Smooth Criminal
Da Cheef
Protip: You can absolutely love something without directly engaging its fanbase. You don't need to be part of an inane mob to justify liking something. Pick and choose the people you engage with, carve out your own niche.
That said, there are some instances where it can become...irreconcilable. For me, as an example, it comes in the form of Warhammer 40k. While I have little issue with the game and the setting itself (tl;dr it's a hilariously expensive tactical miniatures wargame with the grim-derpiest lore imaginable), a good portion of the fanbase that I've run into is just...well, they're nuts. So nuts, in fact, that some of them deadass take the lore at face-value and heartily endorse some of the stuff propagated by the factions in-universe, chiefly the Space Marines, which enforce a universe-spanning empire with a population of trillions. We're talking fascism, genocide, imperialism, fundamentalism...like, it's cool and it's right. It really, really isn't. Warhammer 40k's take on these things was originally meant to be satirical commentary, overblown and cartoonish, cariactures of these things IRL. The developers and writers didn't really do much to try and convince people of that over the years, however, and as a result the fanbase kinda took the ball and ran with it---too far. Lot of neo-Nazis and other unsavory folks ended up co-opting the game, deus vulting their way into a lot of spaces and even into the halls of the company that made/published it. Thankfully Games Workshop (the people in charge of Warhammer) has been trying to dial all that back these past few years and have made significant strides in doing so, but it's like...sour grapes for me, especially during the more formative times when my interest was actually piqued in the game.
Smooth Criminal
