Does GGD care too much about competition?

[Manul 7,377]

5 minutes ago, Didymus said:

But like I said, I remember the same trend from actually within the ARTPOP era. It's about her work in general. Like I don't think I'm exaggerating when I'm saying that members here put a lot more effort and thought into slamming Katy's entire career than even attempting to analyze the ideas and concepts Gaga's presenting in hers.

This is sadly true. And it is confusing because Katy has never attacked Gags, whereas Gags has been quite unfriendly to Katy (especially 2013, when she was downright rude).

Tragic fact, I also recall everyone name shaming Katy and her fanbase back then, while they were all over the Applause video, complimenting Gaga and posting **** like "let's get Applause VEVO certified". 

[Didymus 34,379]

Just now, Love Drought said:

This is sadly true. And it is confusing because Katy has never attacked Gags, whereas Gags has been quite unfriendly to Katy (especially 2013, when she was downright rude).

Tragic fact, I also recall everyone name shaming Katy and her fanbase back then, while they were all over the Applause video, complimenting Gaga and posting **** like "let's get Applause VEVO certified". 

It was quite the fascinating disaster. Both artists and fanbases started supporting each other, basically right until the first week sales of Roar and Applause came in. When Roar so vastly outsold Applause, everything was ruined lol. Nice illustration of general dynamics here.

Sometimes I wonder if Gaga started to act more competitive and shady because she saw it was so important to her fans. Something she said in 2015 to Billboard about her career pre-2013 crash keeps lingering in my mind: "I was just trying to give everyone what I thought they wanted from me". Who knows.

[yxi 4,999]

People on this forum only care about the charts and these silly stan wars, very few truly care about the music...

The perfect example is ARTPOP which everybody loved, then the numbers and reviews came in and it was suddenly a bad album

[Didymus 34,379]

7 minutes ago, symphonia said:

The perfect example is ARTPOP which everybody loved, then the numbers and reviews came in and it was suddenly a bad album

I agree to an extent, though I'm not sure if that's the full story.. I think it was just the excitement wearing off. In just a few days' time the responses to the album here changed dramatically. I remember the first two days of the leak the fan favorites were Sexxx Dreams, Donatella, and MJH and only a few days later they were hardly even mentioned, and now the latter two are usually the songs the fans like the least.

I experienced something odd with BTW anyway. When I joined the forum (I became active in 2012) the majority of this forum was extremely dissatisfied with the album, calling it overproduced and wanting to return to the TFM sound. In every single poll about the fans' favorite album BTW lost It was only when ARTPOP started underperforming that everyone felt this weird nostalgia for BTW and acted like it was suddenly a masterpiece and the polls changed dramatically.

ARTPOP as an album always kept on scoring quite high though. When the bad reviews came in most members here called them biased and focusing on the wrong things, and they praised Gaga for standing up for herself and dismissing claims of commercial underperformance. The criticisms that arose within the first days were the same criticisms that a lot of fans use today. The complaints that grew during the era were those about management and promo issues. So I personally think that's a bit of a myth  

[Phoenix 17,395]

12 minutes ago, Didymus said:

I said the same in my spoiler, but at the same time I think that's quite sad because.. why would we wanna be like anyone else? Isn't more than half of this forum continuously and desperately trying to prove that Gaga is 10x more superior to her competition? Then why shouldn't her fanbase be?

Like I brought up throughout this thread, I think a lot of fans underestimate the impact that sort of general attitude has had on her stopping to visit here (as explained by Emma) and possibly her general relationship with the fans as well. I quoted Gaga directly asking her fans to focus on her work and avoid the rest back in August 2013 and we all know how that turned out. I don't think that should be swept under the rug with the "everyone does it" argument.

There's nothing wrong about wanting to discuss these subjects, but there's nothing right about it either, so I'd like people in this thread to at least think about what kind of fanbase we want to be, and take Gaga's wishes into consideration at least. If we don't, well.. then I guess we're part of the people Gaga doesn't consider as fans anymore.

Well it's true, I mean I personally don't understand people who spend their time on something or someone they hate, I usually try to ignore that something and escape it. I mean, I think all this bloomed in 2013/14 after Gaga's underperformance, which was used by all the other fanbases who saw her as the biggest competition for their faves. Like let's be honest Gaga had it all, talent, success, acclaim etc. etc. etc. She was a perfect popstar, ofc everyone else would be jealous, katy fans cause of katy's live performance failures or grammys, beyonce cause gaga had more success on charts at that time, madonna cause gaga was pretty much replacing her etc. This all was building up, so when Gaga "finally" lost her **** a bit, they all dragged her to the pits, literally. 

