The G.I. Joe online community sucks and other related comments!

But first some quotes that either I laughed at or I thought were a very apt description!

“Pop culturally, 80's GI JOE, while remembered by a generation, has never been that big, even amongst geek fandom. Just look online...mostly the same few hundred collectors...and what's out there probably doubled with the 25th series came out. And a lot of those people came and went.”

“I really wish that the GIJoe community was big enough (and I guess nerdy enough) to make something as complete as that TFwiki has grown to be over the past three years or so.”


The G.I. Joe online community is not a very big place, yet at the same time it is a place where people already in their own little bubble find a website and park that bubble down, allowing it to get even smaller.


Due to this, information all of a sudden becomes a hell of a lot more valuable, because other forms of dick-waving like “BUYING 1998 COBRA TROOPERS AND TAKING BLURRY PICTURES OF THEM STANDING THERE” come and go, but having knowledge or a picture of some crappy 1995 Star Brigade Firefly makes you a better person than me.


I read that guy complaining about the G.I. Joe wiki (wherever the fuck that is) and it dawned on me. There is no way one would work with how the fandom is. If you think about it for a minute, G.I. Joe fans are insular and they horde information, the idea that they’re going to go to a place that isn’t there own to post information that makes them better than everyone else is laughable. I recall when the aforementioned “picture of some crappy 1995 Star Brigade Firefly” showed up, the owner contacted the admin of Yo Joe! to have them to remove the image that’s on the board. Why? The dude who owned the figure was going to write an “Article” about it. That was an obviously bogus story as who actually writes articles like that?


It’s odd because this info is only really important to the people who own (Buyer’s remorse?) and the 26 people who still collect O-Ring A Real American Hero figures, 25th prototypes and such come out all the time and dudes into that share the info (Either to dick wave or they ain’t too sure as to how the G.I. Joe world work’s. That or web hits!) part of it might be due to eBay auctions from the land of mass production, pollution and probable targets for the Neutron Bomb selling off this junk.


For all the grief given to Mike T. he wasn’t afraid to show off and talk about his rare and occasionally useless prototypes, test shots and unproduced figures, I mean you’d get a story about how he did things as a kid or how if he owned that prototype as a kid he would’ve been waaaaaaay cooler than his neighbors, but still you got to see these things in pictures without either a big ass watermark or fear of it being removed.


So remember if you find a picture of something rare, download it. It’ll help you write articles, get membership to covertops.com, be cooler than some people who live next door to Mike T. As that is the way of G.I. Joe fandom, and if people stop being back stabbing info hording jerks, what will I have write about? Tan Grunt? How I forgot to send in questions to a Hasbro Q&A asking “What’s the deal with Hiss Driver’s boots?” because those things are all a lot more difficult than yappin’ about nerds losing money and nerds being backstabbing jerks.


Also in regards to fandom isolation, HISS Tank.com is the best example of that, all it’s members are jerks and all the jerks at other websites are all “LOL SCREW U BRO I AIN’T LINKING TO YOU (UNLESS CONVENIENT) FOR YOUR BEING MEAN TO JOECANUCK.COM” yet when a member there MURDERED someone it’s like “Oh well, they still post pix of new toyz”

In the end all I have to say to the G.I. Joe community is: I’ve got a picture of a prototype version of Cobra Commander, that YOU don’t, but I ain’t sharing