User blog comment:General tiu/Korea: who was he, and can he still be saved?/@comment-1271618-20100605020129

Well, I've seen critique of him on there. But as I said before like the female nation debates, there are fans that use their "feminist" stance to pretty much rip on the female characters for any weakness they see and/or scream about how this gag manga has kicked feminism back to the dark age. Thankfully it's a very vocal few that are that extreme, but still, it's like good luck if you like anything about the female characters around them. You'll be told how you're supporting the sexist agenda by not wanting "important" countries to be female, but of course if any were someone would complain about that in some way (the old "France would be an icky skank if Himaruya made him a girl!" argument). Of course if you do have an issue, you run the risk of being lumped in with the crazies or having the crazies take your word and blow it up to support their arguments. Very lose-lose.

But yeah, overall there's not much of a middle ground especially lately. It's either "omg who cares, enjoy the comic you silly nincompoops!" or "if you are not offended by what offends me, you are not a true fan /starts flamewar". Popularity can be the easy thing to point fingers at to blame, but it's more complex than that. And the FUNi bashing is WAY overdone by now. It makes me irritated to see someone cry that Hetalia is going to "suck now" because Americans have ruined the oh-so-precious unique Japanese feel.

Yeah, YouTube scared me a lot then. Don't forget too, that because there are Korean ripoffs of Japanese media, somehow that means the entire country deserves to die. Definitely not the most intelligent place on the net EVER.

ETA: TVTropes is a pretentious site that I have a love/hate relationship with (the trope pages are handy, but the pretentiousness in there can get so "ew", and being sucked in is both good and bad), but I think their Internet Backdraft page sums up ways to avoid Hetalia flamewars XD. Or start ones, for the trolls I guess.