Discussion on the vid wars of skaters by fans.

[Mathman]

Welcome, ohwylime. Thanks for joining the Golden Skate Forum.

The videos that you are looking at are several years old now. Things have calmed down quite a bit in the fan wars between the "Maosketeers" and the "Yuna dholes" When Yu-na Kim and Mao Asada were fighting it out for World and Olympic championships the figure skating boards were full of shouting matches by youthful partisans who wanted to re-fight World War II.

Links to foolish and hateful Youtubes are not allowed on Golden Skate, and sadly we had to ban a few overzealous patriots back in the those days to keep the peace. Just ignore tham. Instead, check out all the thoughtful and balanced analyses that posters contribute to Golden Skate. (You can start with Olympia's post above.)

[babyalligator]

So it is impossible to be a fan of both Yuna AND Mao? It certainly seems that way.



Sorry, I like them both and if they are in the same competition I want the best to win.

It definitely is NOT impossible! I like them both too.
I think most of us have our favorites, but recognize that the best skater should win.

It is best to just ignore people who deliberately try to create drama and bad feelings.

[l'etoile]

It definitely is NOT impossible! I like them both too.
I think most of us have our favorites, but recognize that the best skater should win.

It is best to just ignore people who deliberately try to create drama and bad feelings.

ITA. Could not have said it better.

[lavender]

So it is impossible to be a fan of both Yuna AND Mao? It certainly seems that way.



Sorry, I like them both and if they are in the same competition I want the best to win.

Same here. I do want Mao to get her OG but otherwise I'm rooting for either or to do their best. I don't go on Yu na or Mao sites...no way. That would only raise my pressure.

[Melon]

I don't think so. The original post is not about Kim being overscrored. It's about hate videos posted by both sides but especially those posted by mainstream Japanese media.

actually, it was about Kim being overscored.. the OP changed the title

[Tonichelle]

actually, it was about Kim being overscored.. the OP changed the title

no the mods did as it was suggested by other members that this was really more about the way the skaters are portrayed on youtube.

[hurrah]

Under CoP, a fantastic skater who botches a couple of jumps can come out a winner against mediocre skaters with mediocre jumps, but s/he won't be able to own the win because there will be fans who protest it. So in order for a skater to take pride in the victory, s/he has to land at least most of the jumps. This would be the case even if the competition was adequately judged. Looking at how Patrick is behaving lately, it's clear his multiple fall wins last year did influence him mentally in a bad kind of way.
Now, if the competition is poorly judged, and YouTube can point this out backed by footage, well, that's even worse. CoP suffers, credility of figure skating as a sports suffers, the skater (of course) is mentally scarred, etc. It's just bad all around.

[Olympia]

So it is impossible to be a fan of both Yuna AND Mao? It certainly seems that way.



Sorry, I like them both and if they are in the same competition I want the best to win.

I'm with you, MaiKatze. They're both so extraordinary that I don't see how I could choose between them. You and I can sit in the middle section and cheer for both. As you see, we'll have plenty of company.

[gkelly]

Under CoP, a fantastic skater who botches a couple of jumps can come out a winner against mediocre skaters with mediocre jumps, but s/he won't be able to own the win because there will be fans who protest it.

Under 6.0, a fantastic skater who botched a couple of jumps could come out a winner against mediocre skaters with mediocre jumps. That's the nature of the sport. Fans got outraged back then as well. Sometimes skaters were embarrassed to win with multiple falls.

At least now the protocols let us see where skater with the falls made up the difference, instead of just ascribing the discrepancy to politics or blind judges.

[jaylee]

Welcome, ohwylime. Thanks for joining the Golden Skate Forum.

The videos that you are looking at are several years old now. Things have calmed down quite a bit in the fan wars between the "Maosketeers" and the "Yuna dholes" When Yu-na Kim and Mao Asada were fighting it out for World and Olympic championships the figure skating boards were full of shouting matches by youthful partisans who wanted to re-fight World War II.

This is a bit of a "whitewash" of what really happened on Youtube (not the FS forums) over the years. And World War II is not the correct war to use in your metaphor.

Assuming the OP is sincere in wanting to know what was going on, here are some highlights from what happened over the last Olympic quad, all based on my own experience, all things I saw for myself, a figure skating fan online who searches for videos on Youtube.

Essentially, there was/is a group of crazies out there who are not fans of Yu-Na (to put it lightly). I would say starting in 2007 (which is when Yu-Na emerged as a true contender), they have done their best to flood Youtube with videos to create doubt about Yu-Na's ability as a skater. They slow-mo her jumps. They freeze them at whatever point they choose in order to present her as a cheater. They tag their videos with the names of as many popular skaters as possible, so they show up in lots of results.

Not surprisingly, it got worse after Yu-Na won 2009 Worlds. Through that summer and that fall, I couldn't even search for Yu-Na without getting sick. Look, I went through Michelle vs. Sasha battles--that was NOTHING compared to this. These people made Sasha (or Michelle fans) look like toddlers fighting over toys. These people were out to destroy Yu-Na's reputation on Youtube. They created the videos in the hopes that new fans to the sport would find it and think, "Hey, maybe Yu-Na's not so great."

