Within the fandom groups nope. Too much politics, backstabbing, etc.
My experience in the 501st was the worst; had people calling saying they were going to rape my girlfriend at the time, screaming at me in public, etc. One guy came up to me and my friends at DragonCon and tried to start a fight out of nowhere.
Individuals are a different story. People I run into at cons to take pictures and the like are great.
Yup. It's a mob mentality in the local garrison. One of the craziest stories is there's a cop in the midwest garrison; he came up to me at Wizard World and offered a card that had a picture of him on it in costume. I said no thank you and that I don't collect the cards and that he should hold on to it to give to someone who does. His reaction was to threaten to beat the hell out of me and get the mob riled up saying how horrible of a human being I am. The mob in turn harassed me anytime they saw me wear my SW costumes at a con because they felt I shouldn't be allowed to wear them and of course threatened me.
Just another example of my experience with the "fans".
I just want to say, as one human being to another, I am sorry this happened and that you or any person has ever had to experience any of that.
My own take is that there are fanatics and I don’t consider all fanatics or fanaticism to be negative. I myself, according to my coworkers, am a Star Wars fanatic, and I can certainly see where they are coming from.
Still, I don’t treat anyone poorly for having a different opinion or perspective than I do. If someone loves the Last Jedi, and it has spoken to them more than any orher Star Wars film, then Great! And I really do mean that. I even tell them so. I’ve had many a discussion of FB with people that loved the film. I tell them what I didn’t like about it, but I do not say I am a real SW fan and since they like it they are not real SW fans. I tell them I am thoroughly earnestly happy for them that they were able to enjoy it so much when I was not able to. I envy them. I honestly do.
Regarding toxic fans: yes there are toxic fans. The people that threatened Kelly Tran are toxic fans. They understand little about the film makig process, and apparently many other things in life.
The mirror of that, are those offended by non-toxic fans whom have a different opinion. This group of offended people are akin to being toxic fans (possibly even worse) as they attribute any and all dissent as stemmig from “toxic fandom” in order to delegitimize a criticism that these offended people do not wish to or simply can not justify.
It is pervasive in the film community, in fan culture, in politics, and in most aspects of life. It is a disease that is rotting and ruining everything. I don’t know how it started, other than coming from the facelss armchair quarterback anonimity that the internet has afforded everyone, but I am mostly concerned with eradicating it.
And as several others have already stated here: Hollywood, stop making **** films. All of this goes away when the movie doesn’t suck @ss. You’ve been making movies for so long now, how do you not understand how it works by now?