Ghostbusters, Misogyny, and the General Idiocracy of the Internet

I hate the internet.  So many assholes.  I am anticipating the new Ghostbusters movie.  I love Ghostbusters, and this is my most anticipated film of the year.  So much so, that I was able to score advance screening tickets for Wednesday.  But, damn, the internet sucks.  And everyone is an idiot but me.

Can’t people see what they are doing?  When this film was first announced,  there was a very large sexist backlash because director Paul Feig decided to cast women in the title roles.  Some simply didn’t like the idea of a reboot, but the loudest were complaining about girls being Ghostbusters.

Oh no!  Gender swap!

Now, I know what you are thinking.  They are not being sexist!  They are simply voicing their displeasure of not liking what the movie is doing.  Sure, you can claim that now, but then when nothing was known other than it was going to be female-driven, you can’t make that claim.

People claimed that having women was a gimmick.  I don’t see how, but if it is, so what?  It’s brilliant.  Not only does it do something different, but it sidesteps the potential problem of recasting the iconic roles.  It was a very smart way to go.

People were also complaining on the internet about how a female Ghostbusters movie wouldn’t work to which they couldn’t explain how.  At the same time, they claimed they were not being sexist, but it is hard to believe that when they refer to the movie with some variation of “Ghost bitches”.

People were just nonsensically hostile for every little thing to the point that director Paul Feig snapped back at the trolls.  Perhaps not the most professional thing to do, but I don’t blame him one bit.  One Twitter user robcassidy84 dedicated most, if not all, of his account to bitching about the new movie.  Can anything be sadder?  If I didn’t like something, I wouldn’t dedicate my life to shitting on it.  I have better things to do.

There was also the rumor of a male Ghostbusters movie coming out starring Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt.  Nothing came from this, but people were already championing this saying it was going to be better than the Feig film even though nothing was known about the movie other than the leads were male.  No story, no character description, no sense of what plot.  Nothing.  If that isn’t sexism, I don’t know what is.

So we’ve established that people were acting like sexist assholes and were afraid that girls were going to take away boy things (even though Ghostbusters was never a male-specific movie).  During this time as well, social justice warriors slowly began to crop out to counter the misogynists.

Now is where things get really stupid.

The first trailer hit and was a disappointment.  Even star Melissa McCarthy expressed her dissatisfaction with it.  Audiences were left with a collective “meh” about it.  Any anyone who had a legitimate criticism was faced with a huge smack down by any and all SJW.  Even when the criticism had nothing to do with women being ghostbusters.

For example, the Angry Video Game Nerd’s video critique of his disappointment with a reboot and received an insane the backlash for that.  I disagreed with much of what he said in his video and laugh at his hypocritical stance (he wants people to stop supporting reboots, but then goes to see the new Ninja Turtles movie a few weeks later), but not once did he even mention that the leads are women.

For fuck’s sake.  Do they not know what they are doing?

Since the SJW defense got comically over the top, a backlash happened against them.  People would mock others for minor criticisms.  Slowly, the SJW’s defense began to be more and more dismissed and taken seriously.

Now, you have the sexist assholes hiding underneath this blanket of legit criticism and “ironic sexism”.  And I hate this for so many reasons.  Yes, there are legit criticisms that people can make, but people need to not see that as some sort of sexist attack.  What it does is that it allows the real sexist misogynist to get away with being sexists.

In essence, they can get away with it now.  Why does everything on the internet have to go to such extremes?

This is why we can’t have nice things.  I absolutely hate it that we live in 2016 and casual sexism like this still exists.  Why should it matter if Ghostbusters are women or not?  And, on the other hand, why do we need to live in a knee-jerk society that people will attack you for things you didn’t even say or suggest.

It is really depressing since this is only a movie – a piece of entertainment.  Not a reason to get bent out of shape about.

If the new movie is indeed good, then it will serve as a nice companion piece to the original.  If it is bad, it will fade into the background.  Whatever the case may be, it’s legacy (before release) will always be marred by some really sad sexist people and really sad people attempting to confront the sexist people making things unnecessarily worse in the process.

~N