[I'll delete this post eventually because it's destined to be cringe-inducing]

based on what I've seen on the internet, it seems like many online communities operate in a certain way that's hard to describe, but I'll try anyway. obviously I'm calling these communities `fandoms', hence the title of this post. the reason I think they should have this name is because the behavior that characterizes them is often most noticeable in fan communities (a good example: the star wars fandom. ew!)

I'm no sociologist, so I'm not sure why internet communities often evolve into `fandoms', but my guess is that it somehow has to do with anonymity. if you have to constantly reassess who's in the community, you end up resorting to crude heuristics for sorting "good" people from "bad" people at a glance, without really knowing them. this often arises in the form of meaningless controversies (e.g. "this ${movie} was bad/good"). perhaps controversies are a way of holding otherwise stagnant communities together -- or perhaps it's more like a harmful form of compulsive cleaning.

but what I'm getting at is that this is an incredibly unhealthy way for online communities to operate, and nobody is immune. you can see "fandom"-like behavior in online politics, in computer science, or really any big group held together by a shared interest.

the point of this is that we should be more conscious and intentional about the online communities we form. we can't expect them to operate like real-world communities where it's easier to distinguish bad actors from good ones, and we can't rely on instincts that we acquired to deal with the pre-internet world. this is a really hazy "call to action" part of the post, admittedly.