First of all, I want to explain that this isn’t a whining type of post, nor is it about pointing fingers. Nor am I saying I am 100% sure I will stop… I’m writing this for two reasons. The first is that I simply need to get this off my chest. The second is that if anyone is actually following my blog, actually following it, not just that they clicked on ‘follow’ Tumblr-wise, I feel like I owe an explanation a bit beforehand if/when I actually decide to stop. Or maybe it’ll just be a hiatus, or maybe tomorrow there will be something I’ll absolutely need to write about and I’ll change my mind. But for now, it’s not looking good for Bruno’s Geek Reviews.

  When I started this blog, I did it with a child-like enthusiasm. I thought it was really fun to have an outlet like this, a place where I could reach out to other people with common interests. Eventually it even led to me using a mascot from this toy I bought at a dollar store, which I named Paul. Sure I would rant about this thing or that from time to time, but I treated my blog in a light-hearted way mostly.

  I tried a few different things, movie suggestions, versus, interviews, etc. All with enthusiasm and looking perhaps with what would connect with other people. And I’m not saying this as a complaint, but just a fact; it seems that mostly, people in Tumblr prefer to exchange gifs of shows and movies they like and reblog things by adding ‘This’ to it, or just an insult to the original poster if they disagreed with it. I am not bashing this, it’s a perfectly legitimate way to blog if that’s what you like. But maybe I should have chosen a different blog site for my idea. Or perhaps not, admittedly some of the more heavy-texted blogs have gained a decent amount of followers… But then again they are few and far between, at least from what I’ve seen. Admittedly I could be wrong.

  But while I didn’t have many followers, I could at least count on my blog to get things off my chest about what I liked or disliked about geek culture and then feel better about it for sharing it. But things stopped being fun a while back.

  First came my post where I gave my opinion on what I consider to be creepy sexual/romantic fan-fiction concerning the Robins from the Batman mythos. (Because the characters are all family members in the first place and because they often portray underage Robins with adult members of the Bat-Family.) The amount of stupidity I received from angered fanfic lovers was astounding. And I don’t mean they were stupid because they disagreed with me, but rather in the way they handled their rage. If you haven’t read what I’m talking about and are curious, just go back a few pages, it’s not that far from this post. And still I replied to them with actual arguments and by trying to keep a semblance of conversation and pretend they weren’t just throwing random insults at me. And that revealed a certain attitude a lot of people have in Tumblr… The “Don’t judge me! Don’t judge ANYONE!” attitude. I can understand that online blogging is an outlet, and it should be. But when someone writes pedophilia fiction, yes I am going to say it’s wrong. Yes I’m going to judge the sicko who wrote that story. And if you write about brothers having sex, adoptive or not, yes I’ll point out it’s kinda gross and creepy. And if the only arguments you can muster are as idiotic as most of those I’ve received, you’re just proving my point for me. But honestly, it was really a depressing experience to see just how many people were like that. During those days I lost some faith in humanity, and every time I see the edited reblog of that post reblogged by more people to congratulate the person, I grow a little bit more disgusted with that attitude of “Everything is okay and nothing should be judged!” Oh and guess what? Many of the reblogs contain one of those Gifs that add absolutely nothing to the post other than back-patting between those people.

  And not long after, there was the whole thing with Gail Simone. I was very fond of Gail because her presence had really cheered me up at a past comic-book convention in Montreal and I was a HUGE fan of her Secret Six book. Last year, things were not perfect in my life but I was going to the Montreal comic convention because I thought it’d be good to change my mind. I was actually going on my own. I knew James Marsters was going to be there so I brought my ‘Spike Omnibus’ comic, hoping to get it signed by him. Once there, I learned that it cost 30$ to meet with him. I could have easily afforded it, but it didn’t feel right to me that I should pay someone 30 $ for writing his name. I have nothing against it, the guy is taking some of his time to do it so he can ask for compensation if he wants to, and the people who pay for it didn’t have their arms twisted, they actually wanted it. But I’ve never been much of a fanboy in the traditional sense. Even people whose work I admire will never be idolized in my eyes. Therefore I won’t pay someone to write me their name. So it might sound silly, but I felt a bit sad to walk away from that line with my Spike Omnibus still unsigned in my backpack.

