in this report i talk about... -how institutional failure has led to the success of independent outlets (podcasts,substacks,patreons) as an alternative for people looking to form a media-consumption-diet-turned-peer-group -how those independent outlets are then pressured to fulfill the role of the institutions that came before them by recreating consensus worldviews/endorsement networks -how the contentious nature of building these endorsement networks leads to conflict and resentment (how the oversharing and co-signing that builds up the outlet is the same thing that inevitably causes it trouble) -formation of “Negative Fandoms”, or places where people congregate on social media to relentlessly criticize the object of their fandom -conflict is the content, all the different things made in response to a post are an inseparable extension of whatever content initially provoked them to be created -the content hierarchy of appreciation, guilt, and conflict