Blogging is bad for me

I read far more fanblogs than is healthy, and so I have a tendency to get more angry at fans than professionals lately.

For some reason I'd rather read a fanblog that I dislike rather than a comic book that I dislike. Perhaps because I'm not paying for a fanblog and I'm trying to punish myself for not giving enough to charity or yelling at my sister or not calling my parents. I'd rather read fanblogs when I'm annoyed than comic books, because I'd rather not have my enjoyment of a decent comic book spoiled by a foul mood. I do pay for my comics, after all, and I want to get as much pleasure out of them as possible. At the moment I prefer to buy comic books I expect to like (I have been known to make a purchase that I fully expect to enrage me for possibly the same reason I read fanblogs that piss me off, but not for months now -- I have the internet access anyway, may as well indulge my self-hatred with that) and I prefer wait until I'm of a positive mindset to read these and I prefer to buy the ones that I expect to like.

This leads to oversaturation of fan opinions, because while some of you may be reading these opinions in one or two places I am reading them from many, many people and certain points set me off with their absurdity. I've no doubt it will fade when I develop the same callouses to fan foolishness that I have to creator foolishness (Heaven knows what I'll write about when that happens, but I'm sure something or another will piss me off). In the meantime I enjoy myself by expressing that anger (yes, I do enjoy ranting as an expression of natural anger -- there's something deliciously wicked about it), answering the issues raised by the initial expression of anger (which is generally by way of more ranting) and trying to work out exactly why that anger built to the point it did (again, by way of more ranting but this adds the sweet mental exercise of trying to word my opinion as clearly as possible and applying the situation to the larger tapestry of my life and society). I also look for cute kitty videos on Youtube.

(And I don't share them with you because I'm mean.)

Anyway, when I expressed my considerable annoyance at fans (the majority of which is usually sparked by a single person and/or community and then continued because of the comment sections of the initial posts), I opened myself to the criticism of being a company apologist which has happened on several occasions. I remember I used to worry an awful lot about how people received my posts. Early on in this blog I worried people might call be a creator apologist or something similar, so I had a tendency to balance out praise with criticism and argue against criticism with other criticisms to keep the objectivity going. I even took on a habit of being extra-hard on the books I liked. But lately I've thrown away the effort of trying to balance criticism of fans with criticism of the industry because I've been here over two years, most of my regulars know where I stand, I'm turning into a crusty old fan who hates everybody and there seems to be less of a point in keeping people on my side needlessly. Also, I've been watching the fanblogs too long. I know that people will read an opinion, disagree wholeheartedly and things will get heated but most commenters and readers don't take this stuff personally enough that they won't come back when you post something they agree with.

I'm becoming needlessly contrary, and I know because reading a post which calls me a DC Defender or implies something similar makes me less likely to post something nice about Marvel or bad about DC. Because I go to write it and I think about the person who wrote that about me, and how they'll read that and figure that their criticism has caused me to write the following post. A solid mass of aggravation rots in my stomach as I picture them in their arrogance at affecting my blog so, and it adds to my annoyance at fans in general and I end up reading other blogs instead. This leads to, more likely than not, another rant about annoying fans rather than any criticism of the actual industry.

I'm not sure what to do about this one. I'm probably stuck in one of those situations where my own personality dooms me.