How Fandom Changed: From Love-Based Communities to Algorithm Machines

ayawinterromances
Jan 7
2 min read

The Social Media Shift

There was a time when fandoms were small, intentional, and tucked away in corners of the internet — Early Tumblr, MySpace forums, fan-made websites, and niche spaces you had to seek out. If you were in a fandom, you were there because you loved the thing.

Today?

Fandoms are public-facing content ecosystems.

With TikTok, Instagram, Twitter/X, and Threads, anything that was once a cult classic can now be blasted to millions overnight. Visibility has completely reshaped how fandoms function.

Fandoms Used to Be Built on Love — Not Virality

Old-school fandom culture revolved around:

• passion

• shared enthusiasm

• deep text-based speculation

• respect for canon (even when debating it)

• community-specific etiquette

You found your people.

You found your niche within the niche.

Think Supernatural: casual fans vs. hardcore Destiel shippers vs. lore-deep analysts. Everyone had their corner, and everyone understood the norms.

Now, the moment a book or show trends, everyone pours into the same space — whether they love it, hate it, or barely read it.

The Algorithm Made Fandoms a Battleground

Once algorithms realized that:

• outrage performs

• conflict spreads

• negativity keeps people scrolling

Fandoms shifted from spaces of affection to spaces of extraction.

Creators discovered that if they:

• post a hot take

• piss off a subset of the fandom

• misquote canon

• exaggerate problems

• erase context

• “call out” characters

…their engagement skyrockets.

So fandom discourse becomes:

• dogpiles

• drama cycles

• shipping wars framed as moral crusades

• misreadings presented as fact

• content farming disguised as “analysis”

People build entire accounts around hating the very thing they claim to be analyzing.

The Rise of Performative Expertise

Many of today’s loudest fandom voices:

• entered through one trending book

• haven’t read widely in the genre

• don’t understand conventions, tropes, or craft

• mistake genre staples for “plagiarism”

• think headcanons are canon

• position themselves as experts anyway

This isn’t about gatekeeping — it’s about accuracy.

If you come into fantasy or romance through a trend book, you won’t necessarily recognize:

• archetypes

• genre heritage

• classic structures

• long-standing tropes

• narrative traditions

• intertextual influences

So misinterpretations become “hot takes,” and “hot takes” become “truth,” and suddenly entire fandoms are arguing about points that aren’t even grounded in the text at all.

What We Lose When Fandom Turns Algorithmic

When fandom becomes:

• rage-bait

• bad-faith critique

• parasocial performance

• content mills

…we lose what made fandom meaningful in the first place:

love.

community.

analysis rooted in the actual work.

spaces where fans could celebrate instead of defend.

And more importantly, we lose the voices of: