Besides, Worstgen was always quite critical when it comes to One Piece. I never understood how you took it this far (?) but are places like reddit not better for you? I mean, there sure are a lot more people who still highly appreciate One Piece for what it is nowadays.
Worstgen is more or less a powerscaling forum...
Because I'm kind of a toxic man myself and it is precisely because I know myself that I can see what's wrong with this place and what can be done to pushh it to the next level.
Sorry but if you're being affected by internet trolls by the things you like, perhaps there are other issues you should be worried about?
It's not about me.
LOL how old are you? The age of social media started when I was in high school and really blew up maybe 5 years later. I remember being on Orojackson where people use to flame the hell out of One Piece. I remember how bad people bashed fishman island arc and don't get me started on Dressrosa. Sometimes I read certain comments and I understood why people felt like that but I understood that Oda is a man at the end of the day. I was apart of a facebook One Piece group where some people flamed and some people were obsessed. I'm still apart of said group but haven't looked at it for years. I remember getting flamed about One Piece even in high school about how lame Luffy was and that it is long and drawn out. Everyone was talking about Bleach and Naruto, including me. Instead of letting people's hate of One Piece ruin mines I just talked about series we liked in common.
I'm old enough to remember that shift sadly
(although it really started a lot earlier as people were starting to get older while reading)
Oda still has not surpassed Enies Lobby and probably never will.
It depends on who you ask, some people will tell you that Wano or Whole Cake surpassed Enies Lobby.
I recently read like 30 or 35 chapters just to see what's happening and I will probably binge it again later this year or next year. No one saw a thread coming from me saying One Piece is trash, even after I stopped enjoying it as much. Obviously I still read it from time to time but it ain't that good anymore for me at least. Since I binged most of Elbaf arc I was kind of shocked at how long that flashback was but I enjoyed it since I read it all in one go. For people reading week by week I can see their frustration once they got another one in the same arc. Honestly I can see this thing more clearly because I neither love or hate One Piece.
Yes, this is something I always say, most people are not build to wait week after week some chapters. Especially because powerscaling and the agenda have taking too much place. With people trying to analyze more and with every chapter being a potential desillusion, the week by week experience can only create a destruction of the enjoyment.
This is why I'm actively trying to expect as little things as possible and when I do, I constantly remind myself that I'm not the author.
In fact Sanji was literally my favorite character in the series and Oda literally sent him on an island with --- and turned him into a joke, the once awesome Mr. Prince turned into a gag, how can you expect people not to be frustrated?
Sanji (his joking side) is one of the critics I have of One Piece. But Sanji is also a highly missunderstood character. And while his pervet side is a problem, people forgot to try to understand the deeper layers of the character, which were the reason behind his badasness. Yes, Sanji is less badass, but he is also more interesting and I prefer this over a shallow character.
The fact that you know it's a social phenomenon and I don't means you need to stop reading negative shit about One Piece. Right now all I am seeing is your obsession and this is coming from a guy who bought a Wii just to play a One Piece game.
I'm kind of an obsessive guy, this is a form of coping mechanism, don't worry, it does not hurt me.. mostly.
I'm simply trying to find ways to warn the community because people will often overlook the impact negativity can have on their own tastes.
I will say people have a right to voice their displeasure but they can do so more respectfully. Also I don't think people should bash Oda. I remember being huge Bleach fan boy and people gave Kubo hell just because he repeated a rescue arc. Oda does the same thing over and over and over again. Yet people idolize him. That whole situation taught him not to flame a series or the author. If I don't like it I stop caring, if I like it I keep reading. I'm not to worried about Oda he got millions of dollars and enough people obsessed with One Piece. He can write whatever he wants.
Exactly.
You are really justifying your obsession by saying you just want people to enjoy a series you love with no hate.
When you buy a product do you only read good reviews? What about the bad ones?
Everyone should be allowed to use their own heads. With a series as long as One Piece people need to hear both the good and the bad. At the end of the day it's entertainment but watching that entire series as newbie take weeks.
Let people make an inform decision. I need you to understand this.
Ok, let me explain my pov:
Everyone should be allowed to use their own head to make conscience choices, descision and judgments.
I completely agree with that. But this can only happen in an environment where there is no social pressure to developp one specific opinion and right now, in my opinion, this is not the case.
---
There is something people must understand :
Opinions are like viruses, they can spread depending on various contextual factors, especially social and environmental pressures. Without diving too deep into the concept : the more the people around you will adopt a certain belief and the more you will trust them, the more likely you will be to adopt their belief systems by social pressure. Like a contagion.
This is a fanbase, meaning that the love of the material
is the factory preset. If the critic of the material outshine the love for the material, we stop being a fanbase and we become a critical book club.
What I'm denouncing on this forum, is the presence of a self-inflated bubble of illegitimate critics within the limits of legitimate ones, a bubble taking now so much place that it can push people to start hating the story through social and environmental pressure alone. Just like this kid that you can see on my first post.
In his case, we are not talking about a rationnal opinion based on the knowledge of years of analysis, no, we are talking about a specific mindset shaped by various environmental pressures such as the internet culture or most probably in his case, adult/fan talking or trash talking the story. As you can see, this is a behavior that can also be bend in the other way. It's not specific to One Piece, it's how we human function, it's natural.
But in our cases, it's a problem: The critic of the material is almost taking as much place as the love. Meaning that a critical threashold could be reached in the next few years or sooner.
And just like a BIG belief system can spread rapidly once a threashold is reached within a specific environment... The moment the hatred of One Piece will take more place that the love, the entire fanbase will implode, creating a paradigm where the One Piece fans will probably start to tell people to stop reading the story and will start to be hostile toward One Piece teams and any other fans that will start the journey out of curiousity.
It's just an hypothesis for now, but I've seen the hatred for One Piece grow, I have seen the tubers slowly but surely start to be more and more critical despite having a material that was getting objectively better and better, I've seen the fanbase adopt their rhetoric or the rhetorics of forum like worstgen... This is not looking good.
So why am I obsessing? Because a fanbase is a potential for good, it's a community, people interacting, people meeting, it's a way to create meaning, to escape reality, to organize and in some cases to build something new.
My problem is like many old fanbase who grew up, we stopped building. We even stopped really criticizing the content, we are simply repeating argument that were created 10,15,20 years ago. And most of all, we stopped dreaming. We stopped being kids in front of the material we consume.
Critics are essentials, but if you can't even enjoy a story, what's the point of being in its fanbase?
