My older brother is the reason that I got into "nerd culture" since I read his sci-fi books as a kid as well as his comic books before I started collecting my own. Also, before he got too old for it we watched G.I. Joe religiously (imagine that cartoon on today). He a wife and three kids now so he is out of the loop for a lot of geek stuff, so when I told him that Amazon was going to have a Lord of the Ring show we both got a good laugh because the first thing he said was "so how long before the articles bashing Tolkien or whining about lack of diversity start"
It is so funny because with all the reboots/sequels I swear it is like clockwork to see articles from supposed life long fans of something that now "realize" all the racism/sexism in the original show/movie. I remember the gushing critic articles for Ghostbusters 2016 and it has only become worse since. I'm currently on the last book of Wheel of Time series and I've already seen articles calling it sexist and complaining about abuse to women. That whole Geeker Gate thing was spot on.
I'm just going to state the obvious: You guys know that 90% of the articles screeching about racism/sexism are cooked up to drive traffic, right? And I'm not talking about traffic to the site that publishes them, but rather to increase awareness about the product they're complaining about so you'll go consume it. You DO realize that, don't you?
In the last twenty years we've seen such an uptick in angry ranting media precisely because they know what you don't: pitting half the audience against itself drives engagement better than anything else. That this also causes them to become polarized and engage in tossing firebombs is apparently an acceptable cost of doing business for them.
The solution to all of this is to stop consuming corporate culture altogether. Doesn't matter if they're making things you find acceptable -- don't buy it. Stop buying. No, really, STOP FUCKING BUYING. Get a hobby that doesn't involve wasting money on buying shit you don't need.
Thss as is the very reason I pretty much read or watch stuff from 2014 or prior