Make Good Movies or Die

(werner herzog voice) All right wing men are psycho sexually obsessed with the transgender individual

Why the fuck are you people watching Euphoria? Do you need help?

tbh from what I know of The Pitt or Heated Rivalry fandoms I don't necessarily agree that it's crazier than any fandom that's ever existed before. I think 1) social media has become very centralised so now conversations between fans that used to happen on fan specific forums and sites are now happening on mainstream sites because those smaller sites and forums either no longer exist or have become too irrelevant 2) because these fandom activities are happening on more mainstream sites they're more visible to "normies" (for lack of a better word), as well as people who actually work in media which means that 3) not only is this fan culture more visible and therefore more accessible to more ppl who aren't typically involved in fandoms, but it's also the most exploitable it's ever been so it gets mined for content like anything else does which makes the fandom even more hypervisible which makes the fans even more intensive and it becomes a feedback loop that 4) is exacerbated too by the fact that creators are now a log in away from seeing what fans really think of their work unfiltered for free which adds another layer of potential exploitation that fans themselves are aware of in an already fraught fandom ecosystem that 5) was changed fundamentally post-covid lockdowns because that was ground zero for the flesh world and online world becoming synthesised in a way that can't be undone so now people approach all online discussions and discourses, including fandom, the same as flesh world discourses because there is no line between these spheres anymore (which is not me saying that what's said on the internet didn't matter before, it did, just not in the same way). All of this is me trying to say that the technocratic billionaire class have reshaped the world and the internet and social media in such a way that is incredibly hostile to practising fandom as a subculture and newer fandoms ultimately reflect that paradigm shift....and it's a paradigm that makes me sad. More than anything else.