On Saturday, the cast of Ghostbusters visited the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Director Paul Feig's reboot of the 1984 film is shooting in Boston near the hospital, and the production noticed some of the patients had put signs in the hospital's windows which spelled out "Who ya gonna call?" So the cast dressed in full costume, put on their proton packs, and visited sick children and their families, which Tuftsposted images of on their Facebook page.
However, if you think doing something for sick kids would be immune from the criticism of internet trolls, well you'd be wrong. Whenever there's a remake, reboot or re-imagining of a classic film or TV show, opinions can be strong. But since it was announced, this new all-female iteration of Ghostbusters has been the source of scorn for grown men who somehow believe the movie will be able to bend the space-time continuum to go back and take a shit on their childhood, thus leading to it being a target for their misogyny. And that contingent of unhappy fanboy assholes descended on Tuft's Facebook post of hospitalized children to leave nasty comments, with the invective being so much that Tufts had to ask people to watch their profanity and threatened to delete comments.
The key characteristics of this sort of dynamic is obsession, entitlement and a loss of perspective. Within any sufficiently large group of people united behind some commonality, eventually things will splinter when some portion of the group starts believing they are better and the truest of "true" believers who are the self-appointed defenders charged with protecting its honor. And it doesn't matter whether it's a religion, political movement or fans of a film, TV show or book series, sooner or later a meta discussion will take place which goes nowhere, satisfies no one and is a waste of time that accomplishes nothing since the whole thing is irrational. Because declaring victory in an internet flame war is about as nebulous as true victory has been in the real wars over the past decade or so.
This got me to thinking about the whole thing, and what would be the silliest, most ridiculous, nastiest, or (insert mocking adjective here) internet flame war you've ever been witness to?
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