Anyone who tries to tell you that fandom used to be chill before Kids These Days came along is lying to you, because I've been in the trenches going through old zines from the very beginning of organized science fiction fandom in the 1930s, and let me tell you, it was the autism Thunderdome. They were calling each other Hitler, getting into physical fights, writing into letter columns suggesting that other fans kill themselves.

To give the briefest of summaries: the first convention happened in 1936 with about 9 guys, and within three years they and all of sci-fi fandom had split in two over who got to plan the cons and who was a card-carrying Communist. By 1943 they'd had the first attempted fandom cult and the first faked suicide. Two different sex offenders were exposed, one the attempted cult leader and one a major player in the Communism feud. Another sex offender was only exposed in the 21st century after his death; in the 1940s he publicly proposed to a lesbian Satanist in the pages of A FANZINE and she had to politely suggest that this was best discussed in private. Everyone kept making fun of a teenage Ray Bradbury for being a terrible writer. They would tear their own friends' work to absolute shreds in public if they didn't like it!

Two young men got to the Chicago Worldcon by stowing away on boxcars and riding in the freezing cold for 30 hours (they got an award and cash prize for doing this). All this is taking place at a time where there were maybe 50 genuinely active fans, and they all knew each other and had to pay money to mail their fights to each other. It was wild out there, my friends.