Remember when people could just think a show or movie sucked… or that it didn’t stick the landing in the finale… and it just meant…
(wait for it)
…people didn’t like it?
Wild concept, I know.
Over the holidays, I was watching a goofy comedy from the early 2000s with my girls. It was a remake/reboot of a TV show from before I was born. The movie ends in that very obvious “this is setting up sequels” way.
My 11-year-old asked, “How come they never made more of these?”
I told her (paraphrasing and aggressively oversimplifying for an 11- and 8-year-old): “Probably because not enough people liked it. Studios don’t keep spending money on something that won’t make it back.”
Simple.
And I don’t remember anyone at the time accusing the audience of being toxic.
I don’t remember studios blaming the fandom.
I don’t remember press tours explaining how viewers were engaging with the movie incorrectly.
Because back then, “review bombing” wasn’t a convenient narrative, and gaslighting the audience for not showing up wasn’t a strategy.
The assumption was straightforward: if people didn’t come back, something didn’t work.
Somewhere along the way, that changed.
Now, when a piece of content doesn’t land — especially something attached to a big franchise — the conversation often shifts away from the work itself and toward the audience. Suddenly it’s not that the story failed, it’s that the viewers are problematic.
- “Toxic fandom.”
- “Bad faith criticism.”
- “They’re afraid of change.”
- “They just don’t get it.”
Here’s the thing: calling a fandom toxic is lazy.
If you’re going to take a big creative risk, you have to be prepared for the possibility that the audience won’t go with you — and that the result might be failure.
That’s not persecution. That’s the cost of risk.
And this doesn’t just apply to movies or streaming.
It applies to everything that gets made and put into the world.
Including books.
From time to time, I’ve seen some of the same bad habits showing up in the online publishing world: if a book doesn’t sell, or a series doesn’t take off, or reviews are mixed, the narrative quietly shifts away from the work and toward the reader.
They didn’t understand it.
They weren’t the right audience.
They’re conditioned by tropes.
They’re uncomfortable with change.
Maybe.
Or maybe the story didn’t do what the story needed to do.
The market isn’t a moral judgment.
It’s information.
Silence, indifference, and “meh” aren’t acts of violence. They’re data points.
You don’t learn anything by assuming every reader who didn’t love your work is acting in bad faith. You learn a lot by asking why they quietly walked away.
A lot of writers say they want honest feedback.
What they actually want is reassurance.
Those are not the same thing.
Honest feedback sounds like:
- “I stopped reading.”
- “The ending didn’t work for me.”
- “I liked the idea more than the execution.”
That’s not abuse.
That’s someone telling you where the story lost them.
When you create content of any kind — movies, shows, books, art — the marketplace gets a vote. And if that vote is “no,” it doesn’t automatically mean the audience is the problem.
It might mean the work didn’t land.
And that’s uncomfortable. But it’s also useful — if you’re willing to listen.
If your instinct while reading this was to argue with it, sit with that for a minute.
That reaction is often where the most useful work starts.
If you want help doing that work — honestly, without fluff — you know where to find me.
If you’re working on a book right now and worried readers might quietly walk away instead of loudly complaining, that’s not a failure.
It’s a signal.
I help authors learn how to read those signals before the book goes out into the world.
