This is just a collection of various observations and some even clash like different perspectives, but there’s a chance that some are unique or unpopular so they’re "hot takes", i guess.

Once in a while, there’s always someone complaining that "Doom fans have the Same Fucking Jokes" and i always assumed that those complainers were just as "Zoomer" as the ones making the repetitive memes.
But more so that the memes themselves (The longer the Icon of Sin, Shooting a hole on the face of Mars, Isabelle, The Demons Are Stuck With You, GIT GUD, When the Doom Music plays, Doot etc) are either very recent or just associated with Eternal/2016.
Like, you never see someone say "DOOM MEMES ARE ALL THE FUCKING SAME" and bring up Impse, NEDM, Plutonia jokes, Benellus the God of Shotguns, “Does It Run Doom?”, Dopefish, Repercussions of Evil, IDSPISPOPD and so on.

DOOMGUYBOT made a video called “Ranking EVERY Doom Joke” and all those jokes were not before Eternal/2016 except maybe Rip and Tear: In a way, they accidentally reveal something about the most popular Doom content/personalities nowadays.
The Doom fanbase is now either defined by newcomers or that stuff just gets to be more popular/shared often, almost hiding the actual old blood/guard under the rug (Which makes certain “assertive” behaviors ironic since they’re technically the actual “new kids on the block” and not the other way around)

It’s why i find it ironic when people fear Doomslayer in Fortnite will bring in annoying kids into Doom, because 2016/Eternal were Doom’s return into the mainstream so the main games technically already did that (And the people with this fear in the first place might as well be newcomers themselves).

It explains the discourse around difficulty and Eternal: It’s not just people being bad at their first Doom game; It’s also people being good at their first Doom game and doing that “GIT GUT, GAME JOURNO” attitude that feels like they took it from somewhere.
The fact that some of them even go “Boomers can’t beat Eternal because they can’t quicksave” almost enforces this divide of old and new fans.
(It's true that older fans have their struggles with Eternal but still; Then there's those that are good because they were good with Quake 3 etc).
(Though what if being too good at Quake 3 is why boomers struggle with Eternal? There's a thing called carpal tunnel syndrom and-)

If one were to judge the fanbase by the current content, they’d almost be surprised this series actually existed for almost 30 years, let alone had its fanbase start off as one of the most supportive and diverse modding scenes, making content for a certain engine and even gets to port its games to non-gaming devices.
(Probably even before ORIGWAD and DOSDoom).
Doom is a series people see as an example of “the one franchise that actually returns to the roots and avoided the sins of other pop culture” but a lot of people into the games may still reveal certain traits/behaviors you could spot elsewhere.
You could point out new fans having those "MCU/Consoomer" behaviors or being exposed to "digestable internet content" like basic memes and talentless Youtubers.

The phrase “Doom is Eternal” seems like genius marketing from Slayers Club, but a side effect of making a series “loved by everyone” is that it can easily trample over the “core of the fanbase”; Because otherwise, you’d think the answer to “why is Doom eternal?” would start with something literal like mods and open source code.
(And then on r/Doom, the basic memes would have been getting much less upvotes compared to a mod release or a piece of fanart actually being posted by its author or at least noticeably credited/sourced).

Because Doom is a series that, for better or worse, was impacted by the fanbase and there’s aspects about Doom that can be traced back to outside sources.
Just consider:

