![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/7acc68df-42cb-4217-9327-b01a90c5b9b3.jpeg)
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/656a9f41-6cec-4f31-a510-ab0e1b24d40f.png)
I’m not real sympathetic to the whole “Dante and Virgil were just writing fanfic” type arguments. There’s certainly a human tendency to reinterpret, but the material conditions that form the basis for the possibility of modern fandom are quite recent and projecting it backwards is something that I think is ahistorical
The earliest you can push this back as a phenomenon is probably something like the original Sherlock Holmes fandom
I work with teenagers every day and it definitely helps prevent boomerfication