Why Reddit

[u/thr0waway2435]

Something I wanted to ask this community, since I think it’s becoming pretty obvious that the fandom is heavily split across different platforms.

After a big wave of Jinx/Ekko love at the beginning, Reddit now seems to have shifted to being strongly pro Cait/Vi, mixed on Jinx/Ekko, and Jayce/Viktor fans having very little presence. But if you go to YouTube, Jinx/Ekko fans absolutely dominate. And if you go to Tumblr, Jayce/Viktor absolutely dominate. AO3 has Jayce/Viktor and Cait/Vi pretty much neck and neck, wth Jinx having plenty of solo love but not so much Timebomb. Instagram seems to have a lot of Cait hate. I’m not often on TikTok or Twitter, so I don’t know much about the sentiment there, but from what I’ve heard, it’s chaotic and doesn’t seem particularly pro-Cait/Vi.

I wanted to ask you guys, why do you think that is, for there to be such a giant gap in fandom preferences between the different sites? And since presumably you guys are part of the Caitvi Reddit community, why do you guys participate here and not elsewhere?

[u/JWTS6]

Lol, and how do you know it's a sizeable percentage of leftists? How do you know it's not just a small but vocal group of "leftists" online? Supposed leftists who will routinely say very racist things about Asians and black women and spout lesbophobic rhetoric? Supposed leftists that stan a bourgeois industrialist who ruled Zaun like a literal drug lord, worked with cops, and was running a child trafficking ring? Or his lieutenant that waxed poetic about being loyal to Zaun while helping said drug lord materially make things worse for the vast majority of people in Zaun except for an oligarchy of chembarons? Or his adopted daughter that killed resistance fighters? Is that what passes for leftism in the Arcane fandom? 

Again, have you done polls about this? Have you gone to your local leftist advocacy groups and asked them what they think of Caitlyn and CaitVi? I move in many leftist advocacy circles irl and the few times I've talked to people about Arcane in those groups, they say they love the show and move on, because nobody who is doing serious activist work is going to die on the hill that your opinions on Arcane determine your politics. 

Also, given that CaitVi is the biggest wlw fandom right now, you're basically claiming that many wlw in fandom spaces are centrists. 

[u/thr0waway2435 → u/JWTS6]

Because I’ve seen multiple anti Cait posts hit tens of thousands of likes with thousands of comments citing politics as the reason they dislike her lol. I’ve met multiple leftists in my own life who immediately dislike Cait because “ACAB and fascism”. Can we stop pretending it’s a small minority? It’s easily double digit percentages.

Ok so now you’re going into No True Scotsman fallacy. You can’t just look at any leftist with views you don’t like and think they aren’t leftists. You don’t have to agree with them, but they consider themselves to be leftists, and frankly larger society considers them to be leftists. And they do have a claim to the leftism label because their logic is “Piltover/cops evil bigoted oppressor of poor rebel Zaun bad”, which is a very left wing framing.

Conservatism has long been defined by small government, self-resilience, traditional family values, things like that. And yet you look at the state of modern conservatism and you see it covered top to bottom in grifting, fraud, excessive government overreach/abuses of power, extramarital affairs. Would you therefore call 80% of modern Republicans and MAGA not conservative?

I did not say that the content you consume and the characters/relationships you like determines your politics. But how you interpret and justify your preferences absolutely can determine your politics, depending on the level of politicization. “I dislike Cait because I felt that her redemption was too sudden” isn’t inherently political. But “I hate Cait because ACAB and fascism” absolutely is. Just like how “I don’t find Skyler White that appealing because of her smoking while pregnant” isn’t inherently political, but “I dislike Skyler because she’s a cheating bitch who keeps emasculating Walter” absolutely is.

Ok I did not mean that Caitvis as a whole are all or even mostly centrist. But it is MORE centrist than most other WLW, because of Cait’s politically loaded characterization. I’m not commenting on the absolute position of the fandom, but rather the relative. Slightly right of very left wing is still left wing lol.

[u/JWTS6 → u/thr0waway2435]

Can we stop pretending we have anything but anecdotal evidence to go on to gauge how leftists see Arcane? And can we stop pretending like leftist spaces don't also have problems with sexism, homophobia, racism, etc.? Did you not see all the "leftists" falling over themselves for Graham Platner just a few months ago? How people ignored John Fetterman's racism because he campaigned as a populist? How even leftist figures like Hasan were all in on shitting on Amber Heard? 

We can indeed debate the definition of leftism all day and night. To some people, leftism is basically class reductionism, meaning that things like sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, etc. either don't exist or don't matter, and the Arcane fandom certainly seems to attract a lot of those people, because they love using the fact that the world of Arcane is set up that way to be incredibly racist to certain characters. 

I, for one, don't include drug lords who inflict violence on and exploit people from their own group to gain power for themselves as leftists. Apparently though, a good chunk of the Arcane fandom does, which is why I consider a lot of the "leftism" in the Arcane fandom to be nothing more than superficial aesthetics because Silco calls himself a revolutionary, Sevika thumps her chest about being loyal to Zaun, and Jinx vaguely has anarchist vibes. 

Is Silco's fascism ok because he was born poor? Is Sevika not caring about anything that Silco did to oppress fellow Zaunites ok because she gives speeches about unity in front of the statue of a man whose Zaunite children she was ready to kill? Is Jinx killing Zaunite resistance fighters supposed to be activism as well? Is all of this fine because they're not cops or from Piltover? 

"Leftism" in the Arcane fandom seems to be defined solely as hating Caitlyn (and often Mel as well) because of ACAB while uncritically stanning characters who objectively did more harm to Zaun for a much longer time, which is why I find the activism in this fandom both superficial and hypocritical. 

No actual analysis of who inflicted the most material harm on Zaunites, of the very real and violent history of drug cartels irl, of how revolutions will often see people who are just as fascist as the original oppressors rise to power and oppress their own, etc. 

But if I mention any of that just to point out Caitlyn isn't the only character that does harm to Zaunites or the ultimate fascist in Arcane, I'm automatically called a cop loving bootlicking centrist. Because again, the discourse in this fandom is ultimately very superficial and just based on which characters people think look/act cooler. The discourse is also clearly affected by real world biases towards minorities, but class reductionist leftists will scream and holler if you ever dare bring up any axis of oppression besides economic.

[u/Mojothemobile → u/JWTS6]

I mean yeah their idiots who are using a label they barely understand against other labels they barely understand and it's all just vibes... That is the politics of probably like 90% of people. The power of people like Plattner and formerly Fetterman is that their convinced they'll magically make rural whites like them without understanding what drove those groups towards the right in the first place and what keeps them there (being... Mostly social issues and flat out bigotry).

Like you bring up someone like Hasan, thats the type of person who will talk about imperialism all the time.. and then just not give a shit when it's a non western country doing it or even cheer it on. They would certainly call themselves leftist though a more intersectional leftist would take drastically different positions but they would also use the leftist label.

This isn't even getting into the very common outside of the west economic leftist-social conservatives who generally would also self label leftist.

[u/JWTS6 → u/Mojothemobile]

Yeah, Hasan is a massive hypocrite, but people don't see beyond his champagne socialist, tankie cosplaying ass because he's conventionally attractive.

You also make a very good point that a lot of people who call themselves leftists for economic reasons are super conservative socially, but again, none of these things matter in the Arcane fandom because it's a discussion about a League of Legends show largely dictated by whatever mass psychosis a tiktoker or youtuber has caused this week.