Why Fandom Cant Have Nice Things / Live-Action TV

• Before Season 3 of iCarly had started airing, Dan Schneider posted a script fragment of a future episode◊. He took it down quickly, but it was reposted on various sites. Naturally, shippers from both sides went nuts, especially on LiveJournal. After receiving heavy criticism for ruining the fandom, Schneider deleted his LiveJournal account, without warning or notice (meaning the fandom lost a lot of interesting interaction with him), and eventually set up his own blog site, which he claimed was for better control. Schneider's first post, however, was about how pissed off he was about the reception of his script.
• Doctor Who :
  • Fan complaints are why Steve Roberts of the restoration team stopped writing articles about the Doctor Who DVD restorations. Prior to that, he had to take a temporary break from the Doctor Who Restoration Team's now-defunct forum,^note (albeit the forum wasn't removed until several years later, and was done so due to hosting costs) after getting flamed endlessly by fans over his part in commissioning the horribly-received mockumentary "Eye on Blatchford" for the "City of Death" DVD release.
  • When it was announced Christopher Eccleston would be leaving the revived series, fans took to the then-active Outpost Gallifrey forum in their droves. One well-known superfan then compared Eccleston to a "cockroach" and in doing so, had the entire forum taken offline by its admin for several days in order to give tempers a chance to cool.
    • This trope is surprisingly averted with Eccleston himself, though. He did quit the show after a very short time due to issues with the creative team and the BBC. But he's more than happy to interact with fans, go to conventions, and he's reprised the 9th Doctor role for audio dramas.
  • After the transmission of the "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks" two-parter, writer Helen Raynor — who had also been the main script editor for the revived series since it began transmitting — decided to look on the Outpost Gallifrey forum to see what fans thought of the episode, only to find out that not only was the reception mixed to say the least, a not-insubstantial number of fans were directing misogynistic insults towards her. Needless to say, she never looked at those or any other Doctor Who-related forums again, and despite coming back to write the "The Sontaran Stratagem"/"The Poison Sky" two-parter the following season, focused mainly on Torchwood for the rest of her time with the franchise.
  • Doctor Who and Torchwood scriptwriter James Moran shut down his blog for a year (and never wrote in the franchise again) because of the level of abuse he received from m/m fans who accused him and the other show creators of being homophobic for killing off Ianto Jones in Torchwood: Children of Earth.
  • When Jenna Coleman first got the part of Clara, one of the very first pieces of advice she was given was "stay off the Internet." It would be several years before she'd establish Instagram and Twitter accounts.
  • In 2011, archivist Phil Morris found ten missing episodes of Doctor Who in a TV station in Nigeria, completing "The Enemy of the World" and "The Web of Fear". By the time the film prints made it to the BBC in 2013, "The Web of Fear": Episode Three was missing. Morris suspects that, after rumors of the recovery leaked, a fan arranged to buy the rare film print from the station.^note It had been for many years one of the most sought-after of all Doctor Who missing episodes, as the first on-screen appearance of the iconic franchise recurring character Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. The DVD/VOD releases include a reconstruction using previously-discovered stills and audio, and two years after the recovery's announcement, episode three's discovery and loss was made public. Morris hopes that whoever owns the print will return it, and highlights this as an example of why he needs to keep his finds secret until his search is over. The worst part? Those film prints were in very bad condition, so much so that they might fall apart if played without careful physical restoration first, so the episode may end up gone for good.
  • During early production of Series 10, Peter Capaldi was accessible to fans who attended location shooting, happy to pose for photos, etc. As production went on, however, this was cut back noticeably with the forums indicating it was due to some fans who abused the privilege of access.
  • As revealed by composer Murray Gold, the long delay in releasing the Series 10 Soundtrack is partially due to a loss of motivation following the Series 9 soundtrack being leaked online prior to an official release.
• Back in the late '90s, before Lexx developed a fan base that was rabid when it came to Michael McManus, who portrayed Kai on the show, he was known to dote on the fans. There is an especially cute story of him leaving an autograph session, announcing that he wanted a beer and inviting a nearby group of fans to join him. After a few years of non-stop stalking and harassment at the hands of fangirls with no respect for boundaries, McManus eventually stopped interacting with fans all together, becoming almost reclusive.
• Joseph Mallozzi, a writer and producer of the Stargate series in general, has had a blog on and off over the last decade. Each time he comes back, the blog is more and more regulated toward the fan hate and complaints that had eventually flooded his last blog. He is, however, an avid poster on the Stargate subreddit.
