A tale of two moon knights

Plus some thoughts about the not-quite-late Bruce Willis

It’s Friday, April 1st, and here’s where we are…

High anxiety, low empathy. That’s how I’d describe the world right now.

I am deeply grateful for the advent of the internet, but I am also deeply conflicted about it. Much of what I have and much of who I am has been defined by my interaction with the internet, and that is both a good and a bad thing. I presume it’s that way for most people. The promise of connectedness is what drew me into using the internet in the first place and it certainly has delivered on that front. I am more connected to more people on a more regular basis than I ever was when I was young. I also have been connected to them longer, something that is important to someone who moved constantly and never really felt any stability regarding friendships.

But we are also connected to the absolute worst of what we have to offer each other, and at a greater volume than ever before. If you express an opinion that runs contrary to the agenda of a certain section of fandom, they will swarm you and then they will scream that they’re not being toxic and how dare you suggest they are. After Sunday’s Oscars, I saw a good chunk of Zack Snyder’s most vocal and least informed fan base crowing about their “Oscar wins.” While it is true that they manipulated the completely ridiculous online polls for “Biggest Cheer Moment” and “Fan Favorite” so “The Flash Enters the Speed Force” and Army of the Dead were in the #1 spots, those were not in any way, shape, form, or fashion “Oscar wins.” The Academy votes on the Oscars, period. There were no statues given, no acceptance speeches, no actual award. It was a commercial bumper, something the Academy did so that people might watch the show, and it worked. Unfortunately, there is such a low level of understanding of how things work at this point, and people are so adamant that they are right regardless of facts, that when I laughed about the notion that these people think they won Oscars, they got furious at me. Fair, I guess, although I maintain that if I’m not coming into your timeline and raining on your specific parade, it shouldn’t matter to you if I like something or not. But what really marks them as unhinged is the way they keep insisting that those fan polls count as actual Oscars.