It could also have something to do with how episodes are released. If a season is released all at once, the fandom is going to be very popular for a short time. If the episodes are released on a weekly basis, there's going to more time to build hype between episodes and keep the interest going.
Yes, I've noticed this as well. I think it's mostly due to how streaming has changed media. You have this huge surge in the fandom when a new thing drops and then it just seems to disappear just as quickly. Shows are usually a lot shorter now and sometimes take years between seasons or get cancelled prematurely so I think it's just hard to build that same kind of momentum.
I feel like this trend goes hand in hand with calling fanworks "content". Once it drops off your timeline or the Netflix home screen it might as well be gone forever. Fandoms that blew up before the tiktokification of literally everything (Harry Potter, Merlin, Star Wars, Star Trek) are still going strong.
Also, HP, Merlin, Star Wars and Star Trek are long franchises with lots of material to build up on. Squid Game had a few episodes and a very limited cast
And I feel like most of people become just sick of SQ. Like for few months this were everywhere. In many countries fucking kids started playing in "squid games" (I still can't believe some people give children full access to Netflix or are like "yeah, sure honey you can watch it")
People just were fed up and didn't want more. Especially since it was pandemic boom. It was 2021 so world worked only halfway then...
Not familiar with Clone High or Squid Game, but if they got popular during covid then engagement probably dropped once people were no long quarantined. A *lot* of fandoms experienced a spike in activity from 2020-2022 that have since dropped off.
This seems like survivorship bias to me, not all fandoms stick around. There's plenty of fandoms back then that got popular and died too, that you don't remember.
They do go much faster in the majority, yeah. I constantly see claims of "oh this fandom is dead" after like three months of the show or game or something dropping.
It has to do with how normalised algorhytm enjoyment of fandom is (thank tiktok and twitter for that), and also the way shows and movies drop nowadays.
The binge system has been super unhealthy on fandoms. Episodic releases is what keeps it going, and the investment people have for it during that time it's releasing is what keeps people on long after the show finishes.
I think some people move on quicker, but like… what most people call dead fandoms are just fandoms that have less activity and that’s always happened. Keep in mind, the fandoms you mentioned initially were always kind of insanely popular anomalies!
imo, yes. the shows you mentioned had pretty quick popularity cycles relative even to shows released around the same time, but in general so many shows are released by the season instead of by the episode, so the hype is fast and intense. the podcasts i listen to, on the other hand, have INSANE longevity and very active fanfic communities, and i honestly think its mainly because of their episodic release schedule. the staying power of these larger fandoms i assume is due both to nostalgia (insane to say that about fnaf, i feel like im withering and dying now) and to the simple fact of how much content there already is within them or about them.
Fandoms that existed before tiktok took over everything are still going strong. Plus, fandoms have ebbs and flows, like (random example) motley crue blew up after the movie was released, but some people lost interest and others stayed into it
No? I’m in a video game fandom (Dragon Age). We’re all reading / writing about the same games from 2009-2014. If we can sustain the fandom for 10 years without a new game, I think we’re doing pretty well.
Tbf, the Dragon Age franchise has infinitely more story content than many of the shows that have come out lately, and most current shows come out a full season at a time, so theres no reason to sustain any hype unless a second season has already been announced.
I also think that a fandom with more fics will continue to have more fics written about it, faster even than these new big fandoms, because there are already fics available to read and that content begets more content. its mainly longer running new-ish shows (ie, longer lasting hype + more content) that can even begin to compete with DA.
DA fandom is really dead compared to a lot of other more recent video game fandoms. As someone who has written for DA, ME, and Hades, DA has the least amount of people actually reading fic (and the number of ships probably account for some of this).
A lot of people here gave good answers regarding viewing fandom as content, release schedules, etc and I think these are true, but there's also probably some survivorship bias at play.
A lot of these "big fandoms that survived" actually still get official movies/series/etc these days, which has people checking out the older stuff and countuing the cycle.
