RANT: The ONE thing that truly makes me ashamed to be part of this fanbase.

I may have some polarizing opinions regarding Linkin Park, but on the whole, I've never been embarrassed to call myself a fan for any reason...except for one. If this topic doesn't have a place here, I apologize, but it's something that I've felt strongly about for a long time, and I think it needs to be said.

So earlier today, through a mutual friend who has numerous connections with the Linkin Park crew, I saw the following post come up on Facebook. If you're not aware, Warren Willis is Joe Hahn's DJ tech, and he also works with the band in the studio as an engineer.



Pretty straightforward...I don't know the whole story and didn't read the article, but it's someone who works in the music industry posting something related to the music industry.

So I scroll down through the comments, and at the bottom, I come across this...



I see stuff like this from Linkin Park fans ALL THE TIME (at least it wasn't "LP COME 2 BRAZIL" though). This post had nothing to do with Linkin Park. Warren is a normal person just like you and I, and he has interests and opinions on matters that don't involve Linkin Park. Yet it seems like EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. someone associated with them posts something on social media, there are inevitably comments from fans pestering them for information related to Linkin Park, regardless of whether the original content was related to the band at all.

Why is it so common in this fanbase to have no respect for people's boundaries? Warren Willis has a life. He's not some fucking 24/7 receptacle for all of your Linkin Park-related queries regardless of how relevant they are to the matter at hand. There's a time and a place to ask people questions about the band, and this clearly isn't one of them.

I really don't get it. You know how many times I reached out to Sean Paden when he was Brad's guitar tech, prior to him contacting me first? Zero. You know how many times I've asked Benjamin Chandler a question on one of his Instagram posts? Once, and it was a post that specifically related to the question I happened to be asking. Even people like Lorenzo Errico and Adam Ruehmer, whose positions are/were specifically geared towards fan interaction, are people I only contact when I have a specific reason for doing so (typically issues involving my LPU account). I'm not Facebook friends with Warren Willis, or Pooch, or Dylan Ely, or Kevin McCarthy, or any of the people the fanbase commonly knows are associated with the band. I know who they are, and I know for a fact at least some of them are aware of who I am, but unless they have a reason to initiate contact with me, I LEAVE THEM THE HELL ALONE BECAUSE THAT'S THE LEVEL OF RESPECT I'D WANT IF I WAS IN THEIR POSITION.

I mean shit, even *I* have had to institute a personal policy of declining all incoming Facebook friend requests from Linkin Park fans, because Facebook is not where I choose to deal with my involvement in the Linkin Park community. I've made myself incredibly accessible through other avenues, yet people still don't get the hint. I've had to block numerous people who repeatedly send me unsolicited messages/friend requests just to ask "HEY HOW DO YOU PLAY THIS PART IN THIS SONG" or whatever, even though I have a website, a Youtube channel, a Twitter, and an Instagram page that are all specifically geared toward my involvement in the community, plus I'm active on multiple forums. AND I DON'T EVEN WORK WITH THE BAND, I'M JUST A FAN LIKE THE REST OF YOU GUYS. I even had somebody pestering me for the mailing address for LP's private headquarters because they knew I'd received mail from them before when they sent me an autographed guitar. SERIOUSLY?!

Come on, guys. I'm not asking you to never ask anyone a question, but do so through the appropriate avenues/in appropriate situations, and at least have the decency to treat other people like...people.

/rant

 

They are young fans that the only thing that they want is to listen to their new stuff. I was one of those teen fans. The only thing I wanted to hear were LP news. We need to understand them, and yeah I agree that this is not only the case with LP. This happens with a lot of artists.

They are only excited fans that they support the band and when they find a little opportunity to ask something they do. I know that there are different situations and maybe is a bit disrespectful to ask something of Joe's turntables in a Alanis Morissette post that has nothing to do with LP but we have to deal with it.

 

Am I showing my age if I pull the "Well I didn't act that way when I was younger..." card here?

