I think by far the worst fandom I was ever in was my first fandom that I actually participated in - which was the Beatles (and by extension classic rock). So this was in 2010-2011, and then it branched out to classic rock in 2012 before I left (Technically Star Trek 2009 was the first but I wasn’t active). What a flaming trash fire that was. It was just. So embarrassing? The average age of people in the fandom at that time were 13-16 years old. So there were a lot of young girls and then a smattering of older people - men, usually, who grew up with the Beatles/Classic Rock.
So of course there were scandals. Older men preying on these little girls. I remember one in particular, it was actually a woman in her 20’s - and she was BIG in the fandom. 10k followers at least. And she had been soliciting nudes out of these little girls for YEARS until it all came to a head and she was ran off the site.
And the racism. Yoko Ono. The “witch who ruined the Beatles.” Fan girls couldn’t be bothered to come up with actual reasons to hate this woman so of course it always turned to racism. It always ended with slurs.
And there was a huge problem - moreso in the classic rock fandom as a whole - with underaged groupies. Led Zeppelin in particular had a lot of dealings with underaged groupies, some as young as 14. And these fan girls not only condoned it but they encouraged it. They had wished it was them a lot of the time.
There was also a big issue with people harassing the band members’ families on social media. This happened a lot with The Who in particular. These girls would harass the band members’ children and wives for pictures and it was just so bizarre and appalling, honestly.
Looking back now I can’t believe how toxic just… everything about it was.
