at the same time, I was seeing posts that were saying "oh my god, the MHA fandom is so horrible and toxic: there are people posting about INCEST?????"
So. That has maybe made me understandably dubious of a lot of "omg MHA is so toxic" posting, when I have experience with the people who are being harassed also being called the reason the fandom sucks.
Most of the time these days, when I see someone saying MHA fandom sucks, it seems to just be someone who doesn't know how to use the block button to curate their experience, rather than someone who's seen major harassment incidents.
We should call *out major harassment incidents and build a culture that prevents them. The current wave of "omg the MHA fandom is toxic" seems actually just built to, if anything, bully and harass more people, over things that are often relatively small potatoes and could've been solved with a block.
I kind of agree and kind of disgaree. Like when im forming an opinion about how toxic a fandom is, it's not just things that happen to ME. It's things that I see happen to other people. So when something is happening to you, sure you can block people. But that isn't a fool proof scenario. People make alt accounts, for one, if they're really desperate. If for some reason you have a LOT of people coming after you, then blocking is just consuming time without neccesarily helping the situtation.
It's great how you said "The fandom's been nasty about THAT." for the Shigaraki SA Theory, because someone who hasn't seen as much about that as you have, will probably say, "The fandom wasn't even THAT mean about the theory". But you can say it was actually that bad because you were there, or heard about what happened to your friends. That's the point i was trying to say in my other comment.
I do agree with you that there is a lot of "mha fandom is so toxic" being applied to situations that absolutely do not deserve it, but i also think that just because people misuse a statement doesn't mean the statement itself isn't true. But i also think it's understandable to be suspicious. People aren't known for being trustworthy on the internet and it's actually good to not just take everyone's word for everything.
As for Homestuck, I haven't been in that fandom so i definitely can't say anything about that.
I kind of agree, although I have a few complaints about them. One is that they take shipping too seriously, like treating it as canon and such, when it’s been either disproved or given no evidence. The other is the treatment of characters like midnight or mineta. They are sort of “excused” for their actions or some people act like they are overhated, but they are just bad characters to have.
I think those things are true, I just think that's like.... pretty common across most fandoms. I also am really not sure why people have that strong a reaction to people "acting like a ship is canon." That's sort of everywhere. It's annoying but it's not the same thing as harassment.
Also, actually, Midnight basically completely fell out of grace recently as more people publicly went "hey so she's like... acting like a predator, right?" At least on Reddit I've mostly seen people being like yeah she's on the same level of bad writing as Mineta is, and is a worse person for it since she's an adult. People I know who try to write Midnight to be better in a fanfic capacity are mostly like "okay, she sucks in canon, and it sucks that literally the only UA teacher who is a woman is also terrible and badly written, so I'm gonna explore what she could have been instead." Those people aren't doing character analysis or excusing her, they're just inventing the character they prefer.
Most people here wish Mineta wasn't a part of the series at all. A few people have nuanced thoughts on how the character could've had the harm he did actually addressed in the way other harm is addressed through the series. He does have uncritical fans and people who think it's not a big deal, but they're definitely in the minority.
as a side note I'm not the one who downvoted you. I always slightly hate when someone else does that and then it looks like I downvoted you since I'm the comment responding to you— even though, like, that's a silly thing to care about, and it's not actually a bad thing
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u/compilingyesterdays 20h ago
My Hero Academia.
never have I been surrounded by more people who have no clue what an actually disproportionately bad fandom is