• Stephen Amell used to be more active with fans at cons and on his social media in the early days of Arrow but has slowed down over the years, largely because of some over zealous Real Person Shipping. Fans of the "Olicity" pairing have harassed his wife into turning her Instagram private at various points in time. They also found out who his non celebrity ex-wife was and harassed her. Fans have even gone so far as to photoshop Felicity’s actress’s face onto his wife’s in pictures of them and their daughter. After one too many transgressions like that, he stopped posting picture’s of his daughter’s face and followed suit with his son who was born after the show wrapped. He’s still active on social media and goes to a lot of events but keeps his wife and kids out of it and doesn’t talk about the pairing much anymore.
• TV mega forum Television Without Pity: Aaron Sorkin's experiences on the site during The West Wing's heyday led him to roundly mock it on an episode. Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars, also avoided the show's fandom after run-ins on TWOP.
• Dave Chappelle became disillusioned with Chappelle's Show for the following reasons:
  • He felt that it had turned into a minstrel show.
  • He had begun to realize that some of his fans were idiotic whites who took the humor at face value and thought that hearing a black man saying "nigger" repeatedly was hilarious.^noteAn alternative explanation that made the rounds at the time was that he'd made several sketches trying to make fun of white people to draw his preferred black viewership, but that his white audience quickly became his biggest demographic when they saw the humor in his sketches for what it was and didn't react with the pearls-clutching shocked offense that he'd expected.
  • He was getting extremely tired of people shouting "I'M RICK JAMES, BITCH!" at live standup appearances to the point where he was drowned out.^note There was even a case where someone walked up to him while he was with his family and recited the phrase at him. It eventually resulted in him blowing up at the audience and telling them that he gave them too much credit and that they really were every bit as stupid as the network execs said they were. In another appearance, when someone did the same thing, he claimed that he wished he had never done that particular sketch.
  • He walked off because the schedule was becoming far too demanding for him; he had to work 20 hours a day, and it soon got to a point where he no longer enjoyed working on the show.
  • A newspaper reported that Chappelle accepted Comedy Central's 35 million dollar contract. This angered him as that was something he wanted to be kept under wraps.
  • He had already begun to wonder whether he hadn't turned into what he had originally been making fun of when filming a "racial pixie" skit; the pixies in question were caricatures who egged on individuals of various races to act out the stereotypes of their races, and Chappelle played the black pixie, which was an extraordinarily offensive archetype straight out of a minstrel show. Chappelle was already unsure of whether the skit crossed into bad taste or not, and when a white crew member laughed in a way that Chappelle felt was at him rather than with him, he became extremely uncomfortable and was more or less convinced that the show was not headed anywhere good.
• Bradley James of Merlin temporarily abandoned his Twitter account after certain portions of the fandom began to leave unpleasant comments about his girlfriend Georgia King and co-star Angel Coulby. As a result, he didn't find his "fans" hassling two women he cares about particularly endearing, and despite an attempt to calm things down◊, King shut down her Twitter account and James cut down considerably on the use of his own. When it was announced that James and Coulby would be be starring in a photoshoot together, Brolin (Colin/Bradley) fans flooded the organizer's Twitter account with rude comments about how they'd rather have Colin than Angel◊. The organizer's disgust in her reply◊ destroyed any chance they might have had of convincing her to do their desired Bradley/Colin shoot.
• CBS limits Audience Participation on the American version of Big Brother after the earlier attempts at audience participation wound up with the Boring, but Practical players left and people from the players' hometown repeatedly calling in to save their person. In 11, they held an audience vote to decide who would receive the power of coup d'état, which would be a Game-Breaker to whoever got it. During this vote, texting would cost $1 a text but you could vote on the site for free. Ronnie's wife botted the site in Ronnie's favor and then posted instructions on how to bot the site for Ronnie's sake. People took this and made counterbots to the site so that Jeff or Jordan would win the power. CBS then made it so that you could only vote a maximum of five times, and then, on consecutive votes, randomize the houseguests positions on the map so you couldn't just mindlessly click on the same spot and then vote a hundred plus times. And for America's vote, they put in efforts to limit bots. You had to have an account and could only vote ten times total. This didn't stop a bunch of people from making Sock Puppet accounts and voting in Brendon to compete against Lawon in a competition to return to the house, though.
• The Price Is Right:
  • Drew Carey opened his own personal blog on the show's website and within days, ruthless fans (most of them from Golden Road.net, a hugely popular fansite to which many staffers of the show have contributed) began attacking him. One took his commentary too far and pushed Carey into disabling comments temporarily. Since July 3, 2008, a lot of users over at that website had been hurling all sorts of invective at Carey and Fremantle Media over the firing of Roger Dobkowitz and various other things. When Carey disabled comments, he made a blog entry announcing that he had disabled them, and in this blog entry, he stuck it to these fans by calling them "telephone pole screamers".
