The Sustainability of Fandom Communities

Are fandom communities sustainable, or just a fun memory of the past?

By: Shannon Brault

Middle school fandoms on Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram fan accounts bring a special kind of nostalgia and were a pivotal part of community building as a young teenager. In a time where you’re bound to be awkward, these communities accepted the weird quirks that made us feel like outsiders. Are these fandoms sustainable, or are they just a goofy light in our childhood?

Looking at this seven years after the awkwardness of middle school, I realize that I’m no longer friends with the people I would post on these forums and social media accounts with, but my love for the things the community was built around survives today. 

My love for 5 Second of Summer may never die because of these fandoms, and I’m completely okay with that. My entire friendship with a few of my friends in middle school was centered around this fandom, and I don’t think my undying love for 5SOS would have actively continued without them. 

While I am no longer following fan pages on Tumblr, I am still fangirling over members of 5SOS’ Instagram pages and their music. These fan accounts are the reason I still go to their concerts every time they’re in town with 1,000s of other fans, some who were also part of this online fandom. 

The relationships I built with these fan accounts as a young teenager may not have been sustainable, but the love these accounts created exist in new ways. I still follow their social media and some fan accounts, I buy all of their music on both vinyl and CD’s, and I attend all of their concerts when they’re in town. These fandoms have curated a deep, shameless love for the four boys of 5SOS that will continue to live on, just as it has all of these years.