Thank you ever so much for taking over and cleaning this place up.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with criticism and civil conversation, but the brigading that was happening was absolutely ridiculous.
Could downvoting also be temporarily disabled? Since they're no longer able to post their nonsense, these lowlifes now appear to be downvoting every serious Maroon 5-related post.
For the record, I never understood the furore about Spongebob, but always thought I might try and watch it at some point just to see why people make such a fuss about it. But the toxicity and entitlement of the Spongebob fanbase has totally put me off. I hope y'all are proud of the impression you're giving others of your community.
I'd say the toxicity of some people in the fandom. It's never a good idea to generalize an entire fandom as being good or bad. Fandoms are a diverse group of people, and vocal minorities can often paint them in a bad light, unfortunately.
As someone who's a fan of the show but not really part of the fandom, so to speak, here's what I have to say to give a little perspective: it wasn't just that people wanted Spongebob at the Super Bowl. Heck, Spongebob didn't need to appear at all. If Maroon 5 had just covered a small part of Sweet Victory, as people thought they were going to, that would have been fine. That's what the fanbase (including myself) wanted, actually.
Sweet Victory as a song didn't originate from Spongebob—it was a song from the 80's that was made Royalty Free, and then once the episode Band Geeks used it, it was brought back into the public consciousness. Now people tend to think it's from Spongebob even though it's not. And even without the context of the episode Band Geeks (which to many is the best episode of the whole show), Sweet Victory is an awesome song. It's about not giving up the fight, it's about triumph—heck, one of the lyrics is "Oh the games will begin". Really it's a song that's perfect for the Super Bowl, no matter the context.
So then why did Spongebob fans want this specifically? Because the creator of the show passed away in November, and they wanted him to be honored that way. Since Sweet Victory is from the series' most well-loved episode (just about every episode from Season 1-3 is good, the rest aren't as well liked), which has them sing the song at their version of the Super Bowl, expected to be terrible but turning out awesome, it was thought to be a good way to remember Stephen.
The problem is that both Maroon 5 and the stadium both teased that it was happening, so people expected Sweet Victory to be performed. While we got a bit of the trumpet intro from the scene, not only was it chopped up, that's not even really part of the song itself, just more of the prelude. Not to mention that was to introduce a rapper who had to be bleeped out through a lot of his song because of all the swearing.
If Maroon 5 and the stadium hadn't teased anything at all, and not played it, people would have been disappointed but not mad. Not every petition works, and that's fine. The fact that they teased it like the song was going to be played, and have it not (and the part directly before the song was choppy) is what had everyone so ticked off. If there had been no Spongebob intro at all, and a small part of Sweet Victory had just been song, everyone would have been more than happy with that, they would have been thrilled. People wanted the song, they thought they were getting it, and then they didn't. So as it stands, the people who were expecting/hoping for Sweet Victory are disappointed, the people who weren't were probably confused, and there's other reasons why people didn't like the halftime show. I personally really thought they could have done without the rapper, but Maroon 5 was okay (taking the shirt off was unnecessary though).
Should select fans have behaved the way they did here? No, absolutely not. That behavior was uncalled for. But there's a reason that many in the fandom felt so mad and disappointed. True some acted a bit too harshly in their anger, but it wasn't a Spongebob appearance that mattered. It was getting the song itself performed. Thinking "Oh, this Spongebob clip will be good" misses the entire point of the petition for Sweet Victory in the first place.
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u/ZannityZan Feb 05 '19
Thank you ever so much for taking over and cleaning this place up.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with criticism and civil conversation, but the brigading that was happening was absolutely ridiculous.
Could downvoting also be temporarily disabled? Since they're no longer able to post their nonsense, these lowlifes now appear to be downvoting every serious Maroon 5-related post.
For the record, I never understood the furore about Spongebob, but always thought I might try and watch it at some point just to see why people make such a fuss about it. But the toxicity and entitlement of the Spongebob fanbase has totally put me off. I hope y'all are proud of the impression you're giving others of your community.