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The finale was a cavalcade of bullshit, from which you could pluck a few gems clearly thrown in to appease classic series fans.

Sparks: I have now heard from two people who liked it; one classic series fan, one new series fan. But this really is the most lopsided reaction I’ve seen.

Regardless, I stand by my statement above: you can’t do drama this way, simply because it _isn’t drama_ and can’t function as such. It can have some of the form, but it lacks all of the substance.

It seems as though Moffat may have a genuine strategy in driving away frustrated viewers: the BBC doesn’t just count viewers per episode, it also counts viewer satisfaction.

This means that by getting the alienated (pun inevitable) to bail on the show, only three classes of viewers remain:

1. Die-hard Moffat stans, for whom he can do no wrong;

2. Casual viewers who like anything so long as it’s shiny enough;

3. Anguished-but-perennially hopeful fans who keep watching in hope it will pull out of its nose-dive and sieze upon any glimpse of improvement to cheer a longed-for improvement streak.

Since the “demanding” fans who want silly things like good plots, arcs that make sense, consistent characterization, science within the reasonable handwave and (ugh!) diverse representation have left, their “negativity” which would bring down the “AI” – short for “Appreciation Index” – is gone and the percentage of happy fans goes up, lifting the show’s score even as the overall number of viewers sinks.

I don’t know how long the Beeb will let this go on, but it is one of if not the highest watched shows on the BBC even now. However, they’ve gone from a high of about 10 million at the start of NuWho, and instead of gaining more viewers, they’ve shrunk it down to about 7 million (predictably the Moffat-stans insist this doesn’t matter, even though that represents a very bumpy season where people clearly kept coming back to see if it was getting better after hearing good buzz and then bailing again, culminating in a final spike for the finale-cliffhanger.)

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/doctor-who-series-8-ratings-accumulator-66394.htm

As far as I know, American TV ratings doesn’t work like this, and neither do comic book sales, so the logic can’t be quite the same — but there does seem to be a similar “become the biggest fish by shrinking the pond” attitude towards driving off that part of the audience that isn’t mainly composed of nostalgic — and reactionary — man-children.

But how Moffat is symbolically killing off that despised fangirl segment of his base isn’t even something he’s trying to be subtle about now, with the fridging of Osgood. (And this Tom Baker-was-MY-first-Doctor fangirl has only sneers for his attempts to justify the horrible plotting & characterization by saying “We’re just like the old shows, so if you liked those you gotta like us!” The Fourth Doctor may have been gonzo eccentric, but he was always heroic, humane, and so full of heart that you couldn’t help but trust his good will, no matter how overwhelmed or plain daft he seemed.)

Julian: ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh it makes sense _goddammit_.

See, I’ve had my idea float through my head a couple of times about something like that, that maybe this is intentional, to drive people _away_, but I’ve dismissed it as a bit of fannish paranoia, but with that extra satisfaction data – it makes some sense. nnngh.

See, one of the things I’m reminded about now is how some American show producers _actively do not want_ women and girls watching their shows. There was a superhero cartoon that I didn’t watch – some team show, maybe Young Justice based? I think so – which was cancelled not long ago _not_ because of budget, or poor viewership with boys – but specifically because _too many girls were watching it_.

And bear with me, because there are reasons. It ties back into a post I made last January talking about how marketing figured out in the 1980s that it’s easier to get your current demographic to buy _more of_ your stuff (and thereby make more money) than it is to expand your demographic (which also makes you money, but takes more work). And the easiest way to get your current demographic to make those extra purchases is to _degrade_ people _not_ in that demographic as lessor and unworthy of the product. It’s called target group optimisation, and that link is to a well-detailed article on it.

All of which pushes me in the direction that this Moffat sexism isn’t just about being that sort of unconscious sexist, but is about “optimising” the fandom. By, you know, getting rid of long-time fans like _me_.

God damn I hope you’re wrong.

So yeah, that’s awful. And is something you see in American TV. Which is to say: American TV is _exactly_ like you describe television ratings in the UK. At least some of the time. It’s just a lot less up front about it.

Yurgh, I missed that article – thanks for the link even if it’s nauseating reading. I do remember hearing that about canceling Young Justice because “too many girls are watching & we don’t know how to sell toys to girls” which, just, I don’t even – speaking as a girl who had so many Star Wars figures I got the free base from sending in UPC codes. The way to sell toys to me is to make some female action figures who don’t look like masturbation aides for dudebros! Literally that simple. But there was no Katara action figure, no Toph action figure, even though one was the ‘everyman narrator” figure and the other the team badass.

