Confirmation Bias

I was going to use this post to talk about the focus on Nia at the New York Toy Fair, but... there’s honestly very little to talk about. It only concerns me that, because all the PR is directed towards her rather than Rebecca, Nia herself will be a dry character.

Instead, I’m gonna rip the fans a new one - again. Why? Well, Yahoo Hong Kong (of all sites) has released an article about Big World, Big Adventures. And... well, fans ran it through Google Translate and all common sense flew out of the window.

The translation is absolutely awful. I’ll leave a link to the article at the end so you can translate it for yourself. But the English is as broken as my thigh bone was after the surgery a couple of months ago. The only part that can be understood (kind of) is the subject of fan anger and this post, however. Here is the quote in question:

“With the appearance of Nia and Rebecca, Henry and Edward reduced their roles and gradually disappeared from the company.”

Alright. Let’s tear this quote apart, shall we?

First of all, they’ve pretty much explained what’s already happened. While Edward got two big roles during series 21, Henry got very little to work with. He was even written out of Journey Beyond Sodor in the first five minutes, only to reappear right at the end! And then it was announced, and clarified by Mattel, that they’d no longer be in the main cast (hence the translated word “company”). We’ve known this for months! The reports have simply been translated into Chinese, then poorly translated back to English by Google.

Second, how the hell are they going to completely remove two characters that work on important routes in the CG era? Henry works on the main line, so we’ll still see him pulling goods and passengers from time to time. Meanwhile, Edward works on his branch line, AKA the line that ends at Brendam Docks. AKA one of the most important locations in the show at this point!

Simply put, fans would rather ignore the facts and the concept of rational thinking so they can continually push their confirmation bias against Mattel (which has been there since they announced the changes to the Wooden Railway range). This despite the fact that they hired a team that have produced some of the show’s best content since 1995. Possibly some of the best ever at times.

Trust me, I’m not exactly thrilled about the changes either. I’ve written enough blog posts and tweets with regards to my thoughts on this whole thing. But I’m willing to give the new series a shot for the sake of supporting the production team. If you can’t, fuck off and find something else to watch. No one wants to hear your baseless negativity. No one wants to hear your bullshit claims based on poorly translated news articles. If we wanted either of those things, we’d move to America and live under Nazi Trump’s dictatorship.

Fans need to get the idea that the world revolves around them out of their thick fucking skulls. It’s this mindset that drove the biggest Trainz modelling site to shut down. It’s this mindset that almost drove another modeller on Twitter to do the same. And it’s this mindset that makes these people think that Thomas & Friends is more than it truly is, was and always will be: a television programme aimed at preschoolers.

Source:

Yahoo! Hong Kong (you’ll need to translate the page)