  • Though contestant Terry Kneiss was awarded his prizes anyway, suspicions about him cheating his way into a perfect Showcase bid in a 2008 broadcast, which brought back memories of Michael Larson's two episode reign of terror on Press Your Luck, led to certain products not appearing in future episodes.
• Miley Cyrus deleted her first Twitter account, not only as she reportedly lost her privacy and was addicted to Twitter, but due to death threats she received for posting pro-LGBT+ rights statements on her account. At the time, her account had over 1,300,000 followers. She's returned, of course, but posts less frequently, more discreetly, and certainly sticks up for herself more tersely. She also asks her fans not to flame those who criticize her.
• Alton Brown of Good Eats had this problem, no less than twice. First when he decided to open up an email portal on his website and was promptly rushed with all sorts of unsavory things. The portal was closed down. Years later, he finally relented and opened up a Twitter account with similar results. He seems to have returned to Twitter, however.
• Before and during the run of Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski was very active on Usenet, Compuserve & GEnie forums dedicated to the show, with well over 10,000 posts from 1992 through 1998. Constant harassment by a few fans led him into several ill-advised flamewars. Claudia Christian's departure from the show led to middle-of-the-night phone calls and death threats. He's never been as active online since, though he does have a Facebook fan page now.
• DirecTV and Viacom wound up having a heated debate over some little thing, and Viacom attempted to rally its viewers to support them and call DirecTV. However, there was a generally lackluster response since most Viacom shows can be watched online legally.^note Viacom puts episodes online and just throws in some ads where a commercial break is supposed to be. As a result, Viacom started removing official episodes from the Internet, even though this would do nothing but LOSE money and piss off fans who don't even have DirecTV.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Writer Bryan Cogman left Twitter after one too many insulting tweets by angry fans.
  • Ed Sheeran was invited to cameo in Season 7 as a Lannister soldier and the backlash from some fans regarding his presence as out of place led to him deleting his Twitter account too.
• When spoilers for the entire second season of Bomb Girls leaked and were spread around (against the production company's wishes, mind you), fandom reacted extremely negatively, mostly Shippers whose only concern was Betty/Kate becoming canon. Soon after the series was moved from a Wednesday to Monday time slot and there was a long mid-season hiatus, leading to a drop in viewership. Then Global TV announced there would be no third season with only the possibility of a TV movie in winter of 2014 to wrap up all the cliffhangers. Cue more negative reactions. And then after the movie aired there was even more outrage over Betty/Kate being torpedoed as a ship.
• When Ioan Gruffudd first got famous with Horatio Hornblower in the late '90s and early 2000s, he really seemed to be enjoying interaction with fans on-line. He was even paying a considerable sum of money to run a web-page where fans could send him greetings and kudos and he would often reply. Fans were also collecting and preserving rare stuff like videos from his child actor days or various interviews. When he got engaged, supposedly many a fan-girl could not deal, forgetting that Celebrity Crush is supposed to be for fun. They started sending hateful messages directed at his fiance. No wonder Mr. Gruffudd refused to pay for that.
• Masi Oka used to play World of Warcraft, but eventually stopped once several Heroes fans figured out his username and wouldn't leave him alone.^note He's also hinted that the game is somewhat addictive for him and that with his schedule, it's just not possible to play the way he wants to - i.e. scheduling raids with friends and guildmembers. He also describes himself as being good at avoiding the Internet, but was amused when he found out a fan wanted to keep Hiro as her "pet". He also has a Twitter account, but tends to treat it more as a broadcast than a dialogue, only answering questions during specific "Ask Masi" events.
• This is mentioned in-universe during The Haunting Hour episode "Brush With Madness". Alan Miller is portrayed as a paranoid comic book writer and artist after being stalked by a homicidal fan eight years prior to the episode's plot. He then gets set off when the episode's protagonist, Corey, tries to overstay his welcome while at a convention signing and comments that he follows Miller on Twitter (though why a Reclusive Artist would be on Twitter in the first place is a question the episode never answers). Miller rushes out in a hurry, leaving Corey with his old set of paint brushes... and it just gets stranger from there...
• Sue Perkins of The Great British Bakeoff closed down her Twitter account for several months after being harassed by fans of another BBC show over (false) rumors that she was going to be its new presenter.