And yeah, it would sound conspiracy-theorist, but when sexist guys in charge come out and say sexist things in public, at Comic-Con and in interviews, it’s more of a conspiracy theory to bend over backwards explaining how it ISN’T sexism! They admit it! And it’s gotten So. Much. Worse. since the admittedly-gendered 1970s – have you seen the Lego ad comparisons? Amazing.

I think that it’s just the latest version of the Backlash that Faludi wrote about, but this time at least there is pushback (like sexist shirt guy on the Philae project) even if it’s like Sisyphus all the damn time. (BTW I came here via Angela’s blog, I read her books & then hey! other things I’m interested in, so that’s why I’m ranting all over your blog now, sorry!)

The thing that makes it even more twisted to me, is that the gatekeepers of the media KNOW that their audience is shrinking: “The Graying of Fandom” has been something I’ve seen people beating their breasts about for the last 10 years, and “How can we get new readers?” laments from comics and prose presses alike.

Except, when you tell them, “Put out things that don’t alienate over half your audience — because even most straight white dudes aren’t on board with your casual overt sexism/racism/homophobia! — and instead of actively repelling the rest of us, make it clear that you respect us too–” they act like you just told them to emasculate themselves sans anesthesia. Or, when it’s suggested that instead of cane-shaking “Kids these days with your anime and YA novels! Get off our space-lawns!” maybe listen and take an interest in the newest things and stop acting like SF ended with RAH, too many of the older generation act like you just told them to find the nearest icefloe…so much _Pride_ in not reading/watching/listening/participating in the present, while claiming to be the guardians of futurism!

Now not all these reactionaries are technically old — Moffat & Davies are only a few years older than I am, and same with Goyer — and Sir Terry Pratchett is younger at heart than most of the cranky fanboys complaining about the girl cooties online! But that reactionary, center-right, status-quo-is-god mindset is in love with the worst sort of Mad Men era social attitudes, disguised at best as “chivalry” and at worst not even trying to hide the belief that biology is destiny and that women were put on earth to serve manly men–

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we see all these mid-life-crisis guys in charge of studios and publishing companies, responsible for creating stories in which, say, Peter Parker has to be turned single so he can date and watch porn again — and not caring that they shed outraged audiences and even authors and artists bailing on them. There’s a void of empathy, where they think everyone will agree with them — and if you don’t, they don’t want to hear it! They will keep steering that ship because they’re the captain, by Zeus, they know best — what iceberg?

David Willis can unpack it for them in satirical comics that get reblogged endlessly, but what does he know? Fans, schmans — REAL fans would just say, “Thank you, may I have another, Sir?”

“All of which pushes me in the direction that this Moffat sexism isn’t just about being that sort of unconscious sexist, but is about “optimising” the fandom. By, you know, getting rid of long-time fans like _me_.”

Oh, I have to say something else. This is EXACTLY what the last pope was saying, quite explicitly, and a lot of conservative religious leaders argue this way — we’ll get back to a purer, truer faith once all the dissenters are gone! Then, somehow, we will successfully evangelize the world — step two is missing, of course, and the idea that once you alienate all the “degenerate moderns” there will be this vast pool of non-degenerate reactionaries who were just being kept from joining up by all the inclusiveness earlier — well, let’s just say that Gawker has tried that with their comments policy over the past several years (they explicitly wanted to get rid of their old commentariat that spent all their time joking around in threads, and replace it with a new readership that would click through onto the profitable ads instead) and it worked to the point where they succeeded in getting rid of all but the most die-hard readers…

Still waiting for stage three to kick in, per their publically accessible stats. Now they’ve floundered back to try to attract viewers by allowing user generated content, instead of doing what the remaining fans begged them to do all along and restore the old comment threads. Because the PTB know best, dammit! Do what we say or get out, you’re either with us or against us — wait, where did everybody go?

Julian: I also think that these decades of denegration-for-marketing has a lot to create the environment that has spawned misogynist movements like GamerGate, where they genuinely accept all of this horribleness as the “base” and as the “centre” of normal.

And you’re right, it is horrible, but the problem is that it _does work_. (And, of course, things get worse from there.) So this is a very hard nut to crack, and also, something that will have to be played in the long-game mode – quite possibly forever, or rather, as long as humans are around. And that’s very depressing.

