It's hard to say, it feels very "slowly then suddenly" -- but I think a big trigger was the influence of big business, and how what was primarily communal became a source of production itself (there's a quote from a book on YouTube I'll have to find--it explained things quite well.)
Solely because of my own experience I think the early-mid 00s were pivotal for the shift because of how fandom became mashed together with "regular" people. By the 10s it was no longer uncool to be super online, which was so alienating to me because I was the online nerd! And now online wasn't nerds anymore.
Theres an interesting book about how increase of scale caused the rise of race based prison gangs. Skarbek's social order of the underworld is the book. Basically before prison population surged in the 50s & 60s. The social order was something called the convict code, which was a decentralised norm based governance. This broke down as prison population increased both because of pop increase generally and a rise in willingness to imprison. This resulted in the formation of prison gangs based on race, as you need something to keep track of and skin color (both natural and tattooed) is difficult to fake. So it becomes a coordination mechanism.
Damn—now I remember reading about this not too long ago. Apparently it didn't stick in my mind, because reading more about it and bringing it up here never occurred to me.
I was trying to verbalize this initiation process and unspoken rules of fandom that were stampeded over, this explains it perfectly.
In your opinion, around what year did the stampede begin?
It's hard to say, it feels very "slowly then suddenly" -- but I think a big trigger was the influence of big business, and how what was primarily communal became a source of production itself (there's a quote from a book on YouTube I'll have to find--it explained things quite well.)
Solely because of my own experience I think the early-mid 00s were pivotal for the shift because of how fandom became mashed together with "regular" people. By the 10s it was no longer uncool to be super online, which was so alienating to me because I was the online nerd! And now online wasn't nerds anymore.
Humans' balance is a negative feedback loop that destroys itself to maybe rebuild, maybe splinter and reproduce, or maybe extinction.
Theres an interesting book about how increase of scale caused the rise of race based prison gangs. Skarbek's social order of the underworld is the book. Basically before prison population surged in the 50s & 60s. The social order was something called the convict code, which was a decentralised norm based governance. This broke down as prison population increased both because of pop increase generally and a rise in willingness to imprison. This resulted in the formation of prison gangs based on race, as you need something to keep track of and skin color (both natural and tattooed) is difficult to fake. So it becomes a coordination mechanism.
Damn—now I remember reading about this not too long ago. Apparently it didn't stick in my mind, because reading more about it and bringing it up here never occurred to me.
Might have been more apropos than the drum circle metaphor, since social media has become something in which we're all imprisoning each other. (cf. https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-instagram-pay-social-media-study-2023-11)