#fandom lifespan

[destinationtoast]

Help gather data about fandom lifespan Author: destinationtoast (that’s my username on tumblr, gmail, and discord; please reach out with que

Anyone interested in volunteering 15+ minutes of their time to help gather some data from AO3 about how fandom lifespans have been changing over time, please read the above post!

[destinationtoast]

fandom lifespan: how quickly do people move on post-canon?

Good news: people are generating interesting ideas and methods suggestions in response to my initial post! Thanks so much to everyone who h

I just did whole lot of noodling about gathering data about fandom lifespans -- with example spreadsheets! Feedback welcome if you have it -- at the end of the post I ask about whether it makes the most to start with movies/TV/other, and what time frames to use, and whether my example spreadsheet contains the right data.

(I am experimenting with posting things here and reblogging them in the Fandom Data Projects community vs. posting things in the community and then sharing a link here. You can comment on this post if you don't want to participate in the community. Other people in the community are also making posts about this topic and other cool things, though -- if you're into fandom data, you might like it! Just sayin'. :D )

[destinationtoast]

*waves shyly* Hello!! First off, I absolutely adore all of your stats and get excited when you post new ones -- thank you so much for all that you do!

Secondly, a friend and I have been discussing fandom longevity lately, and I wondered if you have thoughts? Subjectively, it seems to us that new fandoms tend to have more quick bursts of fandom activity when a new season/movie/book/etc comes out that fades quickly with time, whereas older established fandoms have more staying power. I'm curious if you have any insight about whether this is objectively true in most cases or not, and as to whether or not the type of canon source material matters (eg show-based fandoms vs book-based fandoms). I hope you're having a great day <3

Hi there, and thanks! :D This is a great question, and one I have been having a bunch of conversations about lately.

I share this subjective experience -- it sure seems like the attention span of fans and lifespan of fandoms is shorter than it used to be, when I think of how quickly people stop talking about a bunch of newer movies and TV shows these days. And then I see some of the older fandoms like Harry Potter still producing a ton of new fanworks, and I think, "Wow, maybe new fandoms just don't have the staying power of older ones." At the same time, I also question how objectively true/simple that story is for a few reasons, including:

Memory bias: When we look back on the past, the fandoms we remember most are usually the ones that lasted a long time. So our estimates of past fandom longevity may be overly generous.

Changes to fandom size: Maybe any changes to fandom lifespan are mostly due to some other change, like fandom size... Attention is more splintered these days than it used to be across more streaming services/etc, and I think there are more, smaller fandoms than there used to be. Maybe if a fandom doesn't get really huge, it's just not likely to last that long.

For TV fandoms -- changes to canon release schedule: most TV shows used to have seasons that lasted most of the year, so they had a lot more reason to stay in the public mind longer. Now many seasons are shorter and sometimes drop all at once. Perhaps if we compared popular TV procedurals with 22 episodes/season from now vs. ~a decade ago, we'd see similar patterns of fandom activity?

I've been thinking about ways to try to gather quantitative data about the changes, and testing out a few methods. A few ideas I've had:

Look at the Tumblr official lists of top fandoms and see whether the top fandoms tend to leave the top 20 rankings faster now than they used to. (The Tumblr rankings go all the way back to 2013 on a yearly basis, at least -- I'm not sure how long they've been releasing the weekly lists; those may have started later.)

Look at AO3 fandom activity after new canon infusions - how quickly does activity drop off after a new movie/book/video game release, or after a TV season ends? How has the rate of activity dropoff changed over the years? (And how much of that seems to be explained by other factors, like fandom size?)

See how quickly AO3 authors/creators tend to migrate to new fandoms, and how that's changed over time - many authors tend to be active in multiple fandoms, so we'd have to define what it means to migrate to a new fandom, but I think we could do so in a way that would allow us to look for changes.

Look at Tumblr, Twitter/X, and/or Reddit activlty after new canon infusions - same as AO3, but on a platform where people are posting shorter content and there's more of a discussion. (This data would be harder to collect, though.)

I'd love to also hear other ideas. I think I'm going to need some volunteers to help gather data if I do any of the above, though... Readers, if you'd be interested in helping to gather data for an hour or more to help investigate this question, please reply/DM and let me know! And/or join the new fandom-data-projects community.

Also if any readers know of anyone else who has looked into this/similar questions, I'd love to hear about it!

[destinationtoast]

Hi! I was wondering if there was a reason why xmen days of future past is on the spreadsheet and not xmen first class? I have a feeling the fandom got big was from first class...

Great question -- I think you're right! I came up with this movie list by compiling the lists of top movies from the Tumblr Fandom Year In Review posts from 2013-2023. Because XMFC was released in 2011, it was apparently too early to feature in those lists. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a big fandom movie!

(If anyone wants to suggest other ways to generate a list of movies from roughly that time period that are likely to have significant AO3 fandoms, I'm open to suggestions! Edit: I could easily grab the biggest AO3 movie fandoms overall, but I was thinking I'd get a better mix of AO3 juggernauts and other movies that more briefly caught fandom attention this way...)