[ SECRET POST #1951 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1951 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 102 secrets from Secret Submission Post #279.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom.livejournal.com]

08. http://i.imgur.com/1s9uX.jpg

[spiritlobo.livejournal.com]

It always sucks when the BNF of a fandom is like that--especially since a lot of times, the BNF is what people new to fandoms usually see.

Ah well, back to lurking I guess.

[(Anonymous)]

Talk to them as an equal and not as a creepy worshipper and you won't have any problems.

htfh

[(Anonymous)]

You mean when you hero worship someone and put them on a pedestal, they don't like it?

And if you casually go up to a random stranger and start in on conversing with them as if you were already friends, they think you're creepy???

Who'd have known!?

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe if you didn't do that kind of hero worship bullshit, they would.
If someone came up and said it was an "honor" to talk to me, I'd find them creepy and avoid them, too.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not a BNF by any means, but the double standard about this whole thing, even in this thread, bugs the shit out of me. If a random person feels that somebody else is creepy and doesn't want to be their friend, omg they're totally allowed and poor them for having to deal with a creeper. If it's a BNF, HOW DARE THEY NOT GIVE EVERYBODY A CHANCE TO BE THEIR FRIEND. That elitist bitch!

Seriously guys?

[(Anonymous)]

I wish they gave me a chance to talk to them

Uh, from the secret it looks like you got a chance. Two chances. Am I missing something?

[(Anonymous)]

This happens all the time in the Portal fandom. Ye gods.

[anonlulz.livejournal.com]

As much as I dislike the BNF Belief, the sheep irritate me more.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, this secret was seriously triggering....

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not a BNF, but you remind me of someone who followed me around on the internet a long time ago. He started off showering me with compliments which made me uncomfortable. Then I told him that made me uncomfortable, and then he switched to offering all his TL;DR thoughts on our mutual fandoms whether I wanted to discuss them or talk to him or not, obviously trying very hard to make me be his friend regardless of whether or not I was interested. I tried to avoid him and mentioned outright a few times that I was totally uninterested in the conversation but he persisted in desperately trying to seek my approval until I just told him he made me super uncomfortable and cut off contact.

His angry response?

"You never gave me a chance!"

Please. If someone is telling you that you creep them out, it's probably for a reason.

[(Anonymous)]

Well... what do you bring to the party OP? Besides your flattery that is.

I know this sounds harsh, but the BNF has 500 other people who want to talk fandom with her just as much as you do. She can't have a personal one on one relationship with all of them. Being selective is not an option it's a necessity. So most BNFs will stick to the people they've known from before they were BNFs, who they are already in a comfortable relationship with, or maybe become close to other people who they admire as well.

[(Anonymous)]

I kind of look down on people who flat-out call themselves "BNFS"s. It especially rubs me the wrong way when they start talking about their "fanbase." Um, yeah, no. You write fanfiction/post fanart that is derivative of some work. You would have no "fanbase" if it weren't for the source material. No one would give two shits about you.

From what the OP shows in the cartoon, the BNF is the one being a dick. It's a compliment to have fanart/fanfic praised. If they're being creepy about it (leaving tons of comments, saying creepy personal things, etc.), then, yeah, that's another thing.

I'm friends with supposed "BNFs" in my fandom, but I don't think that much of them. Honestly, they're just nerdy girls like me who spend a lot of time reading/writing fanfic. I compliment their fanfics because I want them to write more -- not because of some sort of "hero worship" thing.

[mollywobbles867.livejournal.com]

It'd be hilarious if the OP was a BNF, not the "creep" in this scenario.

[(Anonymous)]

People who actually refer to themselves as BNFs are total jerkoffs.

[honeysuckle-raw.livejournal.com]

The entire idea of being a ""BNF"" is enough to make me avoid someone completely. Who cares, OP? Find friends whose heads aren't up their own asses.

[antialiasis.livejournal.com]

Speaking as somebody who's been on the other end... I just say thanks and be nice when people do the hero-worshipping thing, but the second kind of encounter is really, really awkward. I mean, I still try to just engage them, but when people persist in it it's kind of maddening.

I admit you don't provide a lot of context, but given my experiences and the BNF's reaction, I'm guessing the problem is that it came across really obviously that you were just using the subject as an excuse to talk to the BNF. The thing is, that's not actually treating them like a normal person, and it's likely to just make them feel cornered. Odds are you don't generally go around asking random people you don't actually know in a personal capacity their opinion on the latest episode of whatever - you might ask it as an open question in a discussion, or you might ask a friend whose particular opinion you have reason to care about, but you'd probably never normally go asking a non-BNF this one-on-one (if you didn't know them well), and the BNF can most likely tell... which means it's going to be awkward for them.

