• by Michelle Edelman , May 29, 2026

Something happened after COVID: People went looking for each other.

Subreddits gathered thousands of members to debate obscure films. Strangers on Discord built friendships around sports teams and video games.

Distancing accelerated our search for belonging. Simultaneously, our culture became increasingly siloed. The sense of “us versus them” intensified. It’s given rise to heightened passion: You’re with us or against us, you’re a true fan or you’re not.

As the world lost stability, fandom began functioning as infrastructure. Americans turned to their chosen communities for connection and sanity. In the years since, that sense of belonging has ballooned.

Fandom now resembles a relationship, rather than media consumption. Are brands paying attention?

Reach and exposure no longer guarantee connection; people encounter content constantly without forming meaningful bonds with it.  

What fandom offers, and what brands can participate in, is repeated, ritualized, identity-reinforcing engagement that builds loyalty over time.

What's happening in these communities

Fandom runs on participation, not consumption. Fans create, contribute, argue, moderate, and organize.

Inside a fandom, you don't have to explain yourself. The shared language and references do that for you, enabling recognition and connection without prior relationships. That social shortcut matters when many traditional forms of belonging have weakened.

The cultural calendar ahead highlights the scale of this. FIFA World Cup this summer will welcome some of the most passionate fan cultures in the world.

Join, don’t own: A practical guide for brands who want in

The most common mistake brands make is treating fandom like a media channel. They identify a passionate audience, buy their way in, and push a message.

But fandoms already have rituals, norms, and language that predate brand involvement and exist independently of it. When brands try to manage those systems, fans experience it as an intrusion into a protected space.

Do your homework before you show up

Spend time listening. Read the forums. Watch what people celebrate and what they mock. Understand the language, the history, the grievances. Fans reward brands who show up as group members. They’ll punish those that are inauthentic interlopers.

Find the specific door in, not the biggest one

The marketer’s instinct is to go broad, but the communities with the deepest loyalty form around the niche. Rhode built a devoted following not by appealing to every beauty shopper, but by going deep on a specific aesthetic. Specificity makes people feel seen in a way that scale rarely does.

Be the host, not the headline

Brands that earn lasting goodwill in fan communities create the occasion, then get out of the way. Erewhon’s smoothie collaborations give fans a reason to gather with each new iteration. The brand functions as the context, not the content.

Earn the right to ask for something

Fan communities grant or withhold permission based on whether brands have demonstrated understanding and contributed value. The brands that earn advocacy spent time contributing before they started converting. That timeline feels slow by marketing standards and tends to be perfect by fandom standards.

The fans have already done the work of finding each other. The job for brands is to show up as someone worth having in the room.