Poll about reasons why fandom is "quieter" these days: https://www.tumblr.com/memorizingthedigitsofpi/819055973575589888/there-are-lots-of-reasons-why-fandom-is-quieter
I'm amused that there's no option for "rose-tinted glasses" or even "other".
I feel like I'm forever posting about Baby's Second Fandom problems. Maybe it's my age or how long I've been in fandom, but it seems like I'm constantly tripping over toxic nostalgia, and this poll is yet one more example. The poll itself isn't toxic in the sense of being rude to other fans or anything like that, but it betrays a mindset that is generally not great for the people who hold it.
Fandom isn't quieter now.
LJ went the way of the dodo, and a cohort of "LJ was the golden age of fandom" people continue to cry about this. Since I'm the right age and was on LJ, I know tons of such people, and they show up on every single one of my "LJ was not the peak of fandom" posts to reminisce about how it was totally the peak of fandom and everyone agrees. Ah, LJ! Those were the days!
Tumblr is now where LJ was a decade or more ago, and I'm seeing more and more tumblr era fans choosing to be sad old fogeys prematurely.
It's certainly true that 2026 tumblr doesn't feel identical to 2012 tumblr even taking out the personal element, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how much tumblr has hung on post porn ban, even bouncing back a little as twitter shit the bed multiple times.
But I look at those poll options and just sigh. Discords are hard to know anything about from the outside, and there are negative aspects to that format, sure... But mailing lists were siloed. Invite-only LJ coms were siloed, and there were far more of these than people remember. Some of the old fic archives did not have open account creation.
It goes much deeper than places that one couldn't freely make an account on too. Even at the height of people thinking fandom=LJ or tumblr=fandom, it wasn't so. There are whole other parallel worlds that I never knew about at the time and only found out about a decade+ later when the quizilla tweens ended up on AO3 in college or whatever. Quizilla was huge. I could have been there. I just wasn't. I was on FFN at the beginning but left in the early 00s. Whole eras of FFN culture sprang up without me knowing about them. Even now, I see LJ slashers going "Wait? I thought everyone left FFN back in the day?" on a post that lays out just how much this isn't so.
Baby's Second Fandom problems can be a midlife crisis or they can be literally your second fandom.
Fandom wasn't that easy to find in the past. Even in an era where it's easier to hear of it, it's not always that easy to really get into it beyond reading a few fics on a site and doing zero interacting. People tend to enter fandom in meaningful way when they happen to like the hot flavor of the moment and when they're in a phase of life where they have the right mindset and level of free time for that.
It could be that they're in college and super excited about their favorite show. It could also be that they're terribly depressed, stuck in bed with a broken leg, and fic on the internet is the one bright point in their day. I'd say the positive version is more common overall because one needs energy, but the other one exists too.
I'm often into less popular things, but I found fandom properly by liking The X-Files just as it was majorly taking off. I learned to actually like and use tumblr in the thirty seconds during which I actually liked Sherlock. There simply wasn't anything here for me before that. Suddenly, everything was for me... even if Superwholock was extremely not.
One's first fandom or one's first fandom era or one's first platform teaches one how to be this type of fannish as a general response to media. I like canon in a particular way, so I want fic of it. I like canon like this, so I want meta of the fanworks fandom variety. etc.
One gets into some other media. Maybe it's also the flavor of the moment. Maybe one is lucky for a whole decade. But eventually, one falls in love with something else. This new Fandom (or ship or subset of a fandom) of One's Heart is not popular. There's next to no fic. Nobody writes analysis. Nobody cares. Or maybe it's just that nobody cares on this platform in the vocabulary and mode one expects.
The response is often that Fandom is Dying and/or that one's new fandom/ship/blorbo was robbed, robbed I say! But the reference point is a glowing memory of the peak of Sherlock fandom or one's experience shipping Harry/Draco. "Where are the ship-specific fic exchanges?" Except almost no ships ever get those, even fairly popular ships. "Where is the LJ com?" Except it's 2016 or 2026, and LJ coms aren't how we organize ourselves anymore.
Ye olde Media Fandom zine people did a round of this.
LJ fandom did a round of this.
Tumblr fandom is currently doing a round of this.
But just like with sharks, you have a choice: swim or die.