I mean, I can honestly say I wasn't "that kind of fan" in my teens when I was getting into the community, but I also did so at a time before social media (Trivia: My join date on the original linkinpark.com messageboard was the same day Myspace was founded), so people weren't as easily accessible at the time, either. Still, I feel like there's a weird "web paparazzi" type thing people associated with LP deal with that I don't see with other rock groups (I'm sure it happens with pop stars, though). Like...I don't see Muse fans trying to get info on a new album from Jason Baskin or KISS fans harassing Francis Steuber for tour dates.

(Jeez, I know a LOT of road crew guys...)

 

Honestly as others have said, this really doesn't seem like something exclusive to Linkin Park. I mean, why would it be ? It's not like the band are out there telling people to do this, I would be extraordinarily surprised if this didn't happen with other acts as popular as LP. I'd even imagine that other more modern artists (who might be more popular among under 15s) would have it much, much worse.

The thing is, 99% of fans aren't that kind of fan. The vast majority would never even think to do something like this. We only notice the 0.001% who do. And while I have absolutely zero evidence to back it up, I could totally see the exact same thing happening with Muse (less so with Kiss, but how many people under 20 listen to Kiss? ). Similarly popular, similar fan base, etc. Either way, I really don't think it's fair to say that it's a product of "the fan base" at all, considering that we're only talking about an extraordinarily tiny percentage of the millions of Linkin Park fans out there. And personally, as I said, I'd say that this is almost definitely something that happens with every fan base. Annoying, I agree, but there's no reason why this is exclusive to one fan base.

 

Nothing to compared to Star Wars actors haha. The OT crew can't talk about anything anywhere without it turning into star wars.

 

You think this is bad? You've not met crazy fans.

Example - 1
A year or two ago, Maria Sharapova said in an interview she did not know who Sachin Tendulkar was which led to some really crazy reactions from his fans.
For those who don't know, Sachin Tendulkar is a former Indian cricketer who is arguably the greatest batsman in the last 20-30 years or so. His fans and a lot people including other cricketers call him "God of cricket". So you can imagine there would be quite a few number of crazy fans especially with him being from a country of over 1 billion people.
Maria was not very knowledgeable in cricket so she obviously had no idea who he was (as I'm sure most of you wouldn't know either). So when she mentioned that in an interview. The Indian media (they obviously also love Sachin) came with headlines like "Who is Maria?". This led to fans basically spamming her facebook, twitter and all social media accounts for MONTHS (I'm talking like for almost 6 months) with comments like
"Who is Maria?"
"Sachin is the God of cricket and his records are...."
"You are nobody when compared to sachin...."
And these are not like isolated comments that you wouldn't see much. They would be top comments with 100s of likes on all her facebook posts. Even posts not related to sports and just normal personnal stuff like selfies.

Example - 2
Recently a well known japanese manga(comic) titled "Bleach" ended after 15 years of being serialized. Bleach is really well known in the western world, almost at the level of Naruto and Dragonball. It is one of the series that popularized manga and anime in the west along with Naruto after DBZ.
So technically, Bleach was thought to have been rushed to finish by the magazine that was serializing it because of reduced sales and low rankings. Although, the mangaka (author and artist) later revealed on twitter he ended it the way he wanted and it was rushed mostly because he was ill.
This led to so many fans from the west to spam the official facebook pages and other social accounts of the magazine with comments like "DONT STOP BLEACH", "BRING BLEACH BACK" etc etc.
Heck, if you go to this page https://www.facebook.com/shonenjump.com.portal/?fref=ts you'll still see comments with hashtags about bleach in recent posts. And the manga ended in August.

So yeah, that's the extreme level.
What you mentioned is actually pretty mild.

 

This is way less bothersome than the fact the band members have had stalkers. Like, actual, weird as fuck stalkers.

 

He can't stop the HYPE.

 

It has already been well noted that these people are generally young, often coming from a different country (i.e. there might be a language barrier) and very very excited about the band. What I want to add is that, in the Linkin Park fanbase, it might be more visible simply due to its sheer size. With this band you have a phenomenon of hundreds of thousands, even millions of extremely dedicated fans, a significant percentage of whom fit those characteristics.