  • Mods/wads/source ports/etc in general.
  • Even SnapMap and D3/Eternal mods.
  • The "speed" association, partially because of Quake or the ALWAYS RUN command (And how boring FPS got during the 7th gen).
  • Nicknames like Doomguy, Pinky and Unmaker (This one taken from Tom Hall's Doom Bible).
  • Websites like forums, wad hosting, wikis, documentation.
  • Fan ports/reverse engineering/PRESERVATION for Doom 64, PS1 and RPG games (The official D64 port has Kaiser from D64EX involved; The one true lost Doom game might be Doom Resurrection, D3 based on-rails shooter for iOS).
  • FreeDoom and others.
  • A mobile port by Carmack that used a fork of PrBoom.
  • SIGIL and unused Doom assets John Romero shared (Until ZeniMax got him to stop).
  • Final Doom, D2 Master Levels, NRFTL, Unity ports addons and American McGee once making an unofficial map before D2.
  • Fanmade music remasters and remixes (Even Mick Gordon did some).
  • Anytime a video/article used fanart or modded screenshots because Doom barely had official art.
  • Stuff like ripped sprites, assets and models from the games and so on.
  • Fanart of Doomslayer and Daisy at the Fortress of Doom.
  • Eternal's official cosplay skin may be based off someone's cosplay that id used as reference and didn't credit.
  • Doomslayer is not just tied to the RIP AND TEAR comic, but both ironic jokes about Doomguy's power level from 4chan and unironic fanboy meltdowns over Death Battle animating Master Chief defeating Doomguy (And i guess how jealous Doom fans were at Halo).
  • Memes that are referenced in the games.
  • Memes and reaction images that are shared, often uncredited.
  • IDSPISPOPD since it was influenced by a USENET post before the first game was released.
  • The passage of misinfo/rumors/lies etc like Doomguy not knowing what sex is, Fly Taggart being his "real name, "Doom is keyboard only" but also good/useful shit like how the BFG9000 actually works, how Doomguy and BJ are related, the source of real objects that inspired ingame textures
  • The kind of mods and assets that explored the original games' setting, as if the fans were interested in "expanding/exploring the Doom universe" before 2016's lore.
  • The kind of mods with fanservice and crossover stuff like Samsara or MetaDoom (Or even most bloated fan remakes and HD TEXTURES REMASTERED 4K).
  • Speaking of crossovers, besides mods there's fanart.
  • Mods based off cut concepts like Doom Delta.
  • Cacowards i guess.
  • How fans made a SECOND Wiki to ditch the former, that was under Wikia/Fandom.
  • Feedback that affected the games, which is also why Eternal has that style of ingame pickups and UI design.
  • Hissy mascot.
  • Maybe whether or not id copied Brutal Doom or that fanmade fire Baron to create a similar design in Eternal.
    Doom as a series mainly existed for its impact alone and wasn't meant to be a "franchise" like Mario or Final Fantasy.
    That's another reason to attach fans to such a small series.
    When even Sakurai himself mentions Doomguy as a nickname and makes a joke about ports, that's 2 things that come from somewhere.

It can make discovering the potential outsider origin of the Doomslayer more difficult if nobody ever looks back at fans already doing Chuck Norris-like/copypasta jokes or getting mad over Master Chief and Death Battle; Hell, we’re even past the point people used to think id copied Brutal Doom.

People once were upset over Brutal Doom getting a lot of coverage and its fanbase not touching the vanilla games or other mods but when you look at Isabelle crossovers and other recent memes, it almost feels like a whole different universe where Doom fan content never really revolved around wads and any of the sort.
Brutal Doom in general was a weird age where a mod's popularity and reception felt so forced, its fans even begged other modders to make their works compatible with BD and Romero had to REclarify his opinion about the mod.
But even BD's hate feels so fake/carried by second hand info because people just go "i heard SgtMark is hated in the community", so the only sincere BD hate is like guys on 4chan posting webm's of BD's stupid bugs while talking about how great Hideous Destructor is.
Brutal Doom is like if Yandere Simulator never reached lolcow status because the people hating it fucked up so bad.

It explains why Romero being restricted by ZeniMax from sharing assets of his own games did not get a lot of attention (Besides the fact that this was already a thing going back to 2014); Otherwise, Doom fans would consider giving this the same attention/priority as when Mick Gordon got screwed over by Bethesda.
(I mean this because both situations are lame and Romero/Gordon deserve better).

