Welcome to the church of content

Every morning, without fail, the first thing I do as I wake up is reach for my phone and open Instagram. I hate the app, but it’s 2025—how else am I supposed to start my day? After catching up on whatever happened in the perpetually intertwining worlds of politics, culture, and drama overnight, I move over to scroll through Reels. Naturally.

On this occasion, the first thing I see is a Jubilee video where a self-identifying fascist tells Mehdi Hasan to “get the hell out” of America. A few scrolls later, another clip from the same video: a not-so-nice-to-look-at white guy quotes a Nazi philosopher before proudly declaring himself a fascist. Brilliant entertainment, obviously. Sandwiched between these – in a few physically simple, yet mentally strenuous movements of my thumb – is rage bait, AI slop, a video of hip hop duo Clipse ‘reacting’ to a Labubu, and a targeted ad for an app describing itself “Duolingo, but for classical movies”.

I scroll for a little longer, but it’s clear that I’m not getting anything I haven’t seen before. My algorithm is stable—for now. And I want to get off before I run into one of the countless Tristan Tate disciples talking about Johnnie Walker in the war room or a clip of Addison Rae performing what sounds like a discarded Charli XCX song with the accompanying caption declaring the ‘popstar’ (who was way too excited to meet Donald Trump and is dating an Israeli producer) our next cultural icon.

As I exit, I can’t help but reflect on the absurdity of it all. The absurdity of online fandoms.

Fandoms have been around forever, and many have thrived on extremity and parasocial attachment. Think of punk rock diehards, disco devotees, or even the literal cults that bled into politics and pop culture in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Infatuation with artists as well as the sense of solace and identity one finds in their work – even when it’s ostensibly exploitative or designed for monetisation – has always made fandoms alluring.

But there’s something different about online fandom. It is intimate yet distant, always at your fingertips but untethered from any physical community. There’s no ticket to buy, no venue to leave. Instead, the online iterations can be described as mutations of fandoms as we’ve always understood them because they’re not just byproducts of our neoliberal, imperialist world. They’re reflections of how it retrogrades in the internet age, too.

In a world governed by the algorithm, online fandoms begin to mirror the brutal realities of our misery-filled, misery-fuelled planet, pulling us deeper into the very aggression and insecurities that we’re looking to escape. How that reflection further mutates, distorts, and transforms varies. 

SOFTCORE

You don’t start with an unhealthy parasocial relationship. You start by liking a video. Maybe it’s a Gracie Abrams edit. Maybe it’s a dude-bro talking fast into a mic. He might be spouting far-right propaganda or debunking it. What ends up centring your worldview might even depend on which of the two you stumble onto first. Because even if you’re not following them (yet), the algorithm is following you (always). And it gives you more: inside jokes, shared language, a sense of belonging, of community. Soon, you’re in too deep to tell where irony ends and identity begins.

Author and cultural theorist Shumon Basar argues that identity is no longer shaped by content itself, but by how everyone engages with it, too. “People rush to the comments after seeing a post,” he tells Dazed MENA. “They care more about what people have to say about a thing than the thing itself.” Fandoms aren’t just built on admiration; they’re also produced by the commentariat. You don’t form an opinion and then enter the discourse. You enter the discourse to figure out what your opinion should be.

Tech journalist Taylor Lorenz echoes this view, highlighting how the comment section has become a moral compass for the terminally online. “People go to the comments to see what the general consensus is, and they go along with that,” says the expert on all things internet. “They don’t have the moral fortitude to form their own belief system.” In other words, belonging begins with scrolling, but belief is outsourced to the consensus.

That’s why we project. It’s why even the most mundane corners of the internet feel rigid, sacred even. It’s also why seemingly harmless fandoms morph into political battlegrounds. “The concept of Labubu is more important than the Labubu itself,” says Basar. Trends become canvases for anxieties, desires, and critiques. A Stanley Cup isn’t a thermos, it’s a symbol of consumerist absurdity; Dubai chocolate isn’t food, it’s a symbol of capitalism’s grotesqueries—not because of what these things are, but because of what they are made to represent.

This isn’t an accidental quirk of internet culture; it’s what fuels the engine of digital capitalism. Cultural theorist Sianne Ngai has examined how, under digital capitalism, feelings become entangled with commodity culture, circulated and aestheticised not for utility, but for their emotional and economic value. Our tech overlords don’t care what you believe, only that you do. As long as you’re clicking and sharing, your obsession becomes a data point, your fandom a feedback loop, your personality a monetisable microculture. It’s the real-time manufacture of desire. And in a world where niche becomes identity, and identity becomes economy, softness calcifies into control.

