(for the billionth time),
there were no Glorious Beforetimes in fandom when everyone agreed to play nice, never criticize anything, never complain about fanworks, never harass other people about what they wrote.
Fandom was not a halcyonic utopia before TikTokers Kids These Days Puriteens antis The Fire Nation attacked.
"Don't Like, Don't Read" was never the Golden Rule in fandom. Sporking used to be so commonplace that multiple communities were built specifically to do it.
My Immortal wouldn't have the (sub)cultural prominence it does today if hatereading "badfic" and collectively mocking/lampooning it weren't an established part of early internet fandom.
"Mary Sue" was a term originally cooked up specifically to belittle people's female OCs.
There was once, as legend tells it, a woman who stood outside a fanauthor's door at a convention who actively harassed anyone trying to go in because she objected to the content of the work that author was sharing. And iirc, this was before the internet, or before internet fandom was as big as it is now.
There were roving waves of Christian fundamentalists who'd "flame" (harass) any slash (same-sex ships) author, for being "sinful." Some extremely popular archives (this was before AO3), while not directly affiliated with the religious asshats, would nonetheless expect that any slash, of any "spice" level (even G-rated), be labeled as "Adult." And if you didn't abide by those rules, you were not allowed to post there, and in some cases effectively shunned and invisible in the community.
Some of the Christian activist groups were behind Strikethrough, too. You know, the thing that people keep bringing up when they say "remember fannish history"? (BTW, Strikethrough was not the single precipitating incident of the founding of AO3, just to correct that bit of apocrypha while I'm here.)
There were multiple communities on livejournal dedicated solely to bashing specific characters (usually female characters or characters of color). One midsize fandom I was in had two communities for doing this to a single female character of color, one of which was a watchalong group made so they could say awful things about her on an episode by episode basis. And these people would "flame" authors/fics who wrote positively about these characters, often driving them out of fandom for having the "wrong" opinions.
There were ship wars in the Due South fandom so heated that there are still people fighting about it today (mostly one dedicated person sending boilerplate anon hate, but still).
Some of the greatest wanks of yore (MS Scribe, Cassandra Cla[i]re, etc) were based around ship wars, sock puppets created to harass people, and the like.
Fandom has always been like this. The terminology changes, the topics shift, the methods of harming people change, the locations change (from in person to various scattered sites, to social media and beyond), and so on. But there was never a fannish utopia free from bullshit.
Anyone trying to tell you that there was, that says we should follow Five Simple Rules, or that we need to Make Fandom Great Again, is either clueless, was blissfully insulated from bullshit till recently (when AO3 and social media made everyone's activities and work accessible to larger audiences), or is trying to sell you something. Don't buy it.
