The reason the work you’ve done on how you feel doesn’t seem like it’s working is because you need to do it until it works. It’s never been “this strategy will pull you up” it’s always been “here’s something you can do that will END with you getting out of that hole” the climbing still hurts and the being underground still hurts but that doesn’t mean it’s not working
You, a heroic paladin have successfully slain a fearsome dragon. But the dragon warns you that death is but a door, and dragons don’t die, they reincarnate. You paid it no mind….until your son was born with golden, slitted eyes.
Not people saying “Fandom has always been like this” in that vent post I made. No. It hasn’t always been like this. Fandom has NEVER been like this until recently and if you were in fandom pre-tumblr purge, pre-twitter, pre-netflix boom, pre-tiktok….then you would fucking know it was nothing like this.
We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.
The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.
Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.
Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.
There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.
Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.
We call Art & Fic Content now, completely stripping the value of what it is to a level of consumerism instead of personal entertainment & community bonding.
modern social media should stop offering "sync with your phone contacts to follow them" options and start offering "block all your phone contacts so they never see your account" options