TikTok and the evolution of fandom
This is going to be a rant.
Maybe I’m just becoming too old.
Maybe that’s the problem here.
Maybe those idiots who don’t know where their nose is on their face are just children learning how to navigate fan spaces.
If they are, I hope they learn to navigate fanspaces like the rest of us did.
If they’re not, then I am livid.
Fandom isn’t your content mill. It is not your personalized amusement park. Nothing fandom related has an algorithm like TikTok does, *you* manage your experience. You don’t have the right to complain about being too dumb and lazy to filter through the fanfictions you come across.
It’s a privilege that we have artists in fandom who love a medium so much they want to dedicate hours upon hours writing, drawing, painting, crafting and doing so much more simply out of love for said medium.
It’s a privilege that these artists decide to share their talents and thoughts and ideas with the rest of the fandom to keep discourse going.
I wrote fanfiction in middle school. Horribly childish ones, but I was 14-16. It was fun. I loved being able to make my favourite characters do what I wanted. I could lead them through whatever scenarios I wanted to see them act in, I could clash them together with my other favourite characters from another medium.
I got onto Tumblr when the hype of the RiseoftheBraveTangledDragon fandom was slowly starting to burn out.
Of course fandom has never been perfect.
Tokyo Ghoul fans sent death threats to the mangaka because Touka and Kaneki got together and had sex in RE, My Hero Academia was renowned for years for being the fandom where everyone is shipped with everyone and every shipper hates every other shipper and that mangaka was harrassed as well. With the anime ending, there were so many crashouts about BakuDeku not being confirmed.
The Zutara/Kataang discourse is almost as old as atla itself. Both sides have become horrible and neither is backing down.
All Tumblr sexy men were in one big competition game of who was the most attractive 2D or 3D guy of 2015/16/17/…
Of course there were fandom wars.
Fandom has never been an utopically peaceful space.
There’s ship wars.
There’s haters of characters clashing with the absolute fans of said characters.
There’s theorizers and people who hate theorizers.
But what fandom has never been, or at least not as far as I am aware, in my decade of being in fandom now, be it passively or actively, is a content mill.
Specifically, a content mill catering to you.
Fandom is not an algorithm.
This is where TikTok becomes a problem.
Not only is it frying our attention span, dumbing us down, making us illiterate- it is making fandom to content.
It can be consumed now. En mass.
And that makes greedy. That makes you less appreciative. That makes you blind to different opinions because your algorithm puts you into a cozy little echo chamber where everyone says and shows you what you like.
It kills seeing perspectives. It destroys us in ways I do not even want to imagine.
Because TikTok’s algorithm is making you into a child that has never heard the word "no" before because everything is changed to accommodate their tantrums, so they grow up and start throwing tantrums at the ripe age of 20-something because they saw a drawing of two fictional characters kissing who they couldn’t pheasably imagine kissing each other.
And that's wrong, right? I’m supposed to only see what I like, right?
No.
You’re in fandom.
Fandom is broad.
It's broad because humans are broad.
You not liking a character, a ship, a fanfiction, a fanart, an opinion, whatever- is not automatically a moral failing of the other party and they don't owe you shit.
I've heard there's people demanding updates to fanfics now
Are they twelve and grounded?
That's the only explanation I have.
If not, then they obviously were never active in fandom.
The people keeping fandom alive are doing so out of love and passion. Passion, that can die when it turns into a 9-5 because you suddenly HAVE to deliver. You HAVE to post more chapters NOW, you HAVE to draw more, you HAVE to draw the characters that *I* like, you don't know me, but I am your most important (unpaying) customer now, cater to *me*.
I'm almost glad I don’t write fanfiction anymore because my life became busier. I couldn't handle this. I'd crash out.
Hell, I'm crashing out now.
And DON'T get me STARTED on the AI.
It's bad enough that every app wants to shove it down our throats, you're telling me there's people who are too restless and whose attention span is so fucked that they can't wait until an author has published their next chapter? You just HAVE to push the fic through AI to get your closure?
Weak.
Daydream how it could continue. Use your brain. Use your imagination.
For fuck's sake, it's not hard.
Also: shipping.
- don't like, don't read
- ship and let ship
- opinions and tastes differ
- don't harrass others
If you can't do that, I am so sorry, but then you shouldn't voice yourself in fandom spaces until you've learned to do it.
Grow the fuck up.
... I just found out there's people on TikTok that say that "fanfics shouldn't stray from canon" ... why even write one then?
Do they know what fanfiction is for?
Do they know that they can just go watch/read the canon material and leave the fandom space if it isn't their cup of tea?
No one is forcing you to stay.
If you hate fanon and fandom that much, why torture yourself by going through it?
Why cry that nothing is for you if you're too lazy to search for the things that are your cup of tea?
Again: fandom is not TikTok.
YOU have to manage your experience.
Are these seriously adults?
Because they don't sound like it.
I knew this shit at 14.
I'd be too scared of commenting my opinion be it positive or negative under fics of people I didn’t personally know back then so I didn’t.
Just what is in the water nowadays to make people this ignorant?
Was it the pandemic?