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alt title(s): Vocal Minorities 
When it comes to fans of certain things, there are many people who are sane, down-to-earth individuals; individuals who understand that if they talk about a subject, and the other person's not interested, they'll stop talking about it. These people know how to keep their hobbies under control; how to differentiate between reality and their interests.
Unfortunately, these people never show up on the news. That's because Weird Is Interesting. (Not to mention on how the media can be notorious in exploiting the trouble makers and overall embarrassments to their hobby/profession every chance they get. While any good people like that get a mention infrequently, if ever.) Why talk to an individual who works in an office, who occasionally picks up a copy of Spider-Man, when you can talk to the 300-pound guy who spent $7000 on his exact replica of a Scarecrow costume? Why speak with one of the female fans; after all, girls who read comics? Those don't exist, right?
The problem is that because only the weirdoes get interviewed, this causes non-fans to believe they're all like that; that all comic fans are clones of the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. This is also the main reason why people would hate something just because of its fanbase. It's like the old saying: "The squeaky wheel gets the grease". Not to mention on how the more Vocal a Vocal Minority can be, the more Demonization it gets, regardless whether if the other side is just as bad if not worst. So be careful if you demonize them because in the end, if you're not careful, all you'll end up doing is to just give them a reason to deem themselves a "victim". (Regardless of whether or not they actually deserve it.)
Not just limited to Comic Books, this phenomenon extends to other hobbyists as well.
Pandering To The Base is when the Vocal Minority gets preferential treatment over the rest of the fans. Contrast with Silent Majority.
Examples:
- Furries suffer rather badly from this. TV and certain parts of the Internet would have you believe all of them were gay fursuit-wearing plushie-fetishist zoophiles, when the majority are just people who like Funny Animals in one sense or another, and probably still do not match any of the traits listed above. (For added irony, there also exists a vocal minority of furries who do not wish to be associated with the fandom precisely because of the negative stereotypes, which they seem to take at face value.)
- Anime fans. Most of them are not Weeaboos/Wapanese who speak gratuitous Japanese, squint their eyes, flash V signs, spend all day munching pocky and talk about how Japan is the greatest civilization that has ever or will ever exist while weeping openly at not being born Japanese.
- Hey you back off Pocky that shit is delicious.
- That shit is the equivalent of stale, unsalted pretzels covered in bitter chocolate and flavored with a liberal dash of vinegar. There's nothing delicious about that.
- Trekkies, due in large part to the documentary of the same name.
- Michael Jackson fans, especially after the 2004-05 child abuse trial where masses of them hung around outside the courthouse. Most infamously there was the lady who released a dove for each not guilty verdict at the end. Anthony Barbieri's
 alter ego "Jake Byrd" (as seen on Jimmy Kimmel Live) is a parody of this.
- Feminists. Believe it or not, not all of 'em act like Andrea Dworkin and the vast majority of them are not only vocally opposed to open misandry (i.e. hatred of men), but they've never burned a bra in their lives.
- I'd guess even the rabid ones didn't do much of that, mostly because bras aren't so much a symbol of the sinister penistocracy as they are a way to, y'know, comfortably support one's boobs.
- Indeed, bra-burning is a myth, which originated from a metaphor comparing women throwing out makeup, corsets, fashion magazines, etc at women's-rights protests to men burning their draft cards at anti-war protests.
- Animal rights/welfare supporters. Going by most of their representation in almost all forms of entertainment, one would swear that vast majority of them are insane, radical psychopaths who get off on threatening the families of medical researchers, blowing up laboratories and throwing red paint on people, rather than just people who believe that animals shouldn't suffer unnecessarily.
- PETA, being the perhaps both the most recognised (due to celebrity endorsements) and controversial (due to being ridiculously inept) animal
welfare rights group, are in large part to blame for this viewpoint.
- PETA is not just ridiculously inept, they're animal killers. See this article: http://petakillsanimals.com/.
- And Attention Whores who seriously spend precious time and resources are protecting critters in World of Warcraft and demonizing Cooking Mama instead of...y'know, doing anything to help actual animals, other than perhaps the ones who are suicidally depressed.
- Elvis fans. To look at the media, you'd think there are only two kinds: impersonators and fat women from the Deep South. (By the way, "Elvis Impersonators" prefer to be called "Elvis tribute artists".)
