Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24187738-20160609143214

What happened this evening was an issue that has gotten out of proportion due to an action on my part, so let me just summarise it and address this quickly.

Person opens WS cards pack, did not get the card he wanted, and rips apart a couple of Maki cards and posts a picture of them with the comment "This card can burn in hell".

I quoted it on the LL Wikia Twitter with the comment "No matter how frustrated you are, we do not recommend destroying any LL merchandise ;w;".

Going into this discussion, there are two points to discuss:
 * 1) What is a public identity?
 * 2) What is acceptable as a joke?

Public identity: Instead of the other party, let's first discuss LL Wikia. Most people don't know this but the only reason I took over the LL! Wikia account was because I was spamming my RL friends with Love Live! news they did not need to hear.

But I would like to point out, it's written right there in the description: "Bringing you the latest LL! related news from all fronts." All fronts.

This is not the first time I've chosen to intervene in a fandom matter. I can assure you it will not be the last. I have never claimed to be a purely info-based account- most of my tweets here definitely have contained some fragment of personal opinions. (If that doesn't suit your taste, I would recommend @LLUpdates as a much more professional account that does a very excellent job at retweeting my relevant tweets.)

Again, with that said, it is not easy for me to learn the extent of what an account with 11.5k followers can do, especially when there is always a small, but damaging percentage of followers that are toxic in the fandom. I should not have painted that large a target onto someone, that was my mistake, and I apologise to the party affected by this.

However, on the flip side, I would just like to mention that it is not only people with 11.5k followers which are influencers. I would like each and everyone of us in the fandom to remember that we too, influence the people around us. More so if we have done something significant of note. For example, if someone who was the winner of a Bushiroad World Championship Weiss Schwarz global tournament with a Love Live! deck, went and ripped up Love Live! cards, would that not be an extremely ugly thing to witness in the fandom? If it was someone who was considered a representative of the EN fandom, and that tweet happened to be seen by the JP side, would that not paint a very, very bad image of the EN fandom? How is it not ironic that we question why EN gets shafted over by the JP side so often, yet defend actions that make us look bad and undeserving to them?

We all affect the people around us. Let's try to keep this a more positive, more creative and less destructive environment. (Yes, it was my fault in quoting that tweet directly because that only further fueled the cycle of destruction)

As for the second point, though it was unclear from the tweets that it was merely a joke, that's what I was informed that it was after the fact, so I will take his word for it.

Anyway, destruction of goods is not an acceptable joke. It's really that simple and clear-cut. This isn't something I decided, it's an official stance by Bushiroad after a previous incident where someone burned a Hanayo WS card in the WS community, and they received a strict warning that no vandalism or destruction of goods will be condoned.

This is the part where people will disagree because there are people in the fandom who hold the view that having the money to own things means you can do whatever you want with them with no respect or love. This is a deadlock that will make no advancement. You are free to hold that opinion, I will not argue with you over it.

I've said this before during an earlier scandal on the JP side, but by all means, rather than destroying unwanted goods, please strongly consider selling them or giving them away to people who can't afford them instead. There are a lot of Love Livers in the world and not enough love going around. We don't need to destroy goods. Hold some giveaways and you'll be surprised just how many people are willing to contribute creatively in different ways that they can, where they are not limited by financial issues.

Just to end off, we all make mistakes in moments of anger. Maybe sometimes we get huge amounts of duplicates in card packs and want to rip one. Maybe we see our beloved merchandise get destroyed on public social media and feel angry over it. But let's just try to stop the negativity from spreading. Once again, I'm sorry for highlighting an issue that should have been resolved either quietly or anonymously, and for all the trouble it caused to that person.

And also most importantly, please do not send death threats to anyone! This is never acceptable!

TL;DR
 * 1) Do not destroy merchandise
 * 2) It is okay to criticize someone's actions but do not send hate or death threats! 