Eventer Police Meta

I think it’s generally expected that people behave like sensible, mature adults. But I don’t know if that is always the best course of action or the most interesting thing to do in all cases. More importantly, it’s not a realistic expectation.

I’m just going to sound off on this post a bit. Please read it if you haven’t yet.

Of the online reaction to “yakkai” this past week as a result of people complaining over little things there are a lot of things I personally reacted to, or found noteworthy.

• Police exists in EN Love Live community. I want to know how it started, what people felt had to happen, etc. I don’t really keep tabs on the Japan side of things for Love Live, but I think the JP LL Police types have a hard time. Doubly so for oversea LL Police types? But wait, why does oversea LL Police even exist?
• People don’t even know what yakkai is but they’re using the term, which I think is why Rop posted the second post partly.
• It’s not a 1% of anything is trash kind of thing. It’s about leadership and fostering maturity within the fandom I think. Yes, there will always be some bad apples and the whine will always be highly visible, but there are still some “good” and “bad” fandoms, and what separate them is not statistics, but people investing into their community in a positive and mature way.
• People don’t even know the context of things. Rop’s post gives a continuum, but I think it’s only really applicable for Japan. It’s not the case over in the USA at least–most people, after all, have not been eventing in Japan, so it would be pretty hard to explain to people how it works conceptually this way. More importantly, there are a lot of layers (not inclusive list)–
  • Live is not the same as a live viewing. Watching something in a movie theater necessarily mean you can’t do certain things you could in the live, and you could certain things you can’t in the live.
  • There’s a big picture fandom perspective that, obviously, some people don’t care about. Like, it’s fine to ietaiger, it’s not going to hurt anyone. But it’s not good to do things I mentioned in this post, that I saw people do at my LL2nd viewing. It’s not just dangerous, but that level of “bothersome behavior [TL Note: Yakkai]” causes problem for the management, not just other attendees. It’s not about presenting the fandom as good or uniform, but you don’t want to cause problems to the organizers, if you want them to keep doing live screenings?
  • Should fans from different countries and cultures behave the same as Japanese fans anyway? I don’t think it has to be like that.

To me, I don’t/can’t really talk about this without taking about it in the meta as well. So one meta here is that Rop is kind of a police type, if you didn’t know him and just read the 2 blog posts he wrote. It’s a pretty clear bias. It’s not a problem or an issue–he currently resides in Japan and Japanese society is rather police-like overall already, so it is only expected to hear him take a more harmonious view. I think however that is something of a lowest-common-denominator kind of approach to this.

Appealing to authority and making artists sad are also things I don’t really care for in the general context–these are things that Rop build his arguments on, at some level. The consumption of art is personal ultimately. Sure, fans should behave like, well, mature and sensible adults. But from an individualist view, I don’t really think it’s a big deal to cause a ruckus. That’s like the foundation of live performances for some scenes. Of course, it’s as Rop describes, it’s a spectrum. Even in America people need to not KY, but at the same time the level of forgiveness is a lot higher, the tolerance for violence is higher, and these kinds of things don’t “ruin” fandoms and people over here as easily.

I think it’s also a lot simpler than that. Manipulating fandom is easier when the artist gets involved, and if you need to keep fans within lines, that’s one way to do it. I think Anisama in 2017 sort of tried to do it their own way, and while it might be hamfisted (the initial rules they put out caused some online complaints), the method employed suggests they respect the attendee’s freedom to house tiger or do things along those lines. From a management perspective, they want to crack down on the craziest fans and the people who go too deep into the meta, by heading them off before things cross the line into the totally-unacceptable.

Speaking of which, Anisama, for those people who’d play the yakkai game, is its own game for “creative” expressions. What Rop’s informative posts don’t explain are some of the context behind the behavior–why do people run around during Days of Dash? Because it’s Anisama and it’s pretty awesome, the song works with it. And it’s one of those things people end up doing at anikura/wotagei events subsequently, thanks to Anisama. Anisama’s yakkai stuff, sometimes, is what I’d call clearly right and proper side of things. It is its own game, even if it breaks the rules (spoken and unspoken) sometimes.

Of course, you shouldn’t do all of these, to an extent, because the purpose of Anisama is the performers and the live, but performance art is both for artists and audiences, and I think any pro musician has to respect this on some level. Personally I think it’s okay to be yakkai if it will lead to a net positive outcome, so take that as you will. (This applies not just to concerts, but life in general, don’t you think?)

A good example of what I mean is touching the performer–it’s okay to try to high-five them as they walk past, but don’t make it an opt-out instead of an opt-in, if you know what I mean. Which, I guess, goes to why a lowest-common-denominator approach is sensible–because you can’t expect wotas to not be KY and follow common sense and be mature, etc. The online responses of some folks as a fallout of the Love Live 2nd viewing doesn’t do a lot to prove that stereotype wrong.

Which is just to say, the damage of house tiger is way less than the people reacting to yakkai. It is kind of silly to blow it up online, since the perceived damage, to me, is much worse than just some people yelling during a live viewing. I mean here is Rop, a guy in Japan and didn’t go to any of the viewings in North America, telling how some eventers should to behave, only because you made a ruckus online? LOL. I do appreciate his educational posts but at the same time, like my posts, they’re more for people who probably don’t need to read them in order to feel persuaded to make an attitude change. Ultimately, it takes a level of maturity and sense of responsibility, as well as a degree of not being too KY. These are not qualities that a person can be “persuaded” into having. You are either one of those kind of people, or not. Hopefully Father Time will give you a good teaching as you get older if you are not already one of those people.

PS. It’s totally OK to wave non-penlights/towels at Anisama. I waved a banana for Angela at Anisama, during Aho Girl’s Zenryoku Summer, because they did it in the PV and used it as a cyalume. And I saw at least 3 other folks who did too (out of possibly thousands). Use your judgment–it shouldn’t be that hard.