- Muslims, Christian, Jews, Atheists, and any other group of people representing a certain faith (or lack thereof). Just goes to show you: it really doesn't matter what group a person belongs to; a small group of loud fanatics always seem capable of drowning out the voices of the quiet, moderate majority.
- Beliefs tend to get this worse than many of the other examples as particularly rabid members tend to remain in the public eye even after they are dead.
- Christianity is getting this from its own adherents. The fringe fundamentalists who seem to have turned the public face of Christianity from the kind, loving church of "love thy neighbor as thy self" into the dogmatic, hateful, exclusionary church of "we are elect and they aren't. But its the fire-and-brimstone legalistic Christians who get all the press.
- Christians aren't all science-hating, closed-minded anti-evolutionists, either. But judging what you hear, you'd never know that.
- Even Fundamentalist Christians, really. It just means "what the Bible says; no more, no less." That's it. But judging by this wiki, it's gotten to the point where people are describing any theoretically stupid persons or events as involving Fundamentalists just because of lunatics like Fred Phelps.
- Often enough just about any given online fandom of any show/movie/game/comic (even if the franchise in question seems to be popular in general) is being considered a "Vocal Minority". Heck, it's been said that something is niche if its online fanbase seem to be the only fanbase it has. Not too mention on how just because something has quite the online fanbase does not always mean it's actually successful. Final Fantasy VII seems to be the exception than the rule when it comes to how popular something can be because of the online fanbase. (Even though nowadays it has a load of Hype Backlash over the years because of that but that's a different story.) But in all fairness online fanbases can quite often end up as a Periphery Demographic (especially if it's for a franchise that was marketed towards certain markets such as Children.) Not to mention that online Message boards can be highly known for certain things such as Unpleasable Fanbase and Fan Dumb (which is often seen in great detail when Message Boards do get mentioned in the media at all such as X Play for example).
- But in all fairness the whole "Internet Nerd" demograph that is often stereotyped as teenage to 30-something men are often seen in this light. it's almost sad really on how being pathetically socially inept shy guys are one of the more positive stereotypes of "Nerds". Not too mention on how its been said how "Out of Touch" people in message boards can be about how "Real People".
- Perhaps one of the fanbases hit hardest by this is Fallout - somewhere along the line, everyone forgot about the sane fan, and began painting the entire fandom with the Fan Dumb and ...rancor of No Mutants Allowed.
- NMA itself is hit hard by this. Most people simply go there and write them down as "haters". But there are actually many sub-groups of fans in the site, from super-hardcores to people who even liked Fallout 3.
- Surprisingly enough, not all Twilight fans are obnoxious, violent Edward/Robert Pattinson fangirls who unreasonably attack anyone who dares defile their "Bible" by saying 'I don't like it'. The vast majority of them just want to read the damn books.
- Thank you for saying that.
- Transformers is also a pretty darn big example of this, namely how the fanbase of the original series is often accused of a severe showing of a Nostalgia Filter. But not EVERYONE who likes the original series is a maniacal elitist whom thinks that G1 is the ONLY good Transformers anything to exist.
- Similar to the Twilight fans, not all Supernatural fangirls are vile, screaming pre-teens who bitch at every single female character. Even the ones who ship Wincest do it for fun, want to watch the show and usually just want the wank to be gone.
- Believe it or not, there are people who actually like a Sonic The Hedgehog game made after 1998 or simply don't bother with the entries they don't like, but a casual look at the online "fanbase" would have you lumping them in with unicorns and the tooth fairy.
- While the whole "Anti-Casual Gaming" sentiment has gone rather overzealous... to put it midly. "Hardcore Gamers" seem to be actually getting it worse. Over the years especially earlier in the 2000's, while the Video Game Industry was by all means profitable, it was also in danger of being stereotyped as something "For Lazy Nerds Only". However thanks to the surprise success of the Wii seems to be making good progress in going against that in making Video Games profitable to all sorts of demographics. While there are folks whom do wish that the 7th Console Console would make that stereotype go away there seems to be quite a vocal group who would seem to feel otherwise.
- The Republican Party. Not all of them are...no, wait, nevermind. Well, the Democratic Party isn't...no...I guess not them, either.
- Dutch example: the ill effects of Mobile telecom towers got the weirdos out in spades on the TV, because the science was boring and the weirdos weren't.