Well, “work” is debatable — the “graying of fandom” is something real but limited to print books & comics, where all the available stats show that Didio & Quesada’s attempts to jumpstart their flagships keep failing & turning into punchlines (TIME FOR ANOTHER REBOOT!!) & it’s only the movies and media-related comics that are bringing in new viewers or bringing _back_ old ones who were turned off by the whole “darker ‘n’ edgier” thing (which always means “sexist & reactionary” somehow) — counting on a shrinking demographic of reactionaries to just buy more stuff is why Marvel had to sell their most profitable names to other movie studios decades ago, why Sony has Spidey and Fox has FF. And DC is even worse, when it comes to the 52 fiascos (plural! LET’S KILL ANOTHER KID & WHO’S ARM HAVEN’T WE CUT OFF YET?)

So they’re circling the drain, they just can’t bring themselves to do what they need to do, even when the rare diverse & well-done comics like the new Captain Marvel start bringing in new readers, shows like the old Batman TAS and related are still beloved bestsellers, and people demand a Black Widow movie at every opportunity.

What I think we’re seeing now with Gamergate etc is the thrashing of the shot snake — make that a hydra rather — which is old guard SFWA/SMOF fandom composed of Agéd Dudebros and the Senior Chill Girls who don’t want to become less special, plus their younger versions who admire that model of privilege — and who are only now encountering both serious pushback and public shaming.

So they’re doing the old bourgeois equivalent of rioting in the streets — poison-pen letters cut from newspapers, half-bricks through windows, boycotts and backchannel appeals to fellow Old Boys in their networks, HDU?! letters to the editor (& WOW does Pratchett know his People Who Write Letters) because they finally see the writing on the wall & feel threatened in their privilege, the way they always _claimed_ they were being oppressed by feminism & political correctness OMG IT’S HAPPENING AT LAST!

Orson Scott Card groveled for mercy, for crying out loud! After all his loud talk of going to war against the country if it didn’t cave to his buddies on legally-mandated homophobia.

The ugly core has always been there, but there wasn’t the organized pushback until this past decade, and the building pressure has become a full-blown storm front. But look how fast Marvel caved over that ugly-ass Spiderwoman cover! Look how fast sexist shirt space guy had to issue a public TV apology! The bomb & death threats for dissenters have always been there — just ask Emma Goldman — but before they weren’t needed because there wasn’t public activism that warranted it in the eyes of the reactionaires.

What’s happening is an object lesson in Why Don’t Feed The Trolls doesn’t work, never has, and how it only emboldens the haters by letting them think that “the lurkers support them in realspace” — now the “make me a sammich” libertarian-leftish sexist asses (see also: Elevatorgate & Richard Dawkins) see that not even their heroes Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have any respect for it & they’re freaking out. So it’s also a lesson to the mainstream world that dismissing fandom as “pop culture trash” and not reflective of real world problems, as a backwater for “boys to be boys” was as bad as letting the trolls troll on in the hope they’d grow out of it — science & public atheo-skepticism are reaping that whirlwind now as the major institutions hemorrhage members and can’t afford to run their own conventions as feminist & diversity-friendly new ones start up.

But the point of “We’re mad as hell & not going to take it any more” has been reached and so open warfare has been declared by the privileged old guard — but peasant revolts have never been easy or without ugliness. And at least the grimdark retro-reactionary fanboys are pretty much exactly the sort of people whose “activism” is limited to poison-pen letters and not even “Me and a bunch of my friends will be waiting outside the gym after school for you!”

It’s almost TOO much of a cliché, the angry petulant nerd who doesn’t dare to confront anyone without a mob to back him up. What needs to be done is for more decent people to denounce them, shame them for their own words, instead of “ignore them till they go away” — it’s only because they think they have power on their side that they dare.

But the power of numbers is illusory — when the good people flee spaces & leave them to the trolls, they only seem like sharks because the pond has shrunk, but they’re still guppies — and the power of Authority is in money, and social inertia. But the fannish PTB can’t count on either of those, because the money flows from fans, and if I had a dollar for every post I’ve seen the last two years on science blogs from an ex-dudebro saying “I used to be just like them and then people yelled at me and forced me to examine my views!” I could probably afford to go to Comic-Con.

“We have placed all our business venture eggs in the basket of middle-aged straight white guys who don’t respect women & minorities & wish they were living in the era of Mad Men only without the inconvenient History Happening As We Watch parts” doesn’t seem like a very wise strategy even in the short term — not when DIY crowdsourced filmmaking is getting so much more feasible, and I doubt I’m the only one who’s spent more on self-pub comics than Big Two ones in recent years, either.

And sure the PTB can do what they like for now — but we’ve seen how good at ignoring fans criticizing them for failures of gender & diversity, which is to say — Not at all!