What Internet Fandoms and Communities Can Tell Us About 2025NEWS | 23 December 2024This year, online communities drove news cycles about everything from moldy Lunchable knock-offs and the death of a squirrel named Peanut to the 2024 US election.
More often than not, the internet has been the progenitor of movements, changes, and trends in the real, physical world. As we close out 2024, I wanted to fill you in on some of the online communities I’m keeping an eye on and how they may influence culture, politics, and public health around the world.
Let’s talk about them.
This is an edition of the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
What’s on My 2025 Internet Radar
There is not enough time in the world for me to list all of the absurd subreddits, Discord chats, and TikTok communities I follow to get a sense of how the conversations everyday people are having are influencing our politics. But I wanted to at least list a few that have been top-of-mind for me recently.
Beauty and Fashion TikTok
Going into the new year, I’m most interested in seeing trends that emerge out of the beauty and lifestyle communities on TikTok and Instagram. In a previous newsletter, I wrote about how themes like “quiet luxury” and “old money” aesthetics on TikTok signaled a Trump win long before polls ever opened. And already, I’ve noticed conservative backsliding in these spaces with Trump’s return to power.
For The Atlantic this week, Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote about how “edtwt” (eating disorder Twitter) is growing on X now that Elon Musk has eradicated any form of trust and safety on the platform. I’ve noticed an uptick in “thinspo”—imagery that encourages unhealthy body images and disordered eating—on TikTok as well. There’s the usual Olsen twin obsession and extremely low-calorie diet plans circulating on the platform, but that content has traditionally been holed away from the generic TikTok user.
Now, my feed is filled with popular beauty influencers giving “health” advice that amounts to disordered eating. The Make America Healthy Again community, or what is essentially a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fandom, is filled with junk science that goes as far as saying vegetables are toxic. I’m afraid that the same conservative cultural conformity that helped reelect Trump could revive the disordered eating trends that have hurt so many women and girls and return them to the mainstream.
Elon Musk Fandom
As an unelected official, Musk has only ever had three groups of people to hold him accountable for anything—shareholders, fanboys, and maybe, sometimes the government.
For the most part, the first two believe Musk can do no wrong. Throughout the presidential campaign, many of Trump’s most ardent fans joined the Musk fandom as well, lessening the odds that the government will be subjecting him and his businesses to scrutiny anytime soon. But these Trump fans will always support him before anyone else, even if the other person is the president-elect’s “first buddy.”
Since taking over X, they’ve demonstrated that well enough. Some of the few times Musk has walked back decisions have involved Trump fans expressing disappointment that Musk hasn’t acted like a true Trump fan himself. When Musk suggested that he wouldn’t reinstate banned pro-Trump accounts without them being reviewed by a “council,” Twitter elder Catturd bullied the billionaire into skipping the review process altogether.Author: Brenda Stolyar. Makena Kelly. Adrienne So. Eric Ravenscraft. Julian Chokkattu. Simon Hill. Boutayna Chokrane. Kat Merck. Lisa Wood Shapiro. Source