• Adam Savage, Kari Byron and Grant Imahara of Mythbusters were active on the Discovery-run fan forum, but stopped for various reasons: Grant became fed up with Monday-morning quarterbacks second guessing everything, Kari left in disgust at fanboys making lewd comments (it even resulted in a number of otherwise innocuous words being added to the list to red-flag posts for moderator approval) and Adam left after he received death threats over test results, specifically their first Scope Snipe experiment. Also, when Discovery Communications started leaking out the details for the reboot, fans were quick to jump the gun and criticize the changes made to the series on the official Facebook page, even if some of them were only temporary or inevitable. Observe.
• Sadly, the above also applies to White Rabbit Project. Once word of this "successor" started to get out, hate started to come streaming in. A small number of people are already complaining at several outlets about how the format of the show isn't like Mythbusters.
• In Pretty Little Liars a combination of ill-informed haters, Ship-to-Ship Combat and backlash compelled Lindsey Shaw (who plays Paige) to quit social media, attempt suicide and ultimately retire from acting. Other actors and the writers have been targets as well, but not to the extreme degrees of harassment that Lindsey had endured. From people calling her 'Pigskin' (a name her romantic 'rival' used to bully and torment her character) or a pig to sending her death threats and encouraging her and her fans to slit their wrists and kill themselves. It got to the point where series regulars couldn't even mention her/her character for fear of being harassed themselves. Shay Mitchell (who plays the main character Emily who is Paige's main romantic interest) went from gushing about their on-screen relationship to barely mentioning her in interviews and at some point Lindsey was even Put on a Bus, and her return in the last season was mainly a Take That, Audience!, intended to induce a My God, What Have I Done? in the viewers responsible by showing that Paige really was Emily's One True Love and that their final break up is an Act of True Love It's even lampshaded in the script:
  Emily: Nobody wanted this!
  Paige: Somebody did, they just didn't ask any of us.
  Emily: I have to do this
  Paige: I know. That's what makes you Emily.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Ginnifer Goodwin (Snow White) was driven off Twitter by rabid fans attacking her over her appearance, namely her weight gain in Season 4, which she filmed after she had just given birth.
  • Sean Maguire (Robin Hood) also admitted he nearly left Twitter due to constant harassment from Emma/Regina shippers angry that Regina was being paired with his character in canon.
  • Jennifer Morrison (Emma Swan) slowly withdrew from conventions and social media after being caught in a nasty shipping war and harassed online by Once Upon a Time fans, particularly "Swan Queen" shippers, which lead to her to also stop interacting with Lana Parrilla (Regina).
• Star Trek:
  • An older example: Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath (also mentioned in the Fan Works folder), Star Trek: The Original Series fans who gained access to the actors, producers and legal department through BNF convention organizer Joan Winston. They interviewed people for books about the show, and were responsible for the first professionally published Fan Fic anthologies, The New Voyages, which were enthusiastically received by fans.^note This was in the mid- to late 1970s, when outside of the syndicated reruns on local stations, there was no Star Trek on the air. The reaction to these books proved there was still plenty of public interest in the show and raising hopes for a revival and/or film. Marshak and Culbreath were thus acknowledged as highly important fan liaisons with both the studio and Bantam Books which published the anthologies and their own fanworks. According to David Gerrold, Marshak and Culbreath were also deeply into the Slash Fic premise (their own novels contain much romantic Ho Yay between Kirk and Spock, and their fanfic anthologies and nonfiction works were produced with the assistance of Carol Frisbie, the editor of Thrust, the first K/S anthology fanzine). ^note Such was their guile at the time that many fans believed they actually viewed Kirk and Spock as simply developing a mental bond and a devoted friendship. Then fan historians revealed they had actually written slash chapters for each of their own fanfic novels, circulating them underground. Those pieces would be worth a fortune today. In interviews for a book on Shatner, they tried to maneuver Gene Roddenberry into promoting slash to Ascended Fanon.^note Dedicated K/S devotees still quote his mumbled reply as proof that he had personally intended Kirk and Spock to be lovers from the beginning of the series, even though D.C. Fontana and Gerrold have both vehemently denied this. They apparently demanded that K/S should be included in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and were the subject of an angry 1985 open letter to the slash fandom by Gerrold in which he stated they "managed to alienate — and offend — 3 publishers, several members of the Star Trek cast & production crew, & Paramount Pictures legal department." It's theorized that these types of people are the reason why the K/S fandom has such a bad reputation in Star Trek fandom.
  • Worse than that, in 2016 Gerrold revealed that, going on their belief they'd been acknowledged as "authorized experts" on Spock and Vulcans based on Gene Roddenberry's reaction to a thesis they wrote on the subject,^note His reaction was actually closer to "Wow, you certainly put in a lot of work here" Marshak and Culbreath "assumed ownership of the entire K/S phenomenon and proceeded to chase any fan holding a divergent view out of fandom." They used discussions on fanzines by creating Sock Puppet accounts that essentially bullied other fans that dared to have another interpretation of Kirk and Spock's relationship and what the fandom was about. To quote Gerrold, "Their behavior was simply unfannish. They were working out their own issues on the body of fandom and they hurt a lot of other fans in the process. They hurt people deliberately and that is villainy, no matter how you try to justify it."