Try really thinking about when you might talk to any other random person who wasn't a BNF, and just do that to start with. Try just responding directly to things they say publicly when you have something relevant to add or ask, for instance. If they post their thoughts on something, you could ask if they have thoughts on something related to it (provided you're actually interested in their thoughts on that and are not just popping up repeatedly asking them things you don't actually care about). Comment on individual pieces of fanart they post, or the awesome icon they just used, or whatever. And from those kinds of "stranger-appropriate" interactions, friendship may (or may not) start to emerge. If you do start to connect with them on a friendly level, that's when it stops being awkward for you to just start talking about an episode with them out of the blue. If not, well, not everybody is going to be your friend; that's a fact of life.

tl;dr: While these particular BNFs may have been a bit rude about it and I'm sure you didn't mean to cause them any kind of distress, I suspect you were going about this the wrong way and they legitimately felt cornered. I hope some of this ramble might help you not come off that way.

[citrinesunset.livejournal.com]

I think it can be honestly hard to get to know people in fannish spaces. So much interaction is public, but often still talk the most with people whom they're already friends with, BNFs included. And "friending" someone on LJ doesn't equal actual friendship. So it can be very hard to start interacting with someone in a natural way.

I'm admittedly overly-paranoid about social interaction, so I think about this stuff way too much, but what I generally do is make a point to start commenting in posts that are clearly meant to be public. If a post seems a little more intimate and the only people who are commenting are the person's friends, I'm usually more careful about jumping in.

If someone is rude to you for literally just trying to start a conversation, though, then they do sound like they might be a jerk.

[(Anonymous)]

The best way to think about BNFs is that they really are just people. Some of them are nice, some of them are assholes, some of them are nice so long as you go along with the stuff them, some seem intimidating until you strike up a convo with them and then they're perfectly sociable.

If someone is making your fandom experience unpleasant, I would just advise you not to follow them. I recently unfollowed a bunch of BNFs on Tumblr because I realized that they were just kind of obnoxious and didn't really bring anything I was interested in to the fandom table (besides being BNFs, which really isn't much of anything at all). This being the internet, you don't really have to deal with someone if you don't want to.

Also, I don't see anything inherently wrong with your approach. I've seen many BNFs become friends with people who started out as big fans. It seems like you had a bad experience. But remember the whole thing about how BNFs are people too. So you shouldn't let one bad experience dissuade you from talking to people and having fun.

[(Anonymous)]

LOL at all the entitled bnfs commenting on this.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm trying to puzzle out a way that this secret could possibly make OP look good. None of them are clicking so far.

Was I the only one who read the dialog as shorthand for the way OP was reading each rejection? Like, not literally saying "you're creepy go away" but heavily implying it? Or that the second conversation starter representing multiple conversations started in a similar fashion? If OP approached more than once in a way that seemed overly friendly, or not at all how a person would normally approach a stranger about a topic...well, the BNF is completely in their right to express that they're uncomfortable.

Even if I'm totally off, and everything is word-for-word, I think that implies that something OP was doing came across as creepy enough that the BNF broke social "dealing with creepers" protocol and overtly told them to back off on the very first swing. That says a lot about the way OP was approaching, purposeful or not.

But let's just imagine that this is not the case, and this particular BNF is a huge irredeemable jerk who calls people creepy for no reason. Now the OP really wants to be friends with a huge irredeemable jerk...why? Because they're relatively well-known? Because their fic is good?

I dunno, OP. It's not adding up for me. You might want to ask yourself why you want to be friends with these people so bad, and/or if you're approaching it in a way that's disingenuous.

[(Anonymous)]

I... had the opposite thing happen. Talked to a BNF after leaving a few comments on their works, discussed a few things pertaining to the fandom... and then I supposed I made the mistake of telling them how very alike our thought processes were. After that, whenever I logged on, I ended up having them link me to all of their works, asked for opinions on them, pestered if I read them yet, what did I think-- I just. I was like, 'Oh my god. I don't really care. I just wanted to compliment you on two or three things.' in my head. Eventually I just sort of started giving monosyllabic answers and stuff and pretended to be really busy and then they left me alone. :|

[(Anonymous)]

How do you tell if someone is a BNF? What's the cut off point? *honestly pondering and confused*

[foreba-arone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, its a bit disappointing trying to get to know a BNF only to get no responses if you leave a comment or whatever. You don't even know what to say to them and it always seems like they have an inner circle with other BNFs. While wanting to talk to someone on the latest episode of something seems innocent enough, it kind of comes out of nowhere when that person doesn't know you. Chin up, OP! Don't get too worked up over them or trying to get to know them.

[alexanonymous.livejournal.com]

Because god forbid you were actually being obnoxious, and god forbid that BNF was already friends with another BNF--so NATURALLY they'd rather talk to their friends than someone they don't know?

Yeah, it's rude and really shitty to disregard people because they aren't as "popular" as you. People who do that suck. But I feel like that almost never happens; usually it's because the BNF gets a bad impression of someone who tries to suck their dick all the time.