#ah i dunno i guess im mourning something thats not really gone just changed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alvin-draper · 1 year ago

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A few years ago I remember the most kudosed fic on ao3 (I Am Groot) having maybe 10000 likes, give or take a few thousand. Nowadays the most popular fic (All The Young Dudes) has 154120 kudos. I've seen so so much more of fic being spread and realised that the pandemic was probably the impetus - and that looks highly likely. Fandom is so much more mainstream now, and people are far less afraid to loudly declare that they're megafans, that they read fanfiction, where it was definitely the mark of a bit of a recluse a few years ago. I'm glad the community's grown so much but I'm also fair terrified of how quickly its grown. We're now a couple of years into a whole new era of fandom and fanfiction and I'm excited to see what comes next. And scared that the community's been somewhat hijacked but I don't spend enough time in forums or on tiktok to tell what new young fans are thinking. In somewhat stark contrast, here's tumblr.

Old fandom culture is morphing into a wholey new phenomenon and I'm unfortunately wary of change. Maybe it'll be good for us? Who knows.

#ao3 #tumblr #fandom #and the culture of a lot of new fans is so different #shifting and all that somewhat scares me bc i can never tell how serious they are #it makes fanfom more nuanced but bc so much of the new audience is new to fandom #and often quite young #their takes are pretty rudimentary and v black and white #ah i dunno i guess im mourning something thats not really gone just changed #its just odd to see the mainstream fandoms blow up so much when they were so much smaller by orders of ten less than a decade ago

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