No one is denying that enshittification has hit many online hangouts, but there are always ways around that. Some of the AO3 forks have quite social and active communities—or so I've been told by the people making them the centerpiece of their current fannish activity. There are ways to find discords just like there were ways to find mailing lists back in the day. You can even start your own discord. You can't be excluded from the party if you're the one hosting it. One could start a curation tumblr that reblogs the important content from an active fandom even now in 2026. Sure, it would be a lot of work, but running a fandom newsletter was also a lot of work in 2006.
At the moment, I'm reading my way through a bunch of danmei webnovels plenty of other nerds read five or ten years ago. I'm still working my way through the sprawling tentacle monster that is DMBJ and its many adaptations. I'm finally getting around to the Thai BL dramas I didn't make time for until now.
Every time I post about these things, their many fans leave positive comments. Maybe I'm not hitting them at the moment they were most excited about that thing, but lots of people enjoy revisiting via someone else's keysmash-y liveblog. They can come up with at least some comments and ways to interact.
For that matter, I got a reblog on that Bad Girls vid from someone who liked it back in the day.
Other people eventually got around to Beyond Evil. I get an occasional n00b to Miami Vice finding my ancient posts.
In some ways, the most fun is when you yourself feel young and positive and full of energy (regardless of actual age) and you're into the latest hot thing while all of your friends also are. I had a brief stint in BTS fandom like this where all of my offline friends were in the same fandom for once.
That's the outlier. Even if you just chase BNF authors from juggernaut ship to juggernaut ship, your other friends may not. Some friends will peel off as we change platforms. This is just how things work.
Fandom isn't quiet. My old friends from X time and place are.
Fic feedback isn't dead. You're just not in any hot fandoms right now.
It's the same song and dance any time a cohort ages out of the honeymoon phase with fandom or out of their initial juggernaut ship where they were well fed and into a more typical fandom experience where they have to go make new friends or hunt around to see what everyone else is watching or where fans are chatting these days.
The reason I'm forever rewriting my rants about this is that I think understanding the pattern makes it a lot easier to proactively look for fun or to choose to sit this round out or to decide to become that BNF who makes a small-but-live fandom happen.
Giving in to this It's Quiet Now mindset means being mired in toxic nostalgia, sounding like a grumpy and out-of-touch fogey even to other fans of your same era. They might tell you "Hey, the cool discord's over here!" if you sounded fun. You do not sound fun.
For what it's worth, looking at all AO3 works in English posted this year, here are some active fandoms. If a person feels like everything is too quiet, surely at least one of these has some actual community somewhere and not just fanworks (and is also not morally objectionable/the wrong genre/a canon format you hate):
Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (42519)
Stranger Things (TV 2016) (33991)
Heated Rivalry (TV) (32720)
僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga) (27328)
Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid (17166)
Batman - All Media Types (16941)
呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime & Manga) (16820)
原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game) (16114)
Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon) (14427)
Marvel Cinematic Universe (12253)
Stray Kids (Band) (10812)
Naruto (Anime & Manga) (9453)
One Piece (Anime & Manga) (9087)
Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse) (8819)
Star Wars - All Media Types (8543)
방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS (8475)
文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs (8431)
The Amazing Digital Circus (Web Series) (7783)
Supernatural (TV 2005) (7317)
崩坏：星穹铁道 | Honkai: Star Rail (Video Game) (7196)
Project Hail Mary (2026) (6868)
A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin (6803)
Cookie Run (Video Game) (6536)
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (TV) (6396)
Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) (5771)
If you've never been into Asian media, maybe now's the time.
If you normally don't pay attention to RPF, maybe all of the many AUs in kpop fandom will appeal where more real life-ish RPF does not.
If you just fundamentally hate animation and can't go there, there are still plenty of live action canons getting fic.
Feeling exhausted and alone happens. It's just not a reflection of Fandom™ being quiet now or tumblr being dead or any of the things people normally blame.
It's some combination of one's personal circumstances that need to be addressed outside of fandom and one's unwillingness to check out wherever the action is instead of crying that it isn't delivered to us for the exact thing we already like in the exact format and location we already know.
We all have the power to fix this for ourselves. It just may require hosting the party or being willing to try new things.
vaporwave
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