Hey, lately I’ve been seeing several things around the internet relating to Solek. There’s a Solekian cult, the church of Solek, and many other strange things.
I’ve been doing a little research on the matter and apparently, around 2016 (?) there was quite a big controversy regarding one group of people hating Solek, with a different group defending Solek. However, I don’t really understand what exactly was going on. I’d like to have some clarity.
Can anyone of you who was there at the time explain how the whole thing came to be and what exactly happened? I don’t want to discuss Solek as a set (I think he’s fine), I’m just curious to know what was going on and how it apparently evolved into quite a big mess.
I’ll clarify that I was not around at the time all this started but I am kind of aware of some of the “big happenings,” including this.
It all kind of boils down to Solek’s reception as a set.
Some people really don’t like the set, some people like Solek because other people hate him so much. The meme kind of started there, with some people making fan pages or whatever to poke fun at the people who hated the set.
Eljay himself then posted his Kardatoran review in which he hacked Solek to pieces with a chainsaw. There was already some Solek fan stuff before this, but the brutal murder of Solek definitely contributed to the memes.
From there it’s all history. In your post, you mentioned specific groups, of which I’m not completely aware, but if I had to guess it would be the same situation: one group doesn’t like Solek, another group decides to start a Solek fan club to make the first group mad, and first group predictably gets mad.
I was really worried this topic was going to immediately get into rule-breaking territory but you summed it up very efficiently, well done
The whole controversy really sucks because I very much like Solek as a character and I think he’s great, but any attempt I make to appreciate him is met by people rejecting it as Solekian or actual Solekians trying to recruit me
Yeah, Solek, though he’s not my favorite set, is better than some give him credit for. His mask works surprisingly well with the new Av-Matoran pieces and those blades are perfect with the arms.
The two sides are pretty much just memes at this point, I doubt anyone really cares about Solek and his set quality anymore.
To paraphrase a statement Meso made on the matter in one of the major bionicle discords:
“It was literally just, on a livestream, I just said I hated Solek, that was it. People made a cult out of it to troll me and be like ‘haha funny meme this ‘worst’ set is actually a god’. Then it became a s**tposting cult, with like nazi imagery, and I noped out from there.”