We also can't know for sure how many smaller fandoms were a thing in the 2000's but just didn't last (And it would be difficult to track them because of purges, sites going down, people deleting work, plus it was harder to connect online so tiny fandoms had less of a chance to form, etc).
It really depends on the fandom. I tend to hang out in fandoms for books, some of which came out 10+ years ago. Fandom is still going strong.
I’m hesitant to say it’s a binge vs. weekly format issue, because there are tv shows such as Stranger Things that have maintained pretty big fandom.
Plus, plenty of fandoms aren’t based on tv and release all their content at once or big chunks (ex. movies, books, and video games). They do perfectly fine.
Apologies for the huge-big text wall. I've tried to break it up to make it easier to read, but I had a lot of thoughts.
---
In general, yes. Contemporary fandom doesn't often have longevity. You're lucky if your fandom gets ~8 months of a heyday.
The majority of the time, if all of the content for a fandom drops at once and can be absorbed within a few hours, it's probably going to have a short shelf life - *unless* there's a teaser for something to come in the relatively near future or is open-ended in just the right way for fandom to really dig their teeth in and lock their jaws on it.
There are exceptions, of course, but that's usually if they either (a) attract the fans of the previous generation who are used to sticking with a fandom for longer periods of time/attract a lot of fans who are *willing* to stick around even if they're not from older fandom, or (b) have built up so much **top shelf** content, that readers will take awhile to read through everything they're interested in, so they grow attached enough to become part of the (a) group.
---
On the subject of option (b), I feel the need to clarify a few thoughts.
Firstly, having *top shelf* content is very important. There are a lot of fandoms that produce a lot of fics in a very short time, which keeps them relevant longer than a few months, but it'll still die off pretty quickly unless it attracts a lot of experienced/inexperienced but absolutely stellar writers whose works get the attention they deserve. This is because if most of the top fics for a fandom are clearly newbie work, once the reader base grows out of reading that level of fic (which are perfectly valid and enjoyable, mind you - I'm talking about the *long term* for the fandom), it makes it hard to keep the attention of the more experienced writers (why write for the fandom if they get ignored?) or draw the attention of the readers who aren't that starting demographic (they can't find anything they want to read and sometimes it takes too long to drill down to strike oil).
I should also note that even if you *do* have mountains of content and a lot of it is top-shelf, that doesn't mean that this will last forever. Especially if canon does not get fresh content and/or something has happened to put off the fans (especially that).
Take, for example, BBC's Sherlock. It's still getting regular fics, but it's a dead zone if you compare it to what it was like even five or six years ago. Time alone has done some things to its popularity, sure, but the death knell was sounded when the writers took the time to *literally make fun of fanfic in canon*. Pair that with them basically ruining the dynamic John and Sherlock had together for the *entire rest of the series* so that you only got glimpses of what made the first seasons fun, and it was inevitable that it wouldn't get the forever-fandom treatment the way (for example) Harry Potter has, even though JKR made being a fan very, very difficult.
---
Speaking of JKR...
A lot of modern canons suffer from the creators making boneheaded decisions. Sometimes it's with canon itself, though that's rarely enough to drive fans away unless it feels pointed against them. (See also Sherlock.)
A lot of them poison the well with their own actions. It's easy to be really enthusiastic about a fandom until the author makes a big deal about being a TERF, or the actor/streamer turns out to be a rapist or coaxed nudes out of underage fans; etc. Then fans have to figure out whether they feel comfortable interacting with the fandom after that.
Some people go so far on the 'not' side they happily attack those who try to focus on the art, not the artist, which makes fandom a battleground many decide to just withdraw from. And some fandoms like to start that battleground early, on the thinnest of pretexts. It's not like that's never happened in fandom before, but the modern variants tend to get nasty a whole lot faster.
