Tom Smith

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Thank you for standing up to smug self-absorbed psychotic idiots. Now, if we could just get them to quit running for president...

And I have been seeing that lurking behind all the things that have been said about Twilight and its fans, all the cute little Facebook jokes, just hiding there waiting to come out. We make these groups the butt of our humour--Trekkies, gamers, Potter fans, Twihards--and it all seems so harmless, just having a laugh, and maybe for most of us it is...but behind the clown mask is always, always, the skull.

There are issues about the Twilight books that should be addressed. There were much worse issues about the books I read when I was a kid, and I got over it, mostly.

Maybe we could all be just a little kinder.

I've given up hope. Considering that people were also defending Daniel Tosh's 'joke' yesterday -- not that he had a right to say it, I agree that he had a right to say it, no matter how tasteless it may be, but that it was funny, somehow. I just don't get it.

Someone died, people. Not a violent criminal. Not a terrorist. Someone with a family. She may have liked something that you don't like, but that's not a reason to wish her dead. Ugh.

I'm pretty sure that trolls aren't human. Imagine that poor woman's family reading those comments. That just makes me nauseated.

Pathetic excuses for human beings. Have I made my share of Twilight jokes? Of course I have and I'll make more, but this is just vile.

This is nothing new, nor is it surprising. If she hadn't been a Twilight fan, they would have focused on whatever else she was a fan of. Comics, anybody? Star Trek? Furries? "Hey, Martha, lookit the freaks!" is what sells eyeballs to advertisers, and that's all that matters.

As for the trolls, they thrive in environments that can't or (more likely) won't hire some people to moderate comments. If every MSM outlet just had a few employees whose job it was to eliminate victim-bashing, name-calling, and hate-speech posts, it would make a tremendous difference. But they don't give a shit; that stuff brings in eyeballs too.

Poor Gisela.

As an English teacher, I think the Twilight books are a bit silly, but really, they're well-done for what they are. The movies are sillier. Yet, the books weren't written to be Literature; they were meant to be a teen romantic read, and they have better plotlines than most of the teen romance drivel out there. Meyer captures a teen girl voice perfectly, and that voice spoke to millions of teen girls out there, because it felt genuine to them, in ways that Harry Potter, for all his fun, never did.

Twilight fans are a mainstream step into MY fandom, where there are Urban Legends intersecting our world. They give mundanes a peek into what I love and enjoy. It brought Gisela into the SD Comic Con, a source of a great deal of fun and geekery. She was one of us.

Thank you for speaking out for her. It is fairly likely the trolls won't read you, nor "get" it, but we who read you do. And by raising your voice for decency, you help maintain our own community standards and expectations that we all will treat one another with kindness, and empathy. Keeping silent when we are troubled only gives them more power. Hugs.

My heart and condolences to her family and friends. And safe journey to all of the other con goers at SDCC this and every year. May this incident not be repeated. EVER.

So she's a fan of a crappy book. If everybody who liked rubbish things deserved to be hit by a car, we'd run out of people to drive the cars long before we ran out of people for them to hit. :p (Or that might not have been what happened, from the article; maybe it's that she fell, whatever.)

It's not really a 'bizarre' accident, either. Twilight, ComiCon, those aren't the important parts. It's so easy to forget how fragile life is, and how a single moment of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or looking away at just the wrong moment, or losing your balance in a split second--how those things can change life, or even end it. How terrifying for her, how sad for her family and friends.

I may not care for her particular fandom personally, but if it made her happy, who am I to judge? My sympathies to her family and friends, and I also feel bad for the lady driving the car. (Who acted responsibly and didn't leave the scene)

I'll add that I think it's a nice gesture on the part of the movie's producers to do a memorial for her. Not all places would do that for just one fan.

I'm going to ignore the trolls. Because that's the only way I can deal with it.

Suppose she was a member of Westboro Baptist?

It doesn't surprise to me to learn the trolls were going after the victim for being a Twilight fan. I see the same thing on the websites for all the major media outlets, I have to remind myself never read the website comments on newspaper articles. I agree with comments here that that it doesn't matter what fandom she was in, it's a tragedy that she got hit, and worse that anybody would make light of the loss. I also second the motion to pull back a bit on harshing the squee for other folks.
As some of the elder fen would put it, "Your fandom is okay, my fandom is okay, let's geek out on any shared bits we happen to discover."

