The reasons behind the idea of the RWBY community "Not being able to take criticism"

[u/Dextixer]

For a long time now there have been many different accusations and critiques levied against the RWBY community, both in general and more specifically against places where RWBY fandom resides. Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube and of course, Reddit. Now, not too long ago we had a bit of a situation that was thankfully resolved but also caused a lot of questions, statements and accusations of various kinds to appear when refering to the RWBY fandom and more specifically this subreddit. I would like to tackle the point of why some people do not think that RWBY community including this subreddit (Mainly this subreddit) and explain why that is, partly by using my own experiences.

Critique is not banned

First of all we have to engage with the elephant in the room. The accusation that criticism in the RWBY community is banned entirely. It is not. I have spent over 2 years on this platform, others many more and many people have criticized the show. It is perfectly allowed. It will not get you banned unless you do something else that would be considered a bannable offense.

In fact, the moderators of r/RWBY have tried their hand at promoting analysis of the show and discussions about it themselves. From some weekly events to even attempts at making "Text only" days that i remember were a thing once upon a time. I think my most memorable example of the moderators trying to promote discussion was one of my posts being one of the first ones to get the "Featured discussion" tag 2 years ago by now (Oh god how time flies).

Many users could probably share the same experiences here on this subreddit, that their opinions were not banned, and even accepted. However, for many others, that is not the case.

The cold climate towards critical content

When talking about any kind of community in general terms one can refer in various ways towards the beliefs and thoughts of that community. One can use more descriptive words such as "Toxic" or "Immature" to describe them. One can also get a bit more creative, in this case i will use the descriptor of "cold" when talking about how critical content is received in this sub.

Even though critique is not banned and can even be accepted at times there is still a "feeling" coming from the community that describes how one might feel in it. The community by its various actions, responses and opinions often times shows distain, coldness and little receptivness to any critique provided.

The utilization of Upvote/Downvote system

One of the first things someone with critical opinions can notice is how hard it is to get upvoted and thus get attention in this subreddit. Fan-art is probably a large contributor to that, i am for example a member of r/WOW subreddit and many others, and despite the fan-art there are many discussions that make it to the front page. This is rarely the case in r/RWBY.

Besides that many critical posts can notice a pattern of getting severely downvoted even before the first comment is ever presented, and this applies not only to critical posts. This post in my opinion kind of indicates the problem. While i understand that not everybody would be interested in fanfiction, the op of this thread got downvoted for seemingly no reason. The only person commenting told them that the op did a good job for the most part. And this occurs a lot of times, even innocent questions can get swept up in a spiral of downvotes.

While i am sure that some people do not and will not care about something like this, to many others this can still have an impact on their experience, no matter how small.

The Insults and Accusations

A very large problem that is ESPECIALLY pressing during the times of Volumes airing and 1-2 months past that is one of various insults levied at people with different opinions. Accusations of sexism, racism, homophobia and various many others are incredibly common and are not considered to be "offensive". Bootlicker was the most used insult of this volume by a wide margin, made to label only the people who would disagree with claims about Ironwood and Atlas.

While it is understandable that emotions might be more frayed or near the surface when the discussion of the show touches upon either burning issues or any other content that is very close to real-life and touches upon things like religion, identity, politics and the line. Less understandable is the sheer ammount of insults.

And i know that this is not normal. I have been on the dragon age subreddit many times discussing various complicated moral issues, discussing for and against characters that could be called many names and while there was a rare case of meeting a person with an unsavoury insult it has never been as bad as i have experienced it in r/RWBY.

Me criticizing on how (in my opinion) the entire WF story was done badly has been used to label me as racist. Me criticizing BB as a ship that had little build-up and is dragging its feet when compare to other media has been used to label me as a homophobe. Me thinking that Ironwood made some sense at the start and that team RWBY have problems has been used to label me a Bootlicker. And these were not singular incidents, they have happened multiple times, over inoffensive opinions.

This is without mentioning just how quick a lot of people in the RWBY community are ready to generalize entire communities of people. The ammount of vitriol spewed against traditional anime and its fans for example, which causes the Anime communities (rightfully so) dislike the RWBY community

Of course, we cannot ignore that these opinions are especially hurtful to hear when you ARE a member of the groups that people claim you hate. I am a Bisexual and holy hell the ammount of homophobia accusations i have received is insane and have really made me feel bad a lot of times.

Things like the still pinned thread in r/FNKI implying that people just "dont understand LGBT romances, thats why they dislike BB" is another very unsubtle implication of homophobia.

This even evolves into a larger problem by emboldening some fans of RWBY go out of their way and then utilize various personal attacks against the identity of Youtubers. Even if you dislike them (I also dislike many of them). Thankfully, this is a minority of the community that i hope people would be happy to get rid off.