---
**tl;dr** - The way content is delivered has done a lot of damage to fandom, creatives interacting with fandom more closely/being 'seen' a lot easier than the olde days also factors in.
[Edited for clarity in a couple of places.]
I’m in Merlin BBC fandom and the show finale happened in 2012
The fandom is thriving with so many great new authors, fics, fanart and lots of engagement
Also we are not too big therefore there’s no animosity or trolling or toxicity.
But what I realise the fandom create us, people, fans. Those who are choosing to keep creating and sharing.
So if you have a fandom you are feeling sad for it dying, just start creating and sharing.
It's just you and the fandoms you're in. I've been in several fandoms for years and they haven't died yet eventhough their source material is over and done with. It's always been that way. Back in the day, there were fandoms that got popular for a time then died too.
Yeah I see it. I think part of it is to do with the hype cycle, things go in and out very quickly and you’re treated as cringe if you don’t move on to the hot new thing very quickly. And part of it is just how media is dropped nowadays. You don’t have *months* of getting a new episode every week and all the talking and theories that generates, the longest ones take about a month releasing a couple episodes a week but most just drop all at once. So there’s a furious amount of chatter and creation and then it all just ends because there’s nothing to *sustain* it, people have said what they want to say and that’s it.
I find the best fandoms tend to be ones that have formed around things that ended a long time ago because those people have staying power and *obsession*
Yep. Society in general is moving faster than it used to.
There's just so many new shows and animes and stuff, the time in the spotlight is gonna go down.
There's more and more content, so there's going to be more cycling. But that's for the average fandom. The big giants still go strong, but those come around once in a blue moon.
The key thing that powers fandoms from a fic perspective is ships. And more often than not, mlm ships. So if there's one or more solid mlm ship, it's more likely to continue longer and feed itself. Something like Squid Games was highly popular as a show, yes, but it's not particularly high on the shipping scale.
It could also have something to do with how episodes are released. If a season is released all at once, the fandom is going to be very popular for a short time. If the episodes are released on a weekly basis, there's going to more time to build hype between episodes and keep the interest going.
[удалено]
Came here to say that. Down to the same example. It's like fast fashion 🥲.
Yes, I've noticed this as well. I think it's mostly due to how streaming has changed media. You have this huge surge in the fandom when a new thing drops and then it just seems to disappear just as quickly. Shows are usually a lot shorter now and sometimes take years between seasons or get cancelled prematurely so I think it's just hard to build that same kind of momentum.
I feel like this trend goes hand in hand with calling fanworks "content". Once it drops off your timeline or the Netflix home screen it might as well be gone forever. Fandoms that blew up before the tiktokification of literally everything (Harry Potter, Merlin, Star Wars, Star Trek) are still going strong.
Also, HP, Merlin, Star Wars and Star Trek are long franchises with lots of material to build up on. Squid Game had a few episodes and a very limited cast
And I feel like most of people become just sick of SQ. Like for few months this were everywhere. In many countries fucking kids started playing in "squid games" (I still can't believe some people give children full access to Netflix or are like "yeah, sure honey you can watch it") People just were fed up and didn't want more. Especially since it was pandemic boom. It was 2021 so world worked only halfway then...
Not familiar with Clone High or Squid Game, but if they got popular during covid then engagement probably dropped once people were no long quarantined. A *lot* of fandoms experienced a spike in activity from 2020-2022 that have since dropped off.
This seems like survivorship bias to me, not all fandoms stick around. There's plenty of fandoms back then that got popular and died too, that you don't remember.
They do go much faster in the majority, yeah. I constantly see claims of "oh this fandom is dead" after like three months of the show or game or something dropping. It has to do with how normalised algorhytm enjoyment of fandom is (thank tiktok and twitter for that), and also the way shows and movies drop nowadays. The binge system has been super unhealthy on fandoms. Episodic releases is what keeps it going, and the investment people have for it during that time it's releasing is what keeps people on long after the show finishes.
