Rann:  Insomnia makes you ponder a lot of fascinating things. Or at least a lot of stupid shit that you decide is fascinating and worthy of a blog entry.

But anyway, I was thinking of how many companies have rather blatantly begun insulting the very people they require to stay in business. Sci-Fi did it when they decided to become the Syphilis Channel, saying “The name Sci Fi has become associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that.” In practice, the channel has continued to host identical programming, just with slightly more generic bumps. “Rebranding” in this case simply seems to mean verbally spitting in the face of your audience, and then expecting a whole new audience to show up to watch the same stuff.

DC and Marvel aren’t much better. Aside from the open contempt most of the writers and artists show the fans in interviews and on message boards, you have the more brazen contempt being displayed right on the comic page. The character of Superboy Prime, perpetrator of many of DC’s most maligned story elements in the past decade (including the infamous “reality punch”) has apparently wound up back in his home reality, the “real” world, where he has had to move into his parents’ basement, and spends his days trolling DC comics message boards raging about how much the stories suck. And thus it is revealed that the purpose of this years-long, overarching, entire company continuity-affecting character was so that the writers could tell us all how much they hated comic nerds.

More and more, showing open contempt for the very people that fork over money for your products or whom make up the numbers you pitch to companies who want to advertise is becoming common. The Simpsons has done this for forever… Comic Book Guy started out as a mild example, but has grown steadily more strawmannish, and is now a voodoo doll for any fan that isn’t constantly crowing the opposite end of his catchphrase, “Best! Episode! Ever!” But the intensity and shamelessness of it has changed. Music always had a bit of this as a meme (“I think all my fans are bleedin’ idiots”), but it’s probably reached its height with the RIAA turning lawsuit-crazy.

Comic books I get. They think they have a target audience that they can abuse and screw over and are never going to lose. And to a certain extent they’re right, there is a certain set of core fanboys that probably wouldn’t stop forking over the money even if every issue was filled with the comic’s characters pointing out at the reader and laughing. But that group isn’t as big as they think it is, as steadily dropping sales prove, and as one bout of bankruptcy should have taught Marvel.

TV execs are a little harder to understand. They seem to have this vague concept of an infinite number of possible viewers, and needing to attract just the right number of just the right kind or the show will fail. They don’t have a problem with pissing off a certain kind, because they think they can just switch the polarity of their magnet and attract the kind of viewers they do want. Or something like that.

I don’t know, it’s just a very strange trend. The days of creator and fan synergizing in some level of harmony seem to have passed by, and developed into a strange and lasting animosity. While it would be easy to blame the internet, it just doesn’t add up. The angry, critical letters had to be there before, and it can’t be that much harder to toss a letter in the trash as delete an email or ignore a forum post. So why?