Sorry for the formatting. I'm on mobile

I believe, and this is purely my take on this, that the reason for Weezer's decline in quality post Pinkerton is its fanbase itself. This may be obvious to some but I just realised this and so allow me to ramble on.

I was trying to imagine an alternate timeline where Pinkerton was praised upon release. A timeline where fans and critics deemed it a bold and worthy follow-up to Blue on release. I imagine it would have lead the band in more interesting directions and we would have gotten much more interesting music as a result. This is just my speculation. You could argue that the reason for the change is Rivers getting older, having a family, etc. But this has happened to countless bands before and they didn't have to neuter their sounds so I don't think that's a sound argument.

This brings me to how I feel about toxicity in fanbases. I absolutely love how tight the Weezer fanbase is but we do tend to be very toxic at times, especially during album release cycles. I think while we think it's feedback to the band, the visceral reactions from fans do tend to have much more of an impact on their morale and creative process.

So even if Van Weezer turns out to be meh or like another Raditude, let's chill out and enjoy the 26 and counting years of awesomeness that is the existence of Weezer.