  So anyway, I learned once there that Gail Simone, the writer of Secret Six, was present. I cursed not having known that beforehand because I would have brought my Secret Six #1, or my Batgirl #1. And she signed things and met people for free! I bought Batgirl #1 a second time at a much higher price than the cover price already, even though it was fairly recent, and went to see her. I remember I geeked out and rambled a bit. I’ve come across celebrities of all sorts in my life and never felt anything particular about it, but in this case I was a bit starstruck. And she took a picture with me, which I proudly posted on my blog about a month later. She made that day a lot more bright for me with just that, and I am still happy she was there that time.

  But then she gave a harsh reply to one of her fans. (You can find the whole thing if you click the previous ‘Gail Simone’ link) It surprised me. What surprised me even more was that none of her fans seemed shocked by it. I was pretty sure if anyone else had given such a reply to someone, many of the same people would see it differently. So I wrote an article about it, because I disagreed with it and I thought fanboys and fangirls sometimes put their idols on a pedestal when they shouldn’t. I still made it clear that normally Gail was nice with her fans and seemed to genuinely want to give them good advice and never said she was a bad person. I just pointed out that, hey, that was actually rude of her and I’m shocked people don’t react accordingly and instead tell the girl she put on the spot that she should have known better.

  It all led to Gail Simone calling me a liar in a private exchange. According to her, I had hidden motives to write that article (beats me as to what advantage I could have gained from it) and that I ‘made things worse’. Well, I know for a fact that the person I backed up was glad to have at least one person who supported her. I’m also pretty sure she would never have comforted the girl if someone hadn’t brought up that, hey, maybe that was hurtful. And that was the only point I wanted to bring to the table. So I didn’t make things worse. I did what I thought was right, and it ended up souring my feelings towards a writer I previously really enjoyed by her reaction to what I did. I realize she couldn’t have been happy with it, but the way she decided to completely discredit my opinion by dismissing me as a liar was really disappointing, especially since she so often likes to point out things she thinks are unfair of others. Very, very often. 

  By then, I removed Paul the mascot from the main image of my blog on the front page, because it no longer felt like a lighthearted blog. It no longer felt fun. There was no room for cutesy Paul with all this anger and arguing going around.

  And almost no one reads what I write or post anyway. I’ll be lucky if a post of mine gets five ‘Likes’ or a single reblog. It’s also why I’ve been doing more reblogs lately and less actual articles… My heart just isn’t into it anymore.

  I’m gaining nothing from working on this blog. It’s no longer fun, I feel like I’m writing things that no one will read anyway.

  Again, I’m not posting this to whine. I’m just explaining myself. I’m losing interest in doing this for what it brings me.

  Twice now today, people have reblogged some stuff I posted in the past just for the pictures that were in it and removed all the text I’d included. One had a picture of Marie-Claude Bourbonnais as Hornet and the other was a page from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics with a comment from me. I own none of these images…

  If you’re going to reblog one of my posts and remove the text (and therefore the context) from the post completely just for an image I don’t even own, I honestly prefer it if you simply grab the pic and post it yourself from your blog. Seriously, I do. It’s not like I owned any of those two images so if you just wanted those without any of my input you can go ahead and save them to your computer and then upload them from there!

  If the picture however is one of me, one I took, that someone took for me or that I own in any way, then yes please reblog even if you decide to remove what I wrote. (Which I’d rather not in the first place, by the way. Add your own opinions if you want but please leave the original content of my post alone.)

  While I’m sure these people today meant no harm, it does remind me of that insulting blogger who grabbed the post where I linked Welshy’s critique of the Rose character from ‘Doctor Who’ and then reblogged it to complain about it without even leaving the original link in there. Yeah, make sure people can’t actually see what you were complaining about, they could (gasp!) form their own opinion about it instead of just seeing your point of view! But I digress.

  This is one thing I really dislike about Tumblr, how people can grab your posts and reblog them completely out of context.

  There should be some available options in Tumblr every time you post something:

1. Let people reblog and edit your post however they see fit.

2. Let people reblog your post and add their own things to it but without being able to remove or change the original content.

3. Let people reblog your post but they can’t edit it in any way.