Quote:
Originally Posted by Last Sinner
But what drove me to stop participating in community/group gatherings/events was that there was a heavily increasing amount of people only watching shounen or isekai or the currently airing titles, giving utter contempt at the mention of anything else - not so different from the 'you're with me or against me' mentality of the modern world in general. It was what led to me finding peace with maintaining contact with only specific people with open minds that still want to discuss things patiently and provide valid differing views at various points.
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I was also thinking about some of this when I wrote the last post. Anime is a lot more "transient" now that we get the full firehose of content each season. It's easy for people to treat it like a more passive form of entertainment; you just watch "whatever's on" (whatever's trending) and then move onto the next thing. There are definitely more fans, but mostly aligned to whatever's new/trending. This fits with communication trends too, where a lot of the newer fandom isn't in forums, but more "real-time" communication platforms like social media and Discord (so focusing on trends is encouraged to keep momentum).
Or yeah, as serenade_beta alluded to, anime's gotten more "mainstream." As a result, people who aren't part of the trend/wave can feel left out and it can get harder to find them. I don't know if I've seen contempt exactly for things outside the mainstream, but certainly a decided lack of interest. That even occurs if you're "late to the party" -- the conversation window is very narrow and people move on very fast. And yeah, I do think this has driven a lot of people out of the anime community, along with the extreme aggressiveness in an increasingly-combative society (as you point out).
I do think there's a lot of good anime being produced (though having access to the full firehose means we also see all the less-good too), but yeah... community is harder.