And I could see myself doing this sort of thing, at 11 or 12 (which wasn't all that long ago). I wouldn't go about asking roadies questions about Linkin Park, but I certainly would ask the band members questions out of nowhere.

However, the important thing is, the band's associates probably have a way of dealing with this (read: a way of not giving a fuck), and you should too. It's not exactly worth your attention; social networks are full of this kind of mindless crap.

 

Though I wouldn't bring myself to the point of writing a post about it, I have to somewhat agree with Astat here, some of the pestering you can find on the internet RE: Linkin Park is really annoying, and Filip said it himself, the band members have had real stalkers (can happen to any high profile figure), and there is (or was) a website out there dedicated to their wives. THAT is weird.

You can blame age, whatever.. But do so if it's about trying to sneak in the hotel lobby for an autograph or a pic while they're in town. Not about looking under the rocks of the internet for friends, relatives and crew staff (or their acquaintances) trying to get a "closer connection" or "inside info".

Reality is we can't control the behaviour of such a large conglomerate of fans spread over the entire world, granted; but nothing wrong about venting to at least get that out of the way.

 

Definitely age and the language barrier are the two biggest factors here. Most are young and exuberant fans that don't know any better, they probably think that contacting a crew member or friend makes it more likely that they'll get a response than from the band members themselves. Bands like Linkin Park have music that resonates with people all over the globe across all ages, so it's unavoidable. It's pestering, but I understand their enthusiasm.

Yeah, to me it's only a problem when people get too personal and intrusive such as stalking. When you're that successful it's difficult to have privacy unfortunately, it comes with the fame.

 

This is my thought as well

 

It's hard to distinguish the fine line as to when you should 'stop being a fan' of the band since they're involved in so many other social activities other than just releasing music (Music For Relief, the partnership with Mercedes-AMG and so on), which is a good thing. My take on this - it does happen because of the young age. I too used to get so carried away whenever I saw them outside of the studio and the music making. There once was a stalker situation that creeped me out. And I've seen things worse than that.

And, yes, there is a site about their wives, but in my opinion, it's one of the best examples to mention when it comes to maintaining a site dedicated to their families without violating the band's privacy. Fans are curious, and I get that, but I've learned to respect whatever they want to keep out of the spotlight.

 

Language barrier is absolutely no excuse to annoy the fuck out of crew members and other related staff. To my interpretation it reads as if non-english speakers are less intelligent that the ones who do; regardless of language, doing this kind of things is dumb, and not only international fans do it.

 

I totally agree with this. When they say that one of the reasons is the language barrier I feel like they are trying to say that english speakers are more intelligent than non-english ones. Not trying to say that you guys are saying this, but I feel it like this. I'm from Argentina and, while I think that I have a decent english, I'm not spamming everywhere asking 'WHENZ THE ALBUM COMING OUT OMFGZ'. I use to do this when I was younger but now I don't do it anymore. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think that language barrier is one of the reasons. I think that the mainly reason is their age and maturity. This is my opinion obviously.

 

If I'm going to be frank, this is a really silly thing to be upset about.

 

Oi, makin' me come back from the dead for this...

But yeah, that's something that's always bothered me. I don't even bother with the chats and such since, even if I did have a relevant question, it'd get buried under that sea. It's annoying as hell and I never understood why they did it, but of course many reasons have already been given, and I am quite late to this.

I'd like to add though, that it's not just young fans, but new fans. When I first got here, I remember looking up everything I could about LP and being so excited about every little interaction they had with us. But again, I was always one to let others ask the questions and just take what was given. But still, new fans still learning about the band and who still don't know the rules. Once you've been here long enough to ask the same question a dozen times, you eventually figure out that the answer to "WHEN are you coming to MY COUNTRY???!?!1" is "sit the fuck down we'll TELL you when we're coming to your country." On the other hand, we will always have Brazil and it will always make us lol.