“It’s a metaphor.”
There is always some sort of trend that Tumblr clings too, overuses, and warps it so much that it becomes unrecognizable. It happened with Selfie Olympics, the Doge meme, and all those photos of innocent children making faces that were shared across the internet. Fandoms can sometimes have phrases or quotes that they become known for, Mean Girls has “Boo, you whore,” Perks of Being a Wallflower has “And in that moment I swear we were infinite,” or arguably “We accept the love we think we deserve.” The Fault In Our Stars is in the midst of a hostile takeover, by fans and trolls alike. An unaware blogger made a remark about the scene in the trailer that has Gus putting a cigarette in his mouth but not lighting it, he says “it’s a metaphor see, you put the killing thing right between your teeth but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.” They commented that he was pretentious and how he was horrible for giving money to cigarette companies and it spiraled from there. The meme and its reception want so far, and got so bad that anger and hatred was taken out on the author, John Green. Katherine recently wrote about bullying towards authors and pointed out the instance that has occurred with John Green. In addition to the meme causing abuse towards the author, it has also created an increase in those who dislike the book, and will be avoiding the movie. There are plenty of people who have actual, personal reasons why they strongly dislike the book, but there are others that are just jumping on the bandwagon or judging the content based on a widespread meme. S. Palmer is against the book for her own reasons. Unfortunately some do not have any reasons at all, they only hate The Fault In Our Stars because social media is telling them it is cool, or fun, to do so. Having read the book myself I think the old adage “don’t judge a book by its cover,” should be applied here. Don’t judge the movie based on a meme, at least judge it by the trailer, although trailers have led many viewers away from promising movies before. Don’t judge the book based on a small quote and a large troll population’s actions.
Fandom Evolution 