They took innocuous, awkward moments (like when Yu-Na appeared on Battle of the Blades to skate James Bond, and got awkwardly stuck outside of a group hug by the cast) and labeled it as an example of Kim Yuna being "HATED BY THE SKATERS OF THE WORLD."

It didn't end with the Olympics, either. This group of crazies actually went around spamming a bunch of sites saying that since Yu-Na wore a name brand of earrings that she had broken some ISU rule that her OGM should be taken away. It died soon after, but YES, this actually happened.

What else? Probably the worst thing that I saw happen was that they periodically went after huge numbers of Yu-Na's most popular videos. I could see it happen as videos I had favorited disappeared off of Youtube because of "copyright infringement" even as videos of other skaters remained online. The copyright infringement would be done in the name of "SBS" or other companies even when those companies had done no such thing. These crazies were trying to basically delete Yu-Na off of Youtube.

One of the sad cases was when one specific youtube user, who had been inactive since like 2006, gogi, had their channel deleted...I think in 2010. All they had was popular videos of Yu-Na when she was a junior. it was quite pathetic that those haters out there were so despicable that they had to go after the videos that showed her wonderful junior performances.

That's why, btw, when you search for Yu-Na videos now of a specific performance, you'll likely find TONS of duplicates of the same performance. Yu-na fans took action and started backing up videos, uploading tons and tons of videos in order to counteract the deleting. Maybe it seems silly, but again, if you saw the Yu-na videos disappearing, then you'd understand.

As for the flip side, yes, there are some crazy rabid fans of Yu-Na, and they went overboard in reacting to events (the "impeding" incident) and made their own videos in retaliation, which just made things worse. They were totally wrong and should never have done it. They also contributed slow-mo videos of Mao's triple axels. Again, totally wrong. And once I saw a bizarro person upload Yu-Na's FS and label it as Mao's FS. Ridiculous.

I hate what the rabid "fans" did on Youtube. But i doubt anyone has gotten more crazy videos posted about them as Yu-Na has. As a skating fan since 1992, I've never seen anything like this. I was a Michelle fan and saw plenty of fan wars back in the day...but in comparison to this, they made Michelle/Sasha/Tara/Irina/Sarah fans look like babies. Oh, but then again, there is that one crazy Michelle troll who for YEARS posted nasty comments on all of her videos (getrealandsee/ithinkformyself/etc). Bleh, there are crazies in every fandom.

But whatever, it doesn't matter, because Yu-Na is still an Olympic champion, the whole world saw her win it gloriously, and no one can ever rewrite the past to take it away from her. So the haters can just drown in their own bitterness.

Under CoP, a fantastic skater who botches a couple of jumps can come out a winner against mediocre skaters with mediocre jumps, but s/he won't be able to own the win because there will be fans who protest it. So in order for a skater to take pride in the victory, s/he has to land at least most of the jumps. This would be the case even if the competition was adequately judged. Looking at how Patrick is behaving lately, it's clear his multiple fall wins last year did influence him mentally in a bad kind of way.
Now, if the competition is poorly judged, and YouTube can point this out backed by footage, well, that's even worse. CoP suffers, credility of figure skating as a sports suffers, the skater (of course) is mentally scarred, etc. It's just bad all around.

That has nothing to do with what the OP is asking about. The videos posted on Youtube in question don't back up anything regarding poor judging--they are propaganda videos made by fans of one skater who refuse to believe that the OTHER skater won fair and square, and therefore create specially edited slow-mo videos that are supposed to support their delusion. They are the equivalent of the birther movement in the skating world. The people who made them are pathetic.

[Tonichelle]

*hums* let it be... let it be... let it be... oh, let it be...

[hurrah]

Jeeze, you make it sound like Yuna's the only one who has gotten hate videos on YouTube. Actually, Patrick has gotten some, and so has Mao.

Things have been pretty quiet recently, though. I haven't seen any OTT clips lately.

[Olympia]

And thank goodness for that! I remember the first time I encountered video commentary. It wasn't a separate video but written posts under a perfectly wonderful video. Of course it was one of Michelle's, because I looked her vids up the most. I was so agitated to see such foul language used against anyone, but especially against a young person who had done nothing but try to excel at a sport. I felt almost grimy after I read it. I can't understand why anyone would be that scurrilously intense about a total stranger.

[babyalligator]

*hums* let it be... let it be... let it be... oh, let it be...

...... imagine all the people....living life in peace.....

but then again, it's nice to see passion in a sport. to be honest, i think i like the idea of kumbaya more than i do actually standing in a peace circle holding hands. lol

and i must say, at least it doesn't get physical or bleed into events with ice skating, no matter how excited we get. i can't say the same for other sports....i say this as a native new yorker who spent five years in boston. you take a guess.

[Buttercup]

So it is impossible to be a fan of both Yuna AND Mao? It certainly seems that way.

I think it's possibly to like and admire them both. Fandom to me implies a level of emotional involvement that means that if they are in head to head competition, you will want your favorite to do better. I do like them both very much. However, I like Kostner even more, so if they are competing against her, I want Kostner to win - preferably with a great skate, but I'm not too picky.

Jaylee, I used to work with young kids, and they'd always stay, but he started it. To which I'd reply, but you continued it. Spare us this sort of tl;dr historical narrative, nobody cares nor wants to return to the days of the bot wars. Especially since morozombie has already summed it up so well.