They mentioned her being a twilight fan "as if it made a difference", according to you. How about "as if they were trying to make her a person, not just an anonymous statistic"? Trying to tell us a little bit about her life, who she was, what she liked. They apparently didn't have anything to go by except what she was in line for and the comments of people who had met her in that line. And most likely, all that was talked about in that line (for a Twilight event) was Twilight-related. Family, jobs and so on COULD have been mentioned - but most likely wasn't (with strangers).

And of course there is nothing particular in the behavior of the commentators that is exlusive to fandom in general or Twilight fans in particular. Suppose, instead, that she had gone to the Baseball All-Star game and the accident had happened outside the stadium there. The stories might have mentioned that she was a "Red Sox Fan" or a "Yankee Fan" instead of a "Twilight Fan". That might be all anybody could dig up on her at the beginning, gotten from someone she had been chatting with before she headed into the street. And should it have been reported that way, there would be commentators that would have made those same sorts of comments about her deserving to die (if their favorite team was a different one than the one reported). As a concrete example, at the beginning of the season a San Francisco Giants fan who attended the season opener in Los Angeles was brutally assaulted simply for being a Giants fan.

I'm no Twilight fan, but a lot of the stuff you quoted...that's somewhere 'way beyond low. This is one of the times I wish I believed in karma, or FSM, or anybody at all that would see that payback was on the way.

That's the thing. The people who make those kinds of comments ARE cowards. They wouldn't dare say the things they do to someone's face because it would likely result in them getting their ass kicked.

I've heard it called the Internet Douchebag Theory. Normal person + Audience + Anonymity = Douchebag.

As much as I've made fun of Twilight I would never knowingly wish harm on another person. I've been picked on enough times in my life to know what it feels like to be put down for being different. Maybe I shouldn't joke about it, but I've never meant to be malicious.

I remember checking Townhall around the time Ted Kennedy died and what I saw there made me sad. Someone died and all the people there could think to say was some of the most vile and despicable comments I've ever seen. It is why I don't go there anymore. I've seen anonymous commentators say similar things about conservatives who have died and I don't go to those sites anymore either.

I don't understand humanity. Of all the people in the world you'd think the outcasts, no matter their beliefs or chosen fandoms, would be kind to one another. After all we've seen how people treated us for being different.

This is very sad, on so many levels.

*hugs*

Reading the three comments you posted made me want to urt someone. People really aren't very . . . nice some times. What kind of sick, twisted, evil, douch bags think that way?

I really don't want to know.

I saw the news article, and I'm glad I didn't read the comments. People can be so horrible.

I also feel sorry for the driver of the car involved - it's not pleasant being involved in an accident - especially involving a pedestrian - even more so when there's a fatal result.

Never read the books, never watched the movies.

You see the same thing everywhere - comment sections online bring out animals. Read comments on any story where a bicyclist is killed; you will see the journalist mentioning whether they were wearing a helmet even in cases where that couldn't possibly have mattered, and you would be lucky to ONLY see people saying cyclists deserve to die. Most of the time you will find at least some people actually advocating intentionally running them down.

There are a lot of sick f**ls out there, the internet just lets them speak their sick little minds.

This is so upsetting because I've heard so many similar stories. I am so sorry for the family.
Some people just don't think before they speak or post their thoughts. All of our thoughts do not need to be said or spoken.
I had a similar situation happen when my sister died unexpectedly several years ago. I returned to work two days after the funeral and was told that "If you really loved your sister, she would still be alive." Another person gave a story about how my sister was really murdered and placed in the trunk of a car. The driver was stopped for DUI, the police officer saw her body in the trunk of the car and let the driver go on his merry way.
Both were completely thrown for a loop when I told them I was furious and wanted them to leave me alone. They thought I was being rude because they were "only telling the truth". I told them forcefully that I was going to call our supervisor and hope that he got to them before I did. They were still clueless and could not understand why I was offended; but they did have the sense to get out of my face.

Penny Arcade's "Greater Internet F**kwad Theory" is proven right once more.

For those who don't know the Theory.