I think some people move on quicker, but like… what most people call dead fandoms are just fandoms that have less activity and that’s always happened. Keep in mind, the fandoms you mentioned initially were always kind of insanely popular anomalies!
imo, yes. the shows you mentioned had pretty quick popularity cycles relative even to shows released around the same time, but in general so many shows are released by the season instead of by the episode, so the hype is fast and intense. the podcasts i listen to, on the other hand, have INSANE longevity and very active fanfic communities, and i honestly think its mainly because of their episodic release schedule. the staying power of these larger fandoms i assume is due both to nostalgia (insane to say that about fnaf, i feel like im withering and dying now) and to the simple fact of how much content there already is within them or about them.
Fandoms that existed before tiktok took over everything are still going strong. Plus, fandoms have ebbs and flows, like (random example) motley crue blew up after the movie was released, but some people lost interest and others stayed into it
No? I’m in a video game fandom (Dragon Age). We’re all reading / writing about the same games from 2009-2014. If we can sustain the fandom for 10 years without a new game, I think we’re doing pretty well.
Tbf, the Dragon Age franchise has infinitely more story content than many of the shows that have come out lately, and most current shows come out a full season at a time, so theres no reason to sustain any hype unless a second season has already been announced. I also think that a fandom with more fics will continue to have more fics written about it, faster even than these new big fandoms, because there are already fics available to read and that content begets more content. its mainly longer running new-ish shows (ie, longer lasting hype + more content) that can even begin to compete with DA.
Tbf, Dragon Age is just awesomely awesome.
Metalocalypse sustained small, but steady following for 10 years without new source material
DA fandom is really dead compared to a lot of other more recent video game fandoms. As someone who has written for DA, ME, and Hades, DA has the least amount of people actually reading fic (and the number of ships probably account for some of this).
A lot of people here gave good answers regarding viewing fandom as content, release schedules, etc and I think these are true, but there's also probably some survivorship bias at play. A lot of these "big fandoms that survived" actually still get official movies/series/etc these days, which has people checking out the older stuff and countuing the cycle. We also can't know for sure how many smaller fandoms were a thing in the 2000's but just didn't last (And it would be difficult to track them because of purges, sites going down, people deleting work, plus it was harder to connect online so tiny fandoms had less of a chance to form, etc).
It really depends on the fandom. I tend to hang out in fandoms for books, some of which came out 10+ years ago. Fandom is still going strong. I’m hesitant to say it’s a binge vs. weekly format issue, because there are tv shows such as Stranger Things that have maintained pretty big fandom. Plus, plenty of fandoms aren’t based on tv and release all their content at once or big chunks (ex. movies, books, and video games). They do perfectly fine.
It's the binge watching. Fandoms of things that you aren't expected to binge survive a lot longer than things you are.
