This Is Not A Democracy

Caleb has a heavily locked-down Facebook. He doens't even have his own picture on the profile.

Today, he added a fan - a dude around his own age, from Brazil.

But the thing is, this dude fanboys with the best of them, and talked about it on Tumblr. Now all the fangirls are asking for links to his profile and flailing and trying to get added.

I have already seen one screencap of his profile (nothing massively personal on it, but still) and people are talking about stalking his personal photos.

I cannot headdesk hard enough, right now.

The guy keeps himself private. Very private. He clearly does not want his stuff posted all over the internet and he almost certainly does not want millions handfuls of fangirls trying to talk to him any time he's online.

If you're going to add the kid, add his MySpace, which is open to the public and is regularly updated with his new songs.

Leave the boy some privacy. Don't repost his photos. Don't repost his comments. Don't repost things his friends and family say to him. He's young and he's very new at this. Don't scare him away from his fandom before he even understands it.

But if you have the opportunity, a one-off suggestion that he gets a Twitter account, where he can manage the communication himself, may not go amiss.

Edit: Boom! There are the personal photos which have almost certainly come from his Facebook - posted by someone other than the Brazilian guy. Sounds like he's added a handful of others, too.

*sigh* Steep learning curve, you say?

Edit 2: Someone just said she has "about 20" pictures from his Facebook to post. She has already posted maybe five. This is really not good.

Things I don't understand about fandom right now:

- The strange and on-going shift into darker and darker and more and more violent/outlandish sexual themes. It's an endless stream of non-con, dub-con, child abuse, domestic abuse, extreme BDSM (which is fine, but seems more abundantly common, lately) and D/s relationships. The latter two can certainly be accepted as kinks rather than the earlier ones and I'm totally cool with that. The point is more that they seem to be much, much more common and explicit in fanfics than they used to be, and I wonder why. What has prompted such an enormous upsurge in stories focusing on rape, abuse, violence and role-played versions thereof? When did that change? Am I the only one who remembers when the height of Teh Shock was Aliens Made Us Do It, We Did It With Aliens and Epic Sex Pollen?

- X-Men: First Class. How - and I am genuinely curious about this - is the pairing comprising A MAN PAINTED RED WITH BAD GREASEPAINT and A MAN WHO HAD NO LINES IN THE FILM WHATSOEVER more popular than the pairing comprising the DELIGHTFULLY DAMAGED BUT RIPPED YOUNG MAN WITH DANGEROUS POWERS and THE ADORABLE SMARTASS WHO CAN FLY BUT CAN'T FLIRT? WTF, fandom. Seriously? What the fuck is that? Also: you realise that after the end of the film Beast doesn't turn back into Nick Hoult, right? So all your three-some fics involve loads of blue, matted, semen-sticky fur, right? Okay.

- And while we're at it: why so little love for Caleb? FUCK YOU LOOK AT HIS FACE.




And when you've stopped laughing at the lengths they've gone to to make his skin look normal after PAINTING OUT HIS FRECKLES, let's note that he's the only main character other than Riptide (does Captain Hot-But-No-Speaking-Role even count?) who didn't make it onto the posters. Nor did he get a Marvel Minimate made of him, even though Havok, Beast, Mystique and even Azazel did. He's the only member of the X-Men who didn't. And he was so excited by the idea of getting to be a redheaded action figure for little redheaded kids to have, too. :*( ( RAGE SPOILERS ) C'MON. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT, MARVEL? AND ALSO: FANDOM. GET ON THIS SHIT LIKE SUNBURN ON A GINGER.