One thing I’ve been seeing a lot on Tumblr from older fans is the notion that fandom is wankier/more toxic on Tumblr than it ever was during the supposed good old days on LJ/DW and man–that is just not true. The current wanks are different in that they’re co-opting social justice language and have a weird focus on “purity” or whatever, but ship wars have been happening since literally FOREVER (check the old school Harry Potter fandom, or the Ray Wars in Due South, or literally every major fandom that has ever existed).
People in fandom have always been insanely over the top about their ships. What’s happening now is that we’re not able to f-lock and stick to our own corners the way we did before. So, for example, if I’m a fan of Spock/Uhura in Star Trek AOS, if I go out on Tumblr and search by that pairing tag, I’m just as likely to see awful racist garbage as I am to see a nice piece of fanart to reblog. So yeah, that is a mess–but it’s a mess based in the structure of the platform we’re using, not because the good old fandom days were filled with people that were just INHERENTLY more tolerant and “nicer” than current fans are today.
I’m just really suspicious and wary of the nostalgia for the good old days of fandom, because I think that it’s not only inaccurate, it completely dismisses the progress that has been made in fandom since. You know what we didn’t have back then? A widely accepted content warnings system for triggering content. Open discussion of racism/sexism/homophobia in fandom and fic, and how we can and should be doing better. The good old days a) weren’t that good to begin with and b) you can’t try and bring back the stuff you liked without also acknowledging the parts of fandom that were awful.