Even then, someone’s presence/start into a series doesn’t translate to how deep they’re into it and there’s also stuff like GGGManlives making FPS videos before Decino yet you can also see how the latter can show more knowledge than the former (Though sometimes there’s reasons for this and to be fair, i heard Decino himself may not like Build Engine games but correct me on this one if possible).

In general, the louder/more noticeable fans of something aren’t the most “into it”, no matter how vocal or performative they can be: It’s how MCU fans don’t care about comic books, console warriors don’t care about older/obscure titles of their company and animation/cartoon fans tend to hyperfixate over Disney/Illumination/Dreamworks etc and won’t recognize a name like “Ralph Bakshi”.
Or people that complain "ANIME IS ALL FANSERVICE AND SHOUNEN" and ignore other genres or works.

And i guess if most modern Doom fans are unironic Redditors, someone will point out how some older fans were on a site like SomethingAwful lol.

I mean, if actual “Doom boomers and wise nerds” aren’t pointing this out, they’re either busy better doing cooler things (Unlike me when i wrote this lol) or somehow don’t feel like challenging those that otherwise have a "lower power level".
DoomKid did made a video correcting MidNight (Both representing 2 worlds in the Doom fanbase) and i wonder if we could get more culture shock moments like this.

Even ignoring the old blood and past history, there’s also a lot more to Eternal fan content than just memes, like people making cool fanmade demons or mods or cool animations in SFM.

And on the subject of people making "anime is temporary, Doom is Eternal": Anime fans in the Doom fanbase are usually the ones behind the best fanart or mods, while those that hate anime tend to only make basic, digestible memes; Plus how John Romero’s favorite game is Chrono Trigger and i’m sure even the new id themselves were inspired by Japanese media when it comes to making the new Doom games.

Even lore kinda applies here because getting into "Doom lore" may not start with stuff about Sentinels or Mayks; Rather, you'd get info from the old games' instruction manuals, official strategy guides, ingame intermission texts, obscure media like level packs and phone games etc which is how some get to know about the "Blazkowicz family tree" in the first place and even know stuff like "Hell created their own cyberdemons" is retconned in 2016 (And maybe also that the in-universe date of 2022 is from the SNES port manual and stuff like the fake screenshot implying Doomguy is a turbo virgin).

Speaking of LORE: I think Doom's staying power is related to the setting's limited/weird presentation because of how people still argue over what "Doom should be", have their personal interpretations and the amount of fan content that shows a fanmade universe.
Same reason why "story doesn't matter" doesn't really reflect on the fanbase as much (Specially because it feels like people only got that from a DidYouKnowGaming video where they brought a quote that even Carmack disagrees a bit with).
I also love seeing fanmade redesigns of demons and Doomguy, specially because it's partially to do with how Doom 3 changed Doom's identity and how it pushed that "reinterpretable series" aspect.
The idea of how "experimental" Doom can be is also why i tend to have mixed feelings on Doom having an interconnected universe/lore (Specially in hypothetical "IF" situations where the series could get another reboot and it could reinterpretate certain characters or ideas, even if this is because of how many people didn't like TAG2's conclusion).
When you really think about it: The problem with Doom movies isn't just replacing the demons with aliens or Doomguy with whatshername but the fact that the settings and visuals don't mimick certain wall textures and barely capture the attention to detail of someone like, i dunno, MarphyBlack?

Something interesting about Doom 64 and it being "the real Doom 3" is how most fans knew the game from fan ports and most people outside the fanbase didn't know about the game, but i honestly think it's because generic/mainstream gaming channel/sites (Dorkly, Watchmojo, DYKG etc) somehow refused to acknowledge the game at all.
Yes, the game was obscure in the 90's (Partially because of the FPS genre getting into real 3D and the game being seen as "another Doom port") but it feels like the kind of game that people made it slightly more obscure than it was.
D64 being "the real Doom 3" is an interesting thing to think about because, for being a once somewhat unpopular game at the time, you have to wonder whether or not some fans would care if not for the lore aspect of the game (Since it was not made by id themselves and more people were worried over the game lacking an official modern release and not story stuff).

