Vivziepop.
This was back in early 2016, so while she did have a small fandom, it was long before everyone started to join the bandwagon. Now I tend to stay away from Hazbin and Helluva fans. And just fans of her stuff in general?
Exactly what the title said. What popular and mainstream things were you (and still are) a fan of before they hit the mainstream and exploded into popularity?
I'm admittedly curious about what things you guys are the OGs of.
RadiantRaindragon You're right! Awakening is often credited for full on saving Fire Emblem from full on cancellation (at least in the west, as far as I recall), on top of other things. It did better then anyone expected it to and blew up the franchise in popularity by a lot.
I guess I can also say Fire Emblem? I got Shadow Dragon when it was newer and remember being really hyped up for Awakening to come out. Although, I'm very thankful Fire Emblem is cool now, because... it took how long to get any figures of Marth?? (Now someone do a Chrom scale, please lmao.)
mo dao zu shi comes to mind, i'd say? if it would be considered 'cool'/mainstream enough at least, idk. it was already super popular in china and stuff, and i'm only very passively into it nowadays technically, so idk how much it counts exactly, but i believe i first got into it somewhere around in 2017? i found it on novelupdates and checked out a few chapters before the point where the main translation group had started with it. was only sorta casually interested by that point, but i was pretty thoroughly obsessed by the time the donghua was announced, and pretty closely watched for a while as it went from this obscure chinese thing (in the west at least) to something i'd see around all the time even when not looking for it at all lol
Popee the performer I think? I remember hearing about it when it was super unheard of and just binge watched the entire series lol (I still do sometimes! Unironically a good time waster if you have nothing to watch). Then down came the hundreds of ship art after the fandom blew up in popularity 🥲👍
Idk if this counts but didn’t DBH barely gain any popularity in 2018 and then suddenly skyrocketed in 2019-2020 or did I just black out during that time? I swear tons of popular let’splayers played it but it just emedietly flopped out of attention after a few months? I’ve always stayed a fan of it cause that game is genuinly amazing
ill prob add more here if I can think of anything else
It's kind of hard for me to tell what is me liking something "before it was cool", or what is just me liking something without realising there was an active fanbase, and then only discovering that fanbase way after I was already interested in said thing, and then made the false assumption that I liked it "before it was cool" when really I was just unaware of the fanbase. Anyway, that being said...
1. Jack Stauber. I'm not really sure when his songs became.. "cool"? But I knew of his songs since late 2018-early 2019. It feels like there has been a massive explosion in popularity in his songs since then (because of TikTok turning his songs into memes n stuff). I'm not sure tho, maybe by the time I liked him he was already considered "cool", I wouldn't know.
2. Animaniacs. They are super popular now because of the reboot, but I did already like the OG cartoon years before the reboot came out.
3. Pokemon Black & White. I remember back in the midst of videos making fun of the games because "durr it's the game with the garbage bag Pokemon and the ice cream Pokemon" and it used to make me so mad. I got in so many arguments, haha. Now that it's considered nostalgic, there are a bunch of memes about it and stuff and NOW it's actually become a common opinion to say that B/W are the best Pokemon games. I remember when that used to be a controversial opinion you'd get in heated internet arguments over tho. Lol.
4. The Moomins. I already liked The Moomins years before Moominvalley was released and made it suddenly popular.
5. EDIT: Can't believe I forgot to say the most major one! Furbys! Between the years of 2016 and 2018 I used to collect Furbys, and I was obsessed with them. People thought I was weird. Seeing others with Furby OCs was very rare. At some point within these past years, Furbys exploded in popularity, especially with custom ones like "Long Furbys" and such. Now there are TONS of Furby OCs (or.. Furbysonas I guess) and the interest seems a lot more widespread. Except.. I stopped caring about this interest way before they skyrocketed in popularity again. So.. that kind of sucks I can't join in on it now that it's actually trendy.
Hazbin Hotel. I'm not an OG Vivziepop fan but I've kept an eye on Hazbin Hotel since I learnt of it from Sabersparks' channel, way before the pilot aired, including reading some comments, the comics, the behind-the-scenes trivia on characters etc. I don't participate in the fandom or anything, but I find vicarious enjoyment in watching an indie artists passion project coming together.