• Stranger Things:
  • Millie Bobby Brown deleted her Twitter account due to widespread memes on the site that falsely portrayed her as a violent homophobe.
  • Grace Van Dien (Chrissy) used to be a very vocal supporter of Hellcheer (Eddie and Chrissy) fanart and would often like and comment on other fans' work but eventually stopped after facing harassment and bullying for several months from Steddie shippers, even going as far to change her privacy settings on her tumblr page. It eventually got so bad that Joseph Quinn had to step in to say something.
• David Schwimmer from Friends limited his Instagram comments to only accounts he follows, likely to prevent people from spamming his famous line: "We Were On A Break".
• Michael Rosenbaum, who played Lex Luthor in Smallville, significantly reduced his fan interaction after some over-enthusiastic slash fangirls intentionally and publicly presented him with sex toys at a convention.
• False drug accusations prompted actor Hiroki Narimiya (who, among other roles, played Yoichi Takato in the live-action version of The Kindaichi Case Files and Phoenix Wright in the movie version of Ace Attorney) to retire from the industry. In a statement announcing his retirement, he said that a friend he had trusted had betrayed him and crossed a line that should never have been crossed by slandering him in a manner that ensured his privacy would be invaded constantly, with no end in sight:
  Narimiya: I can no longer bear it when I think that my privacy will continue to be exposed to the world due to someone else's malice.
• The Walking Dead's Josh McDermitt removed himself from social media after receiving death threats over his character's Face–Heel Turn in Season 7. Alanna Masterson also left social media due to hateful comments regarding her weight. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Seth Gilliam, and Austin Amelio have received death threats over their respective characters' cowardly and/or villainous actions.
• Actor Ruby Rose shut down her Twitter account and severely cut back on her Instagram account due to abuse from fans who thought that she had the wrong gender identity and sexual orientation to play the title character on Batwoman (2019).
• Mr. Show briefly had an official online messageboard, but it was removed because it immediately became infested with hostile trolls.
• Tenacious D had a short-lived messageboard that was moderated by JR Reed, who plays Lee in show. The board climate quickly turned so hostile that he had to record a video asking everyone to calm down. The board didn't last much longer.
• Evan Rachel Wood of Westworld locked and later, deactivated her Twitter account after receiving backlash and threats for her comments about Kobe Bryant, particularly his sexual assault case, on the day of his death.
• The reason John Oliver shut down Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, the satirical church he started on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, was apparently because fans sent semen in through the mail (likely a pun on the "seed faith" ideology). In his own words, "When someone sends you jizz through the mail, it's time to stop whatever you're doing".
• Heartstopper (2022): Kit Connor, who plays the bisexual Nick Nelson, was cyberbullied in the months after the show was first released due to him seemingly appearing as heterosexual in real life (being accused by people of "queer-baiting" viewers). This eventually culminated in Connor frustratingly coming out as bisexual on Twitter in October 2022, pointing out the wrongness of pressuring an eighteen-year-old boy to reveal his sexuality to the entire world.
• When Power Rangers Dino Fury decided to bring back Big Bad Lord Zedd, his voice actor had passed away so the villain was recast with Andrew Laing taking on the role. Some fans found him to be passable as Zedd, admitting that Axelrod had left some pretty huge shoes to fill, and that he improved by the end of the season. Others harshly criticized Laing's performance and harassed him online so much that when the follow-up season Cosmic Fury came along, he chose not to return to the role.
• Forever: In-universe. In "The Frustrating Thing About Psychopaths," the writer of a cult graphic novel series admits he is mortally terrified of his fans, some of whom write disturbing things on his website — and one is a serial killer. This is very similar to Ioan Gruffudd's real-life experience with fandom, particularly when a fan threatened his girlfriend's life on his website.
• Within the Kamen Rider fandom, it was customary to stumble upon leaks from toy catalogues and magazine scans, offering fans insights into forthcoming toys and Rider forms ahead of episode releases. That was until a fan queried franchise producer Shirakura Shinichiro on Twitter about Trinity, to which he responded "You are supposed not [sic] to know about Trinity." This ominous response alone hinted at Toei and Shirakura's acknowledgment and possible irritation towards leaks. Following Kamen Rider Zero-One, leaks have been sporadic as Bandai has intensified efforts to prevent unauthorized disclosures.