The Effort Differential - Gatekeeping of critique

Many times over these two years i have not only seen but also made multiple threads about how critique should be better. I still hold this view to an extent, i think that some people become nitpicky or criticize this show for doing common sense things that are industry standard and done by many other shows. However, wishing for better criticism is not the same as gatekeeping it.

The RWBY subreddit has an issue with gatekeeping specifically critique. With anything else, especially if you love the show and express it, you will never be asked to do anything, you will simply get hundreds of upvotes and lots of supportinve comments. Same goes if you want to call out/cuss out youtubers, critics, the "hatedom" and the like.

This is not the same for criticism. There are many requirements on the critique side that one has to be aware of or else sink. A few of these examples include but are not limited to needing to either be "objective" or "admitting that you are not objective", be constructive, add positivity to critique and many others.

The requirements that some people require for criticism are on the level of writting an official university essay, it is that bad if you want to not be downvoted in many cases, this is what i base my current content on specifically.

I have to spend around 3 hours writting even a single thread, writting it, rewriting it to be in a softer language, interspersing (in my opinion) in many lines, including positivity, specifically thinking of what could be done to improve etc. None of these things would i need to do if i was not doing criticism. This is especially clear to me because i have made both positive and negative analysis threads, and very conveniently enough, despite being the same quality, my positive threads usually received more upvotes.

But even that is not enough, not always. Every time i write a thread people find problems with how it is written. No matter how much i try there will always be a complaint, and that is why i refer to this requirement of "effort" as gatekeeping, because there are people in this fandom that only call out "effort" as a way to shut down criticism, and every time you put in that much more "effort" and do what they wish, there will always be another criticism to fall back upon to once again dismiss the thread.

I myself have experienced this multiple times. I make a critique on how bad the WF subplot is? I get lambasted by some people for not being "constructive". I now specifically make sure to include more positivity in my threads. I make a thread with semi-official style? I am accused of trying to pretend objective. I now have to specifically include either a disclaimer that the thread is my opinion or intersperse "imo" in places. And even with all of that, my latest thread on this sub after its deletion was refered by some people as a "hatefull piece attacking the fandom", both on twitter and this very subreddit.

Whatever criticism i deliver, it will always underdeliver to some people. And to many this is the kind of thing that simply makes them go away, because if they are forced to try hard, and even then are dismissed, what is the point?

I do not think that critique has to have all of these requirements imposed on it. Especially when there are people who intentionally abuse the lack of those requirements to shut down discussion. I do not think we should all have to write almost university level essays to be accepted. Especially since a lot of users are not versed in literature as a subject or are non-native speakers.

The dishonest actors and prevailing narratives

The next very important and pressing problem is the dishonest actors that constantly show up in critical threads, any person making critique will start to recognize certain names that constantly show up to cause problems and to dismiss criticism. I will not say their names but i will say their behaviour.

1 user for example has constantly followed me before i threathened them with a block, they constantly took my arguments not only out of context but also created completely new arguments that i never made and assigned them to me. Any kind of engagement with them in good faith always devolved in them just misrepresenting my arguments more.

This user manages to hide their behaviour because what they are doing is not a bannable offense, they are not being directly insulting, all they are doing is dishonest representation to completely change the perception of your arguments. Which can kill a thread and catch many new critique writters unaware and unprepared to push back against something like that.

The other user is indicative of a larger problem both in the fandom and r/RWBY, the problem of prevailing narratives. Some things are just accepted as "true" and almost noone can contest them. This user constantly claims that the person criticising just "doesnt know how to", they imply many things about the expertise and sometimes the inteligence of a person who is criticising the show.

And this is a problem that exists in the wider fandom too. If your conclussion disagrees with someone elses then "you just dont know how to analyze" and this prevailng narrative has been extremelly present during Volumes V7-8, especially surrounding Ironwood and Atlas discussions. This is also a very common "dunk" against any and all critics, with the claims of "HAH, these critics wanted more show dont tell, now they dont understand, they are stoopid". But i have covered this in more detail in this thread,

The Visceral reaction to Youtubers

This is not a defence of all youtubers, their takes or even their characters. A very common problem on r/RWBY is people posting Youtuber content (That they might disagree with) to initiate discussion, which results in many claims of "Oh, this (insert insult here" or statements of "Well, their videos are shit, aint gonna watch".

This will never help the perception that critique is accepted, if people refuse to watch the video and then ADVERTISE that they refuse to do so for upvotes, or they lash out against creators and personally attack them and ALSO get upvotes. It is a bad look, and not only that, it will hurt those creators if they visit such places too.

I agree with criticising Youtube creators, calling them out when they are wrong. But not what we have had currently for the past year and more.

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I tried to be as compact as possible and i might have missed some points or the like, but i think i will end this here. I especially want to ask any critical users of the show to share their experiences with r/RWBY subreddit, maybe i am totally wrong and i am the only one with these experiences, if so then i will freely accept that.

[u/Magnus-Artifex]

Tbf, YouTube left everyone traumatized many years ago.