Minecraft. Been playing since beta 1.8 (2011). Obligatory "the community was so much better back in the day".
Slenderman, of all things. I wasn't in the SomethingAwful forums that spawned that guy, but I frequented /x/ a lot in 2009-2010 and remember how it spread and how everyone was talking about Marble Hornets. In particular I remember folks trying to play along to the myth, pretending that Slenderman was real. He didn't have a wikipedia article back then, so someone made a fake one linking him to some older german myth and screenshotted it before it was taken down. There was also a bit of a movement to make "/x/'s own creepy monster", which didn't get off the ground though. I was surprised when Slenderman suddenly gained widespread mainstream popularity in the rest of the web a couple years later, but I don't mind - it feels like watching that old friend from your teenage years suddenly make it big.
out of things that have already been posted in this thread, danganronpa, homestuck (though i don't like it much anymore), fire emblem and pokemon BW lol
DR was already blowing up on tumblr when i started it, at least in my circles, around april 2013. but now it's like 2 steps away from mainstream and its so surreal? i can tell when someone is a newer fan bc they will use the english localization names instead of the ones that we used back in the day bc at the time only fan translations existed x') being a newer fan isn't bad or anything, it's just kinda funny to me
homestuck i actually only heard of by chance, and i remember checking it out for a few panels and being like "aw it isn't actually a game :(" and just left GJKFDJKGF i only got into it proper when a friend at the time told me about it, that was around late 2010 i think? (i remember [S] jade: enter had just come out around then) watching it grow so much over the next few years was also very surreal. i was one of those annoying fans LOL looking back some things in it were... not very good, but i still think of the memories fondly since it was such a big part of my life for a while
fire emblem, i got sacred stones at the store in a 2-pack of GBA games (the other one was i think the Marble Madness/Klax combo game) when i was a kid, i'm not good at older FE at all but i loved it. i didn't really play any of the other games up until awakening came out, which... for better or for worse, changed the series forever. there are pros and cons i have about it, i'm rather mixed, but overall i liked it.
im not sure this even counts since it's still pretty niche but i don't think it's been mentioned yet, zero escape. i played 999 right when it came out bc the same friend that told me about homestuck told me about that too. at the time it was so obscure and the thought of a sequel ever coming out seemed very unlikely. i thought and still do think that it was one of the best stories i've ever experienced, definitely recommend (at least 999, i have... mixed feelings about the other games)
pokemon bw i feel pretty much exactly the same as @\SherbetToons said
edit: oh also, mlp:fim, not as much of a story there but i liked it during season 1 and people would complain that it was a show only for small girls which made me upset LOL. i liked it up until season 4
i liked eurobeat before the recent meme revival (more specifically, i liked it since the previous wave of memes around 2009-10)
Re: Vivziepop- eyo other older fans! Like @GORDIE I also backed off after some of the controversies (admittedly it was hard to follow & pick apart what's true at times). + the current Vivziepop fandom has a lot of Minors? While Hazbin & Helluva Boss aren't the most 'mature' adult cartoons it's still something I'd feel more comfortable talking about w/adults, not kids (same goes for other adult cartoons, but Vivzie's fandom just has a lot more minors than the fandoms for shows like Bojack, or Futurama for example).
Also, Zoophobia is one of the things that got me into making comics! iirc it's one of the first webcomics I've read & I wanted to do a comic with that style & polish lol. Can say my recent stuff looks way different though
OT: Breakcore/Mashcore/Speedcore (and similar genres tbh). It's become a lot more mainstream lately. Even though I wasn't originally bothered by it, it does somewhat get on my nerves? Like I don't want to gatekeep bc these genres were my shit when I was growing up, but it's really annoying seeing one of my favorite things now being associated with things that make me uncomfortable ('kidcore' & 'kiddie' aesthetics specifically...) But idk i can just say I like other subgenres to avoid that association. Wouldn't say I'm an OG though since I discovered these genres in 2013-14? But still the stuff I grew up with & even the aesthetics were different. Definately a lot edgier