Also weird when people think of Daisy's death as a tragic thing but honestly? Doom being one of the revolutionary violent games in the 90's makes me think that Daisy exists for a dark humor factor. I mean, we're talking about the guys behind Commander Keen, who then made a violent easter egg about that character in the second Wolfenstein map in Doom 2.
To id, it probably felt no different from South Park killing off Kenny.

The idea of "all wads are canon" is also weird to me because:

  • This concept is barely sourced by people saying it, i think it was from some codex in 2016 about Doomguy traveling through time and dimensions but it was vague.
  • The audience of modern Doom lore is different from that of the people super invested into wads.
  • There's also the way how people only know about wads/mods as stuff like "SIMPSONS IN DOOM!?" when most Doom fans think of stuff related to the Cacowards or wads/mods as something more sincere and developed.

In general, Doom modding in a way can feel like fanfiction, it contrasts how people want an official crossover of Doom and Halo, because it's something that could be possible in modding and even done in ways that may never happen officially.

I think a reason why nerd hobbies/media have that "brand loyalty/defense" behavior is because it's technically easier than learning more about the subject, because for all the guys defending Disney Star Wars, not many want to be the wiki nerd that writes articles about the canonicity of "water".
If modern Doom fans are in that "loud loyal nerd" area, then of course the boomers will fit in that "computer geek" zone because of wads and all.

I guess the thing Youtubers and Twitter "personalities" have over someone like modders is the spread of information and influence, so it makes sense why personalities get in the way of content.

You don't need to ever have made/played a wad to be a Doom fan, of course.
At the same time, nobody wants to see a weirdo harass an artist that once drew Doomguy and Isabelle together because they're not interested in wads.
I guess the "venn diagram" connecting these 2 sides of the fanbase exists but it also depends on how close the "circles" are to each other (And if other circles exist).
(Also, people got tired of Isabelle crossovers but the Pixar Lightyear crossovers felt more forced, like a Disney marketing scheme infiltrating a different series).

Most Doom fans play the main games, with 3 having a “maybe” spot to most people (And consider the differences between the original release and later versions too).

Even then, older fans can also be considered responsible for occasional misinfo or misremembered stuff about Doom.
Or literal meme opinions like "Doom is SP, Quake is MP" despite Doom's history with deathmatch and how the Quake arena MP scene is not as alive as Quake singleplayer mapsets.
(There's also weird boomer nostalgia favoring stuff like autoaim and limited color palette than stuff like how armor worked).
(I guess if Decino ever makes a video explaining how movement in classic Doom actually worked, there will be older fans acting like they never made Doom to be that fast and that "ALWAYS_RUN is more of a zoomer thing").

I also think that modern Doom games are both standouts but they do have a few trends here and there (Even if you don't have to be a melvin about it).
This can come to mind when people compare Doom to either SMT, Devil May Cry, Berserk, Warhammer, DarkSiders or MCU when discussing the gameplay, story, aesthetic, setting, tone etc.
Some people even go "gameplay is amazing but the story is Reddit".
Eternal did have some stupid criticisms against the game, but because of the flow of information and how it works online, i assume the stupidest shit was seen more than some good arguements that were presented better.

Modern Doom was received well enough that even people that tend to be cynical liked it.
Whether or not that also means "erm, they have the same opinions as people they'd called Redditors" but again, that's some melvin-ism showing up.
The notion that most/new Doom fans can, in fact, be associated with Reddit or Twitter may lead to some statements about the games or audience, like "maybe id really is marketing stuff towards Redditors".

I also think a reason why SOME Doom memes/jokes are lame is because they’re copypasted from other fanbases but it’s more than that: I think people assume "fanbases" are a "template", which is also why you had various Portugal themed Twitter accounts for some franchises (SMT and Xenoblade) and how any series can have a "No context" or "struggle" Twitter; Similar to Tumblr having confession blogs to any series there; The end result is making fanbases less unique and too formulaic.
Same thing with "fandom" being Tumblr people with ships, coffee shops AU's and "comfort characters"; Which almost erases shit like lore nerds and "WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT, GOKU OR SUPERMAN?".