- Also: the HPV and H1N1 vaccine had/has a large online "anti" presence on the web, the very vocal and very crazy get frontpage items. (Nanobots in the vaccine! MIND CONTROL!)
- In truth, quite literally every social group to ever exist in the history of civilization suffers from this. Just try and think of one that doesn't.
- Those monks who take vows of silence.
- You mean the guys that drew incredibly detailed doodles in the margins of their books?
- Professional Baseball's image has been fairly tarnished as there seems to be a noticeable number of cases of Baseball players getting in trouble for illegal drug use. While fortunately exposure towards ball players that are NOT drug users is remotely existent. But still its been considered pathetic on the amount of ball players whom get in trouble there.
- And compared to football and basketball, baseball's drug policy violations are actually the lowest...but because the most busted drug is steroids, and football's already covered that ground and basketball doesn't focus on it, baseball is painted as the problem child.
- Teachers. You have probably seen plenty of stories about them in the news lately, but good luck finding any recent ones that DON'T involve them getting arrested for having sex with their students.
- Pet Owners (ESPECIALLY Dog Owners) are also a pretty big victim of this as well. Sure they can be seen as genuinely loving to their cute fuzzy pets but nowadays this love is looking more like a grossly unhealthy obsession than anything else. While its not the only show like this the recent reality TV show "America's Top Dog" is one of the bigger examples why Pet Owners are starting to look more like creepy fanatics in the media.
- Shipping is also suffering very badly from this. (Namely due to how the whole Shipping fanbase is far too infamous for, let's just say, this.) Unfortunately just about everything that is popular with shippers are generally not famous in a good way. It's been said that regardless of whether if YOU'RE Pro Shipper or Anti-Shipper, Shipping is easily considered to be one of the biggest examples of fans taking a concept far too seriously. Outside of the internet, though, shipping is relatively unknown. The creators of Avatar The Last Airbender were pretty flabbergasted upon discovering it.
- This view of shippers even seems to be entering the mainstream consciousness, perhaps for the first time ever, due to the whole "Team Edward vs Team Jacob" thing. Although most people may only see it as being about "Crazy fangirls" and not realize the shipping aspect.
- This is even true amongst certain ships. Most Harry/Hermione shippers are nice, normal, reasonable people who deal with Ron and Ginny by pairing them off with, say Padma or Susan Bones or Lavender and Draco or Dean or *insert Ravenclaw here*. However, a small minority of H/Hr shippers - Harmonians - are utterly convinced of their ship's canonicity and vilify Ginny, Ron and sometimes the entire Weasley family.
- One particularly famous example of the use of this trope in politics; President Richard Nixon in 1969 famously positioned the anti-Vietnam War movement as one of these in his 'silent majority' speech, claiming that for all the protesters who made the news and raised their voices, there were countless more who agreed with the war but didn't speak up.
- The "Birther Movement" within the United States. Kooky and deranged can't begin to cover the lunacy within that group and yet they somehow always get mentioned when President Obama is talked about.
- The President's own creepy "fanbase" is no less crazy. Not very many people voted for Barack Obama solely because of his celebrity status and refusal to see him as anything other than the Second Coming of Christ, but the ones who did make it their civic duty to embarrass the rest.
- While Fast Food was never really deemed healthy to begin with but in the 2000's there were a lot of news stories about people who would eat there every day and become morbidly obese. For a time a lot of people seem to think that these people were the only ones who'd ever eat a Fast Food place like Mc Donalds. (And that is when Subway really began advertising themselves as the "choice for healthy food".) While obesity is a problem to take seriously there was a fairly vocal response on how those who eat at a Fast Food restaurant for every meal and those who would eat at a Fast Food restaurant at all are not quite the same thing.
- According to ED, having a Deviant Art account is one of the many sufficient requirements to qualify someone as a weeaboo. As a matter of fact, some people seem to join for the sole purpose of making fun of the site claiming the only people on Deviant Art are AttentionWhores, weeaboos who do 'crappy anime art', or emo kids who post crappy poetry, and a bunch of people who simply post porn. There are then countless journals and stamps expressing dissatisfaction with the site, usually complaining about one of these or all of them. If it's a journal it will usually end with a "Leaving DA forever" note. Truth is, 90% of this stuff would fade into obscurity if not for the excessive amount of people complaining about these.
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