Neato

- Deadpool is insecure - Deadpool has chronic pain - Deadpool is submissive in bed - Deadpool is pansexual - Deadpool lifts up his mask so Hawkeye can read his lips - Deadpool is a blonde - Deadpool’s initials are WWW - Deadpool had an abusive father - Deadpool’s mother died from cancer - Deadpool fell in love with a teenager - Deadpool left her because he didn’t want to hurt her - Deadpool had a daughter - Deadpool didn’t believe she was his because she was too beautiful - Deadpool had to be dragged away from his daughter’s dead body by Cap and Wolverine - Deadpool carries Hello Kitty band aids - Deadpool is good with kids - Deadpool can’t be killed by Ghost Rider because he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong - Deadpool hates himself - Deadpool used to curl up in a ball and mumble about his skin hurting - Deadpool is married to the queen of the undead - Deadpool reads his own comics

- Deadpool tells kids that he’s Spider-Man

-Deadpool was purposefully created to be a pansexual/bisexual hero way back in the 70s/80s

-Deadpool regularly wears clothing traditionally made for women

-Deadpool dressed in Ms. Marvel’s black swimsuit super suit one time for fun

-Deadpool’s canonical biggest fantasy is rubbing sun tan lotion on Cable’s back at the beach

-Deadpool hates Hydra because they’re racists

Like……..that was the core of tumblr in 2013. Its tainted life-blood. Its fetid royal palace. Destiel this and Johnlock that. Tardis-in-the-impala-at-221B URLS. Bendydoot Cucumberpatch and long analytical debates of which doctor is best doctor

And then Dashcon happened: All those people got together for a nightmarish event in the ball pit (for anyone who doesn’t know what Dashcon was, look it up and read any of the news articles about it. I promise, you will not be disappointed). 

Now, I wasn’t too active on tumblr at that point because of school reasons, but I remember finding out that the new season of Supernatural had aired on TV, and I saw NOTHING about it on tumblr. Not a single post on my dash. It was a miracle, but I was so confused. How had the whole fandom just vanished like that? I still don’t know for sure, but it was very shortly after the Dashcon incident. 

Then Doctor Who returned. New doctor and a new companion. Same scenario. Nobody said anything online. I was still big into DW so that was kind of a bummer but it was still astounding.

I went back online more readily and started realizing that fandoms, as I had known them, were essentially dead after that summer. It was like everybody simultaneously realized how toxic those communities were after they all got together in person and proved themselves to be a disgusting bunch.

It was the fastest and most unsettling jump in internet culture I’d ever seen. Overnight it became an embarrassment to admit that you were in a popular fandom. All because of fucking

- Hiatuses: Sherlock especially, but the long Doctor Who mid-season breaks didn’t help. People wandered off. Some of them to very similar shows, like Elementary, which fought initial fan scepticism to become THE Sherlock alternative.

- Fans became more critical. All three shows frequently come under fire for their treatment of women, LGBTQIA people, etc., and without new content fans had no option but to rewatch and reexamine the same episodes over and over again. Their flaws became more obvious on repeat viewings, and the comparison to new arrivals like Elementary didn’t help. I imagine there were other competitors too, but one would need to do more research to see how relevant they are here - cartoons like Steven Universe and Gravity Falls, maybe? WtNV? OUAT and OITNB? All of them are much more obviously diverse, so Superwholock starts looking bland in comparison. There’s also the quality-comparison argument (Doctor Who is not as good at plotting as a lot of other things), but I reckon that goes without saying.

- Fandom backlash! You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. After events like the Mishapocalypse and the infamous FANDOMS GRAB YOUR WEAPONS post Superwholock became shorthand for the most obnoxious parts of Tumblr and fandom, so more people starting distancing themselves from it (see also: how Bronies killed the MLP fandom). And, yeah, it all came to a head with the Dashcon Clusterfuck 2k14.

- Fandom Backlash II: Your Fave is Problematic. Every popular figure from Joss Whedon to Taylor Swift is eventually the subject of text posts and screencaps dragging their name through the mud. Steven Moffat, Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, and Jensen Ackles (I believe? It might have been Jared Padalecki. I don’t really follow Supernatural) have all had plenty of this.

IN CONCLUSION: there wasn’t enough new stuff being made. People found their own new stuff, which in many cases they found more appealling. People became less forgiving of the old stuff, its creators, and its fans. Eventually enough time passed that they gave up on the old stuff completely, so when it came back they weren’t interested.