What else? I've seen people say Doom fans can be cultist over mild criticism and shit like that (Specially with how Eternal lost against TLOU2 at the VGA's).
I wonder if the people that think Doom fans are too loyal are even aware of the older fans: Because otherwise, "you don't even know what a wad is" may or may not be a way to shut some of them up.
The thing with this kind of "brand loyalty" behavior is that it feels like a result of corporate nerd culture and feels out of place in Doom because of certain fan activities.

It's the same reason why i think it's dumb when people imply "Doom has an anti-corporate message" because of shit like: How Doom is owned by Zenimax, the existence of Mighty Doom, how content in Eternal like skins is handled, the Denuvo anti-cheat thing, maybe even the lore or merchandise, how older and newer fans behave and their activities, the reason why Carmack even released the original source code, when id made an unofficial Super Mario 3 port, the music and DND plagiarism, the Satanic Panic during the games' release, how Romero is still screwed by ZeniMax and so on.

Meanwhile, the fact that source ports and mods exist is proof that old Doom is not perfect and fans "fixed the games" one way or another.
So for all the purists that don't even touch vanilla fan wads, there's people that interpret Doom to their ideal ways, even if some end up liking a modded version of Doom way more than the original.

The quality of Doom fan projects makes me surprised they don't get a lot of "HIRE THIS MAN" reactions like Sonic projects do but i can see why:

  • Sonic had a lot of "struggling" moments (Even if people exaggerated them) while Doom at the very least had dormancy moments and Doom 4 taking years to be made before it was turned into 2016.
  • Because Doom was almost defined by its mods and fan culture, people associated fanmade content with Doom as if it was official/canon (Even if it lead to confusion and false information).
  • Maybe people focused on Sonic fans making "the best fangames" to compensate for the years of cringe culture focusing on the lowest aspects of Sonic fans.

I also think the best parts or most important bits about Doom fans makes drama disappointing, though perhaps what makes the highs of the Doom "community" could even explain stupid shit like when Graf Zahl was pissed at Lilith PK3.

In a way, comparing good content to lame content is like when people compared Vloggers and Lets Players to Newgrounds animators in terms of content quality.

ALSO, Doom may be made to be more "EPIC" than it actually is, specially when it comes to crossovers and power level debates, as if Doom fans don't interact with other media.
Because otherwise, the negative reactions to The Ancient Gods part 2 felt like fans realized that "Doom is not as fucking cool as i wanted it to be".

It also reminds me of jokes like "Doom is the most Christian game" because the series is either "90's Heavy Metal Satanic but not really, calm down grandma" or "makes up a bunch of lore to run away from actual references, if anything".
With an obscure phone game having a holy water pistol.
Otherwise, i think Doom fans should know what Shin Megami Tensei is.

Then again, most new Doom fans used to come from other series (Even if it's slop like Ubisoft open world games or COD) while other fans played enough different games, it explains creativity in some impressive GZDoom mods.

I don't plan to start a war or overly praise specific people, i'm just a messenger who could've been informed better (Feel free to correct me even).
I just think Doom boomers should put these Redditors in their fucking pla- i mean educate the new generation, so Doom is in fact Eternal because there's a lot of good things to learn for new fans, let alone other fanbases as well.
Doom fans sort of OWNED the series, even if they're not on the same level as Touhou.

If you think these are good opinions and hot takes, feel free to spread them and pretend you made them or not.
Just do better research/clarifications than i did, if you're a Youtuber wanting to tackle a topic without Dunning Kruger's syndrom.
I should invest in something more interesting like, i don't know, a wad?
Spent way too much time on this fucking thing.

Edit
Pub: 02 Aug 2022 16:44 UTC
Edit: 05 Oct 2022 19:30 UTC
Views: 192