I can't but agree with both the things brought up in the post itself and in the comments here above mine. I think it's a complex problem with many factors, but the current way the Internet has developed and the English speaking part of the Net's culture (in a very general sense, there are of course many local differences) has rushed towards more conservative "won't someone think of the children!"-pearl clutching has likely been gasoline on the fandomwank fire. There have always been in-fights and name-calling in fandom, but with how huge fandom has grown now that everyone is online, it's far easier for people to dogpile someone.
Plus, with many now young adults having grown up with a very handpicked, streamlined, algorithm ruled online experience, where everything Must Be Kid Friendly or your app is deleted from the app store, I don't think they've learned how they should react to things that, as nostalgia brought up, they're used to only seeing when someone's broken the terms of service for a site/app. When I was a kid, if I saw something scary and/or icky online, I hit the back-button. My experience with the generation younger than me is that they're taught to hit "report" instead (or even report things they simply don't like to get it off the internet - as is a popular way to get Youtube videos you don't like removed or at least demonetized for no good reason).
And that fight for resources does seem to be a big part of it. I've always come across people who're upset their favorite pairing/character/trope isn't as big as they want it to be in fandom, but it's (in my very anecdotal personal experience) become more and more of a thing in fandom to go "people aren't writing about/shipping X because they're all racists/sexists/etc" and/or "popular character/ship is Problematic and you shouldn't write it". It's a weird kind of negging, instead of posting about why you like the thing _you like_ - a method that usually gets you way more fanfic, meta and fanart about Your Thing than trying to guilt-trip people to change what they're already writing about to pivot to the thing that caters specifically to you.
It's definitely an overwhelming problem to even start to deal with. But I do believe it's possible to do something about it, even in small, "can't help them all but it'll matter to This One"-ways. Because kids these days are, in my personal experiences, rarely taught anything about online safety - or even how to use a computer. They are (as a generalization) expected to have just absorbed how everything works, because their parents (who are now my age) had to teach themselves about computers since _their parents_ didn't know anything about computers (again, generalization). We have a whole generation raised on algorithms who don't know how to save a document as a PDF and instead are photographing their laptop screens and sending blurry photos of their assignments to their teachers, and who've come to accept the censorship of platforms like TikTok as everyday and normal. Maybe getting as many of them as possible basic computer knowledge and Internet safety tip would calm things down, if just a little?
I'm glad we're finally getting larger fandom spaces to acknowledge there are problems with who is welcome and seen as 'default' in fandom. That's a silver lining to all this, I feel. But I also think it's rather telling that the fandom outrage dogpilings tend to happen over social media to Random Fanfic Writer #193, indie authors and web comic artists rather than those "protestors" going up to people in real life to tell them how sick they are for watching the incest-filled Game of Thrones. I'm sure some of the so called antis are genuinely upset abut the things they're angry about and are sending George R. R. Martin angry e-mails, buuuut far too many of them seem to only focus on random people on the Internet and not on the actual, huge, popular media sharing the same supposedly "unspeakable tropes" for me to believe they're actually outraged about the tropes themselves...
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Plus, with many now young adults having grown up with a very handpicked, streamlined, algorithm ruled online experience, where everything Must Be Kid Friendly or your app is deleted from the app store, I don't think they've learned how they should react to things that, as
And that fight for resources does seem to be a big part of it. I've always come across people who're upset their favorite pairing/character/trope isn't as big as they want it to be in fandom, but it's (in my very anecdotal personal experience) become more and more of a thing in fandom to go "people aren't writing about/shipping X because they're all racists/sexists/etc" and/or "popular character/ship is Problematic and you shouldn't write it". It's a weird kind of negging, instead of posting about why you like the thing _you like_ - a method that usually gets you way more fanfic, meta and fanart about Your Thing than trying to guilt-trip people to change what they're already writing about to pivot to the thing that caters specifically to you.
It's definitely an overwhelming problem to even start to deal with. But I do believe it's possible to do something about it, even in small, "can't help them all but it'll matter to This One"-ways. Because kids these days are, in my personal experiences, rarely taught anything about online safety - or even how to use a computer. They are (as a generalization) expected to have just absorbed how everything works, because their parents (who are now my age) had to teach themselves about computers since _their parents_ didn't know anything about computers (again, generalization). We have a whole generation raised on algorithms who don't know how to save a document as a PDF and instead are photographing their laptop screens and sending blurry photos of their assignments to their teachers, and who've come to accept the censorship of platforms like TikTok as everyday and normal. Maybe getting as many of them as possible basic computer knowledge and Internet safety tip would calm things down, if just a little?
I'm glad we're finally getting larger fandom spaces to acknowledge there are problems with who is welcome and seen as 'default' in fandom. That's a silver lining to all this, I feel. But I also think it's rather telling that the fandom outrage dogpilings tend to happen over social media to Random Fanfic Writer #193, indie authors and web comic artists rather than those "protestors" going up to people in real life to tell them how sick they are for watching the incest-filled Game of Thrones. I'm sure some of the so called antis are genuinely upset abut the things they're angry about and are sending George R. R. Martin angry e-mails, buuuut far too many of them seem to only focus on random people on the Internet and not on the actual, huge, popular media sharing the same supposedly "unspeakable tropes" for me to believe they're actually outraged about the tropes themselves...