Just because you're self proclaimed...

"Just because you're self proclaimed doesn't actually make you anything, but pompous."

Ahhh that self inflated since of self-entitlement. Yes we have all met some one who seemed to think they are entitled to something. I found this to be so more often now then it used to be. Just with in the Phantom of the Opera fan community alone, which I have been a part of online since 1995. I cited this fan scene because it is one I have been more privy to then any other and I have watched as the ideals change and grow. Is it just Americans or is it the world it self is changing in a dramatic way?

When I first became a part of the online community knows, as Phans there was a sense of family, kindness, and friendship and down right intellectual conversation going on. Now you're hard pressed to not find some down right crazy Phans. It's some times hard to weed out what girl thinks she is Christine Daaé reincarnated or Erik is her personal mentor, teacher, angel, lover extra.... There is a great amount of crazy on the Internet true, but why are they so attached to Phantom. Or is Phantom attracted to them? Who knows?

There is an inflated since of self worth going on here. Just alone in the last few years we have seen Andrew Lloyd Webber himself proclaim a great many crazy things. Such as all Phans of his original show are nuts because they love and protect it's integrity, mainly because Andrew's new show "Love Never Dies; a sequel musical based off of infamous book "Phantom of Manhattan" written by Frederick Forsyth that pretty much across the board is quite unpopular with Phans for being the worst fan fiction ever written.  Could it be this musician is just hurt over the horrid drop in ticket sales and countless bad reviews and needed a scapegoat to blame. Sure it pretty much looks to be that way and sadly the ever-growing Anti Love Never Dies group Love Should Die or LSD for short seems to be the key culprit in Andrew Lloyd Webber's horrid scapegoat party regime. Freedom of speech has even been struck down again because this man just cannot face the facts he hasn't written a single hit in years. Perhaps he just wants to beat the Phantom horse till it's bloody and blue because of the previous failures of the film and other musicals. It is true you'd be hard pressed to not find some one who doesn't know about his musical Phantom of the Opera, ok I am willing to go with that. But to sit there and blame a group of people who don't like your musical because frankly it just takes a rehash of something that wasn't very good to begin with and then proceeds to bastardize everything people love about the original Character is just plain ridiculous. Even in the opening pages of Phantom of Manhattan Frederick claims, "Gaston Leroux was wrong and here is why." Gaston Leroux is the original author of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra first published as a serialization in "Le Gaulois" on September 23, 1909. I'm pretty sure Mr. Forsyth you are the one in the wrong morally, ethically and just plain ridiculously wrong on so many different levels it's not even funny. You would think this madness would just stop right here but it doesn't.

There are certain Phans who even go so far as to try and make a career off of writing fan fiction, again stating Leroux was wrong and here is why (insert their crappy Phans fiction here). This pretty much has split the Phantom community in half. You are both self-entitled and rude on one side of the fence or act like the story is yours on the other. Well this is at least what these loonies proclaim. When in fact the most ridiculousness part of all the only person who is claiming it as their own are the ones taking an already copyrighted story and bastardizing it trying to make it their own. Heaven forbid if some one actually disagrees with them saying, 'um no, what are you doing? Leroux wrote that have some damn respect.' Name-calling and mudsling of course is sure to ensue why would we be civilized in the year 2000. This to most people seems completely insane and it is, but that seems to be the crazy, middles aged, housewives of America's motto now a days, completely insane.

Really this all boils down to the lack of respect for one another and their property. Leroux was a journalist who up until his death claimed the story of the Opera ghost is real. If this is true then What very ones doing is basically making a mockery of this poor mans life who all ready suffered enough but the same damn hands as these people. Honestly I think our ideals started to change in the modern are of art. When people like Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp taking art or something that had already been done and rehashing it calling it their art and critics thought them to be geniuses. Just look at this "Duchamp most influential modern artist" What how is that even possible the best this man did was steal the Mona Lisa paint a mustache on it and claim it as art. Now where I come from that is stealing and should land you in jail, but no it got his name on magazines and praised in the art world. The world on a whole is changing art is not longer respected, appreciated, treasured. It is just mindless crap some one shat out and is perfectly ok to steal bastardizes, repackaged and sell as your own. Is it any wonder real artists starve and are depressed? Many artists, musicians and writers spend years and years of blood, sweat and tears perfecting and honing and perfecting again their perfectly attuned talents just to be stolen by a hack. Think I'm kidding? Just take a look around you. Little kids seal screen shots of other people's work slap a photo filter on it and claim it as their work!