THE PIPELINE 

First, there’s the machinery. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter reward what provokes. Their recommendation engines not only amplify taste, they also radicalise it. You liked a TikTok where Candace Owens criticises Israel on Piers Morgan’s show, not knowing who she is? Congratulations, the algorithm is about to take you down a rabbit hole that ends with you transvestigating Brigitte Macron.

In This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, scholar Whitney Phillips explains that extreme viewpoints thrive online because virality rewards outrage and emotional provocation over truth or nuance. The faster and funnier your reaction – whether you’re a fan, analyst, troll, or something in between – the more righteous or authentic you seem. You don’t have to be correct. You just have to belong. And belonging feels good when the world around you is collapsing.

The posts that go viral are the ones that declare war, those you can easily align with or oppose. “Taylor Swift is the face of white faux-feminism.” “If you criticise Taylor Swift’s private jets but not Bill Gates’, you’re a misogynist.” The algorithm doesn’t care what makes sense or which side you’re on, only that you’ve picked a side and are digitally screaming. Sabrina Carpenter’s album covers or Sydney Sweeney’s jeans (genes?), it doesn’t matter. As a certain someone who shall not be named once famously sampled in one of his biggest songs: “No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative… gets the people going.”

Then comes the backdrop: a ravaged world. Climate crisis, rising inequality, exploitation, colonialism, genocide. In the existential misery of our time, ambiguity feels indulgent, so we pick sides—not because we’re sure they’re right, but because doubt is unbearable. You don’t just like something, you defend it. Your fandom becomes your fortress, even if you discovered it only weeks ago.

This collapse of boundaries is no accident. “Instagram is essentially a news app now,” says Basar, who has spent years dissecting how digital life warps identity. “And that has happened since 7 October.” Independent investigative reporting, thirst traps, Marxist philosophy, and influencer scandals all swirl into one hyper-saturated feed. The apolitical turns political, the political turns absurd. There are no separations, no hierarchies of relevance—only content streams battling for your allegiance.

And finally, the emotional hook: good old parasocial intimacy. When you feel you know a popstar, a pundit, or a streamer, attacks against them feel personal. Their successes and failures become yours, too. And this isn’t always about admiration; it thrives on animosity. “You have this entire universe of anti-fandom, where people exist just to tear others down,” explains Lorenz, who herself has faced online attacks, pile-ons, and even death threats from the political right. “Many creators don’t have a coherent ideology. It’s about maximising engagement and creating villains when there aren’t any.” 

Said villains are targeted by anti-fandom fandoms with unabashed ferocity. A bad album review can summon death threats. Criticising a movie can get you doxxed. Call out a celebrity’s silence on a genocide, and you’ll find fans denying the genocide itself. Or even use one too many em dashes in your writing, and you’ll be accused of using ChatGPT—you’ll be AI-vestigated. Everything becomes a trial, punishable by both the algorithm and those it feeds. Online fandoms promise warmth, identification, maybe even escape, but in a world where entertainment is politics and politics is entertainment, these feelings metastasise. 

Theorist Jodi Dean observes that political life today increasingly resembles team sports: pick a side, boo the other, stay loyal. Whether it’s a football team, a popstar, or a political party, the structure is the same. Allegiance replaces analysis. Belief becomes branding. American democracy becomes the Super Bowl— MAGA vs Blue MAGA. And pride, community, belonging – once connective – now calcify on our everything apps. The shell hardens.

HARDCORE

The online fandom was once the realm of the emotionally invested. Now, it’s the blueprint of online activity itself. Algorithms flatten everything from Addison Rae edits to genocide-denial TikToks into belief systems that no longer rely on doctrine, debate, or institutions. They’re distilled into aesthetics, vibes, and virality. The transformation is complete.

Belief is no longer felt, it’s manufactured by comments, by subreddits, or by what Trump thinks of the latest American Eagle ad. The same cultural logic that fuels stan wars also powers digital Zionism, the manosphere, and QAnon conspiracies: filters, hashtags, flags, and language. Hindu supremacists post ethno-supremacist infographics in pink Canva fonts, Andrew Tate sells hustle-bro dogma as masculinity gospel. The tone shifts, but the mechanics stay the same. And so, everything from your most insignificant interests to your moral principles becomes entangled in your online feed—your digital identity. 

