If Facebook Is Any Indication, a lot of "Fans" Don't Understand Their Favorite Acts At All
Wait, are we sure this guy is not a huge Trump supporter?
For the past five years or so I have devoted WAY too much of my time and energy to a singularly pointless and masochistic online endeavor I like to call, “What do the Trump super-fans have to say?”
The answer, invariably, is something terrible and hateful and inextricably rooted in Trump’s toxic cult of personality. Yet morbid curiosity and, I suppose, an eternal need for blog topics has nevertheless led me down countless Facebook and Twitter rabbit holes where rabid Trump super-fans spew their bigotry and ignorance.
So when Jack Black and R.E.M posted pro-Joe Biden messages on Facebook on or around election day I was way too curious about what Black and R.E.M’s MAGA fans had to say. Let me tell you, friends, they were not happy about these developments. No, they were not, not even a little.
Many of these unhappy souls addressed their sentiments directly to Black and the members of R.E.M. themselves. I’m not entirely sure why, but if Facebook is any indication, a lot of people think rock stars, politicians, movie stars and other celebrities devote much of their time to reading Facebook comments about them.
They apparently think Black starts each day with a strong cup of coffee, then spends his morning reading all 2600 comments on a photo his publicist posted of him with a Joe Biden mug, thinking long and hard about each one. After all, if you really think about it, the fans are the real bosses. If he displeases them by expressing political opinions they do not universally share, then he deserves to lose his millions, and celebrity, and good reputation for his insouciance and support for radical, divisive figures like “Sleepy” Joe Biden.
R.E.M and Jack Black fans who are also fans of fascism, hatred, fear-mongering and intolerance were both VERY disappointed in their former heroes but they had different ways of expressing that frustration.
Jack Black fans tended to be more condescending than angry. They seem to have assumed that Jack Black is just a stony good time party guy who’s never had a political thought in his life but then he went to a Hollywood party and everyone was all, “Orange man bad” and he foolishly bought into it out of peer pressure and because he doesn’t know any better. They apparently see it as their job to gently hip Black to the realities of the Presidential race, how it’s actually a conflict between capitalists who believe in Democracy and freedom and Socialists who want to abort babies up to the point where they’re eligible to vote and serve in the Army and replace the police with Antifa.
In their graciousness, these kind, generous souls said that they would not burn Black’s records and DVDs in protest, but felt that he should know that taking a radical stance like supporting Joe Biden in 2020 was something he was definitely going to regret.
R.E.M. buffs were less big about it. If angry political opinions expressed online are to be believed, then R.E.M lost a lot of lifelong fans by expressing the extremist opinion that someone other than Donald Trump should be President.
In the comments for a post reading “Blue since ’82” a parade of indignant ex-fans express outrage and shock at the band’s political views, vowing to never spend money on concert tickets or albums ever again for a band that spits in the face of their Alt-Right fanbase with sentiments like “We support Biden in this election.” Some fans even threatened to give away their CDs and tee-shirts to ensure that they would never again be reminded of that awful day in 2020 when they discovered that R.E.M. are not Republicans.
It’s as if they go through life with an unspoken but powerful understanding with their favorite artists: they will support them with their whole heart and soul as long as they never bring up politics. When that pact is broken, all bets are off and fans turn to enemies and haters.
Oh sure, it’s one thing to suspect that legendary queer icon and badass rock star Michael Stipe probably doesn’t support the policies of Donald Trump, but for him to come right out and say that you should vote for the other guy? C’mon, man. Fans can only take so much before they have to throw in the towel in disgust, and then write extensively and incoherently about said towel-throwing on Facebook.
The grand, delicious irony of these outraged sentiments from ex-fans who, honestly, were never really fans in the first place, and certainly have not been paying attention, is that they scold Black and R.E.M. for being deluded, myopic and arrogant enough to think that people care what celebrities have to say about politics, that they should stick to their day jobs and leave politics to the experts. They’re saying this, of course, in defense of an evil lunatic whose primarily qualification for the most important, powerful political position on the planet involved pretending to be a successful businessman on a series of tacky but extremely successful reality shows.
It’s almost as if these folks have no idea what they’re talking about, and do not understand the artists they profess to be such big fans of. But that couldn’t be it, could it?
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