Fansplaining: "Our Most Passionate Fans"

Podcast Episode
Fansplaining
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Episode Title:	“Our Most Passionate Fans”
Length:	1:03:43
Featured:	Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel
Date:	March 21, 2018
Fandom:	Multifandom
External Links:	Episode 70: “Our Most Passionate Fans” (includes audio, transcript, and show notes) Fansplaining—About (archive link)
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Fansplaining: "Our Most Passionate Fans" is an episode of the podcast Fansplaining by Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel.

For others in the series, see Fansplaining.

Introduction

"In Episode 70, “Our Most Passionate Fans,” Elizabeth and Flourish discuss the ways that corporate America interacts with fandom—especially when fandom behaves badly—through the lens of the Rick and Morty/McDonalds Szechuan Sauce debacle. (Spoiler: corporate America does not do well.) They also continue to discuss fan tourism and read a listener letter about what happens when your own fandom descends on your town."

Links

• Episode, transcript, and show notes: 70: Our Most Passionate Fans, ^{Archived version}
• Tumblr Promotional Post

Topics Discussed

• A letter response to Fansplaining: Fan Tourism
• Rick and Morty
• Fan entitlement, toxicity, mob behaviour, harassment, threatening behaviour (verbal or physical), and rioting
• The dark side of corporate interaction with fandoms; when toxic group behaviour goes un-condemned in PR statements or on platforms
• Boundaries and appropriate or inappropriate fannish behaviour, including celebrity stalking as an example

Excerpts

ELM: In the spring of last year, 2017, mentioned in an episode about Szechuan sauce, at McDonald’s, one of the characters wanted it, it was a sauce that McDonald’s did a special promotion 20 years ago for Mulan.

FK: Right.

ELM: McDonald’s, when they saw people requesting it, they were like “Hey McDonald’s, can we get this?” People were tweeting at them for months.

FK: Right, because people remembered Szechuan sauce—or alternately never tried it, but thought it was funny.

ELM: I think the vast majority of people had not tried it, from what I have heard.

FK: I agree.

ELM: And they just wanted it from kind of a fan perspective. They were like “Well, I want it too. I need to try this sauce.” So McDonald’s was like “Great, we’ll really capitalize on this enthusiasm, these passionate fans,” cause McDonald’s is dumb, so they were like “OK. We’ll make a limited run at certain stores.” And then there was not nearly enough and people rioted, police were involved, it was a really bad scene, they issued an apology—do you want to read the apology? I think you have that up.

FK: Yeah. I’ll read the apology. OK. So the apology read as follows:

“To our customers and Szechuan sauce lovers, yesterday we were truly humbled by the amazing curiosity, passion and energy this community showed to welcome back Szechuan sauce, even if just for one day. Thank you a million times over. Between the costumes, the memes, and the cross-state travel, you, the fans, showed us what you got. And our super limited batch, though well intentioned, clearly wasn’t near enough to meet that demand.

“‘Not cool.’ We agree. So we’re going to make this right. In the last 24 hours, we’ve worked to open any portal necessary, and it worked. Szechuan sauce is coming back once again this winter, and instead of being one day only and limited to select restaurants, we’re bringing more. A lot more. So that any fan who’s willing to do whatever it takes for Szechuan sauce will only have to ask for it at a nearby McDonald’s.

“We want to make this right. You’re some of the best fans in this or any dimension, and we plan to deliver on that promise as soon as possible. Stay tuned. Your friends at McDonald’s.” [ELM cracking up]

ELM: On the surface you feel like this is a mismatch, a supply chain problem, right, and they didn’t plan ahead, but I think that’s too generous. I think what they did was try to capitalize on…they saw there was this fan interest, right? Without really understanding the full scope of it or the depth of it, right? And they were like, “OK! Let’s just do this.”

FK: If nothing else, it seemed like to me if they’d known anything about Rick and Morty fans they would have been wary.

ELM: Yes.

FK: But even apart from that, it seems like someone did not think about the possible…what happens in all situations. So they made this podcast afterward that was like…we can talk about how we feel about that. But they made this podcast afterward where they interviewed a bunch of people involved or people made statements or whatever about what happened…

ELM: Whoa, talk about the podcast actually. The podcast came out in February with the launch of the mass run of the Szechuan sauce. And it’s called "The Sauce," it's a branded podcast, they say that repeatedly, they kinda make a joke out of it—the host says things like “I’m just a branded podcast host, what do I know,” that kinda thing. Like that’s a fun joke.

...I think I can articulate this. What actually happened was kinda heinous. People rioted, people physically threatened minimum-wage workers at McDonald’s, right? Who had no warning, no support from McDonald’s. What happened, “heinous” is the word I’d use. That’s horrific.

FK: The individual experiences of people working at McDonald’s on that day suuuucked.