And when this identity calcifies, the consequences can be brutally real. Think of the 6 January riots in the US, born from conspiracies charged by the algorithm and overwhelmingly coordinated online. The anti-Muslim and anti-refugee pogroms in the UK last year, a direct and physical eruption of digital vigilantism endorsed by Tommy Robinson and other far-right figures. Călin Georgescu’s surge in the Romanian elections, fuelled almost entirely by TikTok. Or the Hindutva project in India, spread through hashtags and WhatsApp groups rife with misinformation and Islamophobia, rationalising the occupation of Kashmir, and encouraging the targeting of Pakistani civilians under the guise of national unity. The list of political and cultural flashpoints produced by the algorithm and digital fandoms is already long, and it grows every day.

This is what happens in a deregulated, unaccountable world where public trust has collapsed, where institutions are in ruins and survival demands curating identity over clarity of thought. As literary critic Fredric Jameson famously noted, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. So people increasingly begin to cling to ideology not as a system of thought, but as an aesthetic posture, even when the ideology is anti-capitalist. It’s something Naomi Klein wrote about many years ago, during the internet’s age of innocence. “We are not identities to be marketed. But the logic of capitalism forces us to act like we are,” the author wrote in No Logo. Unsurprisingly, this has only proliferated in the years since the book was published in 1999. 

In the 2020s, political engagement is loyalty to people and ideology. And so, even the ‘good’ fandoms – liberal TikTok, Blue MAGA, carousel activism – often mirror the very digital authoritarianism they claim to resist. As Lorenz pointedly asserts: “If Kamala Harris tells her supporters that we need to obliterate Gaza, they’re going to go along with it because they have no belief system.” The performative aggression of Blue MAGA, where loyalty to figureheads overrides any meaningful policy critique, is virtually indistinguishable from Trumpism in the logic of digital cultism. 

“Both political parties in America are conservative. We have no progressive political party,” adds Lorenz. In that moral vacuum, resistance becomes a brand, dissent a spectacle—and political engagement eventually collapses into hashtag partisanship. Because online fandoms, at their most hardcore, now thrive on moral binaries, purity, and affective manipulation. There’s no space for contradiction. You’re in, or you’re blocked. You stan, or you’re suspect. And the more precarious the world becomes – the hotter the planet burns, the wider the wealth gap stretches, the smarter the algorithm grows – the more totalising and addictive the fandom becomes. All that’s solid, once again, melts into the feed.

The hardcore essence at the heart of today’s online fandoms is a response to that chaos. A coping mechanism that mutates into dogma. A religion without prophets, but with platforms. What begins as fitness tips or fancams becomes pipeline and purge. Every absurdity is weaponised. Every community is a potential militia. 

JUST KEEP WATCHING

The fandoms orbiting our digital lives no longer depend on belief in any traditional sense. You don’t actually have to think Sydney Sweeney is a eugenicist or believe that Brigitte Macron is a man. What matters isn’t the truth of the claim, but the perception of what engaging with it signals about you. 

And what does resistance look like when irony is already baked into the machinery? When mockery is monetised? When even your criticism of the thing loops you right back to the thing? “Everything has become hyper-optimised to extract maximum profit from everyone,” explains Lorenz. “These platforms are not good substitutes for the actual community.” But that’s exactly what has been engineered into what Basar would call “the new new normal”.

So, where does this leave the future of digital fandom? The continuous rise of AI (with all its opportunism and deregulation) and its increasingly troubling role in digital culture (@Grok, is this real?) coupled with the relentless algorithmification of social media as our tech overlords bow to Trump will only drive the hostility of online life deeper into Dante’s digital Inferno. Could it even be that we will soon look back at today’s chaos with nostalgia?

After all, it was only five years ago that Instagram Reels was released. A couple of years ago, brain rot as we now know it did not exist. Before it became X, Twitter felt indispensable to millions who then abandoned it almost overnight. With unregulated ‘development’ comes uncertainty and unpredictability—you only need to look at Grok as an example. How AI and algorithms reshape online activity, and even government policies, remains to be seen. But it’s safe to say things won’t get better or safer. We may find ourselves forced to opt out en masse in a few years (if we’re not shepherded into yet another metaverse, complete with its own fandoms and cults, that is).

But, right now, there’s no exit button—only the illusion of distance, the fantasy of disinterest, the delusion that you’re not really involved. And after you finish reading (or skimming, more likely) this piece, you might instinctively pick up your phone and open TikTok, where the latest celebrity controversy awaits. Then you’ll head to the comments to see who’s saying what. Maybe Twitter next. Or Twitch? Just to check what your favourite influencer thinks. It’s fine. That’s just how we worship at the altar of content.