And ofc that year was the worst for this fanbase when it comes to that, and it left deep wounds, which ofc caused this thing you are talking about, that monsters are after that and now using every single possibility even some dumbest stuff to try to drag other popstars whose fanbases dragged Gaga when she underperformed. 

It's a messed up vicious circle. 

[Shaney 5,515]

57 minutes ago, Love Drought said:

I know I'm stereotyping but what would a bunch of gay people discuss about sports, and cars at that.  It also doesn't help that she is doing everything but releasing new music and serving "Gaga" looks. Her dressing style has become unusually tame so there's not even that to discuss.

So, they jump on other artists, who have some new music in one way or another. imo.

So they jump on Katy and Madonna, for the most part? Seems odd (and lame). There's so much more music in the world.

[Manul 7,377]

20 minutes ago, Bae said:

So they jump on Katy and Madonna, for the most part? Seems odd (and lame). There's so much more music in the world.

That's who they see as her main competitors, what's so odd about that?

[Neight Shayde 7,925]

not all, but yeah most of them

i used to really worry about that too but nowadays i feel like she doesn't care about it anymore, which i think is really great for her (and for me bc the ARTPOP era was so depressing).

fans should follow her attitude towards her upcoming album release tbh (if it's true that she doesn't care about the charts that much)

personally i just want her to constantly grow as an artist by writing more thought-out lyrics/melodies, and also by exploring other genres outside of the current pop landscape.

[Shaney 5,515]

1 hour ago, Love Drought said:

That's who they see as her main competitors, what's so odd about that?

What's odd is when Gaga isn't doing anything worth talking about, some fans become obsessed with them.

[Manul 7,377]

1 minute ago, Bae said:

What's odd is when Gaga isn't doing anything worth talking about, some fans become obsessed with them.

Not at all.

[Shaney 5,515]

27 minutes ago, Love Drought said:

Not at all.

 

[Manul 7,377]

2 minutes ago, Bae said:

 

Watch them hate Beyonce for the next three years because she removed "ft. Lady Gaga" from Video Phone. 

[Shaney 5,515]

Just now, Love Drought said:

Watch them hate Beyonce for the next three years because she removed "ft. Lady Gaga" from Video Phone. 

She did? 

Beyonce must be pressed

[Florian 19,962]

Currently yes, most of people here care more about competition and chart than Gaga's work and artistry. I mean just look how many time people criticize the "side projects" (C2C, AHS, TIHTY, ...). If people really care it wouldn't even be called "side projects", Gaga is so much more than an icon in music, she can be a icon in Pop Culture. But people doesn't care much about that. Few people has understood that the "side projects" was maybe something Gaga really wanted to experiment and why not go further. For the other Gaga did this only to restore her fame and how the so-called GP perceives her.

Is this fan behaviour something bad? I don't think so and I'll explain why. Is it waste? Yes, because as @Didymus said, Gaga has so much more to offer than commercial success. Now why do I understand why so much people doesn't really care? Because pop music is entertainment, it's just like rugby or football and Gaga, Katy, Bey and the other would be teams. Just like in sport culture, you choose firstly à team that you like because of the greatness (ie you like the play style, or it's your town team, ...). For a little period you actually care about the quality of a match (could the players have done better? This action could have been even better, you discuss how good this action was, or how spectacular the player is) then you just care about the season. You don't care about the quality of the team/match itself but only about the points earned for the season ranking. You're satisfy even if your team win with a really low quality match because you only care about the ranking.

Now replace the words team with Gaga, match with album and ranking with success and you have the majority of GGD members. 

[giskardsb 12,565]

It's not just GGD, for some reason online pop fanbases in general tend to treat pop stars likes sport teams instead of artists.  You don't see this in any other genre.  I've never seen rock fans arguing about one bands superiority based on sales or chart numbers, or arguing to the death of "shipments" vs "sales" in order to argue that "their fav" is "queen."  Sure they will argue on artistic merits, but not with the venom of pop fans.  

It's kindof baffling as a person who  comes from outside the pop fan world.   There is zero reason to behave like this, it's music and art, not sports.  Pop fans get their ego's tied up in a pop star and seem to take on their successes and failures as if they were personal.   It seems like a big sign of insecurity to me.