ELM: There’s a woman who had to barricade herself in the freezer for eight hours because people were threatening her life! A McDonald’s worker! That’s absurd. McDonald’s should be appalled. This is legit within the realm of crime. So you’re talking about it like, “This is a debacle, so we’re gonna do this true crime ‘Serial’ style podcast where we deconstruct it,” but instead you layer this shitty PR veneer over it—so you don’t actually get to the crime-iness of it, and you just try to make it sound like, all the bad actors? They’re “our most passionate fans” in it. They’re never the criminals in the story. They are the fans, in my opinion. And I know that’s a hard thing to say on the Fansplaining podcast, we’re supposed to be pro-fan, but the fans should not have acted that way. You should never threaten someone’s life over fuckin’ sauce! I’m mad, Flourish, do you see how mad I am?

ELM: OK. So let’s segue into the article that mentions this, that I think was really interesting and really useful for some of these conversations. This article came out in early January in The Verge. The author is Katherine Cross and it’s called “In 2018, let’s stop pretending abusive fans are ‘passionate.’”

...

Yeah, yeah. OK. So going back to this article though, I got a little distracted talking about swatting. Basically the argument in the article is what we’re saying here, the kind of idea of framing your violent fans, your abusive fans, your toxic fans, as quote-unquote “passionate” fans is a huge problem. You know? This idea of “all publicity is good publicity,” the fact that…it would have been one thing if McDonald’s had just left it at that statement and then said in February “We’re gonna come up with more sauce, you guys love it, we’re gonna give it to you, you guys are great.” Leave it at that. But to do this podcast, multi-episode podcast, the way they did it and some of the quotes in there…the one quote, I think it was the chef who said it, wait, I sent it to you.

FK: The chef said, quote, “I would never be upset at a superfan for any reason.”

ELM: For any reason! That’s an absurd statement!

FK: Yeah! It is absurd.

ELM: “Someone hated my food so much they murdered my wife, but you're a superfan, so don’t worry about it because you’re committed to the brand.” What a dumb statement. The fact that they made multiple statements throughout, multiple people said this. And I just don’t understand. I mean, I understand how corporate fandom has gotten to this point, but I don’t…I kind of don’t understand how, also. [laughing]

ELM: They literally say in it multiple times, things like “The customer is always right, and this is just an extension of that.” That’s sort of the vibe. They said “the customer is always right,” so then if the customer is always right, the superfan—who’s the ultimate customer—is always always right. Because they’re the ones that you need to appease. Anyone who’s worked in retail, or food service, I know very few people who believe “the customer is always right” is a healthy attitude. I don’t think you should be rude to people, but the amount of abuse that I see on a daily basis working in the service industry—and I continue to work in the service industry at the racetrack—no, those customers aren’t right.

FK: Yeah, and more to the point, there’s a difference between “We did something, it didn’t work out, and we want to make it up to people who waited in line and couldn’t get any,” fine, great, and “Everything that people did while they waited in line, we’re gonna reframe as passionate and OK.” It’s a little bit like, I mean, yeah. Like looking at, I don’t know, One Direction fans following Harry Styles around. Right? It’s one thing to say, to not pathologize people for being interested in celebrities, and it’s another thing to be like “…and it’s totally fine to go through the trash, through your favorite celebrity’s trash.” You know what I mean? No, actually, there are boundaries—and we may disagree on where that boundary is, but I think everybody should agree that there are boundaries that exist in the world!

FK: In any case, you know what I’m saying, though, right? There’s things that are clearly OK, that clearly do not cause harm and could not cause harm, and there are things that are clearly causing harm, and then there’s things that are in this grey area that has to be negotiated. And I think that's the area where people have to communicate about expectations and draw boundaries, both as fans and as celebrities or people who…and that’s really difficult, I know, it’s hard, but one way that you can’t do that is by just saying “the customer is always right” and letting it go.

ELM: This Reddit piece was really interesting because…I don’t know, it definitely talked a lot about this sort of stuff, Reddit wants to be this place of passion, this place, they bill themselves as the “front page” or whatever, this place where people can express themselves, and it’s a really interesting piece cause they talk to one of the founders and he’s talking about how he's struggling with these lines and how can you say “Well, we want everyone to be able to have their say, do whatever they want,” but then if you don’t set any boundaries then you wind up with…I mean, not just TheDonald subreddit, but all the ones that they banned.

FK: The great irony being, of course, that individual subreddits today are better moderated than almost any other place on the internet except closed Facebook groups, right? Reddit, the pit, is actually better!

ELM: But part of that is because he’s been outright deleting groups for the last couple years! Deleting subreddits that were explicitly toxic. And actually changing the terms of service to explain what “inciting violence” meant, that kind of thing. You know? But it’s like, I don’t know. I just…I just feel like if you’re going about it like “The customer’s always right, our fans are the most passionate, passion’s good, everything that falls under passion and conversation is good, doesn’t matter what the content is, engagement is good, doesn’t matter what that engagement is,” even if you look at the way they’re building the YouTube algorithms or the Facebook algorithms, the most engagement will skyrocket it to the top and that engagement might be something incredibly toxic. But it doesn’t matter because it’s kinda blind to what the actual content is, as long as people are…as long as there’s movement on it, right? And where does that end?