What Happened to Fandom Etiquette?

(A gentle reminder from someone who survived the SuperWhoLock era)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how fandom culture has shifted — and why so many of us feel exhausted by modern BookTok discourse.

Here’s the truth:

Fandom is a community.

BookTok turned it into a commodity.

And it feels “icky” — because these creators are:

• using fans’ emotional investment as raw material for content.

• Not participating with love.

• Not engaging with curiosity.

• Not contributing creativity.

• Not respecting the space.

Just:

• mining outrage

• stirring fights

• provoking loyal fans

• flattening canon

• moralizing harmless preferences

• creating reheated controversy

• manufacturing villains

• keeping tension high for profit

• building parasocial identity off negativity

Fandoms used to be built on love.

Now they’re built on leverage.

Back on Tumblr/AO3-era internet, you joined a fandom because you loved something:

• the characters

• the ships

• the world

• the fanfic

• the meta

• the community vibes

If you didn’t love it?

You just… didn’t join that fandom.

Simple.

You didn’t camp the tag to dunk on people.

You didn’t rewrite canon to provoke fights.

You didn’t pretend your headcanon was fact.

You didn’t moralize people’s fictional preferences.

You didn’t hate-follow a fandom for content.

Fandom etiquette meant: don’t ruin the joy of the people who are actually fans.

We knew the difference between:

• canon

• headcanon

• meta

• transformative works

• personal interpretation

And most importantly:

We respected the spaces of the people who were there to enjoy something.

Today, because of TikTok’s algorithm, we have a totally different dynamic:

• people staying in fandoms they don’t even like

• content farming instead of participating

• rewriting canon for hot takes

• turning “dislike” into a moral argument

• camping in tags just to ragebait

• creators building entire niches off hating a series

That’s not fandom.

That’s mining.

Fandom used to feel like a community.

Now it often feels like a marketplace for hot takes.

So here’s my tiny plea:

If you love something? Celebrate it.

If you don’t? Move on to the next book.

There’s no shortage of stories out there.

But let the people who are fans have fun in their own spaces.

That used to be the heart of fandom—and it still can be.