Anime and videogame communities have the potential to do this but just... Don't. Not without the push that comes from building a community into something new.
Very specific examples are hard to recall but I would say this happens in videogames with modding communities often. When a game becomes so old that it no longer has content, no longer has artist interest, no longer has any fanbase creating content or even memes about that game anymore... The community has to come from something right? In order to keep a community they have to form some sort of identity around something that is not the core game anymore.
Modding communities form around a love of the game, then they create mods and form identities around both the game and the mods. Then eventually the game itself dies off and mods become so sparse that in order for the community to "live" its members push to build an identity together around all the other interests they have. This push comes from not wanting the community to die, because they like it, they're invested in it. And this creates a pocket community that is now divorced from its original content.
All communities have the potential for this to occur but it doesn't naturally occur in large communities easily because the incentive doesn't exist - "I don't want this community to die" - that incentive is what causes community members to push for building the group around things other than the original content usually. In CTH's case this push just came from the sort of atmosphere of shooting the shit and mutual interests with no clear push to keep the community "on topic" so it went wild.
The same pattern can be extrapolated out to just about any community that forms around a content source though. The community either dies without that content source or its members decide they don't want their community to die and take on the effort to build something that exists beyond just the content source.
Anime and videogame communities have the potential to do this but just... Don't. Not without the push that comes from building a community into something new.
Very specific examples are hard to recall but I would say this happens in videogames with modding communities often. When a game becomes so old that it no longer has content, no longer has artist interest, no longer has any fanbase creating content or even memes about that game anymore... The community has to come from something right? In order to keep a community they have to form some sort of identity around something that is not the core game anymore.
Modding communities form around a love of the game, then they create mods and form identities around both the game and the mods. Then eventually the game itself dies off and mods become so sparse that in order for the community to "live" its members push to build an identity together around all the other interests they have. This push comes from not wanting the community to die, because they like it, they're invested in it. And this creates a pocket community that is now divorced from its original content.
All communities have the potential for this to occur but it doesn't naturally occur in large communities easily because the incentive doesn't exist - "I don't want this community to die" - that incentive is what causes community members to push for building the group around things other than the original content usually. In CTH's case this push just came from the sort of atmosphere of shooting the shit and mutual interests with no clear push to keep the community "on topic" so it went wild.
The same pattern can be extrapolated out to just about any community that forms around a content source though. The community either dies without that content source or its members decide they don't want their community to die and take on the effort to build something that exists beyond just the content source.