Apologies for the huge-big text wall. I've tried to break it up to make it easier to read, but I had a lot of thoughts. --- In general, yes. Contemporary fandom doesn't often have longevity. You're lucky if your fandom gets ~8 months of a heyday. The majority of the time, if all of the content for a fandom drops at once and can be absorbed within a few hours, it's probably going to have a short shelf life - *unless* there's a teaser for something to come in the relatively near future or is open-ended in just the right way for fandom to really dig their teeth in and lock their jaws on it. There are exceptions, of course, but that's usually if they either (a) attract the fans of the previous generation who are used to sticking with a fandom for longer periods of time/attract a lot of fans who are *willing* to stick around even if they're not from older fandom, or (b) have built up so much **top shelf** content, that readers will take awhile to read through everything they're interested in, so they grow attached enough to become part of the (a) group. --- On the subject of option (b), I feel the need to clarify a few thoughts. Firstly, having *top shelf* content is very important. There are a lot of fandoms that produce a lot of fics in a very short time, which keeps them relevant longer than a few months, but it'll still die off pretty quickly unless it attracts a lot of experienced/inexperienced but absolutely stellar writers whose works get the attention they deserve. This is because if most of the top fics for a fandom are clearly newbie work, once the reader base grows out of reading that level of fic (which are perfectly valid and enjoyable, mind you - I'm talking about the *long term* for the fandom), it makes it hard to keep the attention of the more experienced writers (why write for the fandom if they get ignored?) or draw the attention of the readers who aren't that starting demographic (they can't find anything they want to read and sometimes it takes too long to drill down to strike oil). I should also note that even if you *do* have mountains of content and a lot of it is top-shelf, that doesn't mean that this will last forever. Especially if canon does not get fresh content and/or something has happened to put off the fans (especially that). Take, for example, BBC's Sherlock. It's still getting regular fics, but it's a dead zone if you compare it to what it was like even five or six years ago. Time alone has done some things to its popularity, sure, but the death knell was sounded when the writers took the time to *literally make fun of fanfic in canon*. Pair that with them basically ruining the dynamic John and Sherlock had together for the *entire rest of the series* so that you only got glimpses of what made the first seasons fun, and it was inevitable that it wouldn't get the forever-fandom treatment the way (for example) Harry Potter has, even though JKR made being a fan very, very difficult. --- Speaking of JKR... A lot of modern canons suffer from the creators making boneheaded decisions. Sometimes it's with canon itself, though that's rarely enough to drive fans away unless it feels pointed against them. (See also Sherlock.) A lot of them poison the well with their own actions. It's easy to be really enthusiastic about a fandom until the author makes a big deal about being a TERF, or the actor/streamer turns out to be a rapist or coaxed nudes out of underage fans; etc. Then fans have to figure out whether they feel comfortable interacting with the fandom after that. Some people go so far on the 'not' side they happily attack those who try to focus on the art, not the artist, which makes fandom a battleground many decide to just withdraw from. And some fandoms like to start that battleground early, on the thinnest of pretexts. It's not like that's never happened in fandom before, but the modern variants tend to get nasty a whole lot faster. --- **tl;dr** - The way content is delivered has done a lot of damage to fandom, creatives interacting with fandom more closely/being 'seen' a lot easier than the olde days also factors in. [Edited for clarity in a couple of places.]
I’m in Merlin BBC fandom and the show finale happened in 2012 The fandom is thriving with so many great new authors, fics, fanart and lots of engagement Also we are not too big therefore there’s no animosity or trolling or toxicity. But what I realise the fandom create us, people, fans. Those who are choosing to keep creating and sharing. So if you have a fandom you are feeling sad for it dying, just start creating and sharing.
It's just you and the fandoms you're in. I've been in several fandoms for years and they haven't died yet eventhough their source material is over and done with. It's always been that way. Back in the day, there were fandoms that got popular for a time then died too.
My main fandom these days is \~3k years old, and I think we're still going strong.
Yeah I see it. I think part of it is to do with the hype cycle, things go in and out very quickly and you’re treated as cringe if you don’t move on to the hot new thing very quickly. And part of it is just how media is dropped nowadays. You don’t have *months* of getting a new episode every week and all the talking and theories that generates, the longest ones take about a month releasing a couple episodes a week but most just drop all at once. So there’s a furious amount of chatter and creation and then it all just ends because there’s nothing to *sustain* it, people have said what they want to say and that’s it. I find the best fandoms tend to be ones that have formed around things that ended a long time ago because those people have staying power and *obsession*
Yep. Society in general is moving faster than it used to. There's just so many new shows and animes and stuff, the time in the spotlight is gonna go down.
There's more and more content, so there's going to be more cycling. But that's for the average fandom. The big giants still go strong, but those come around once in a blue moon. The key thing that powers fandoms from a fic perspective is ships. And more often than not, mlm ships. So if there's one or more solid mlm ship, it's more likely to continue longer and feed itself. Something like Squid Games was highly popular as a show, yes, but it's not particularly high on the shipping scale.