I've been on the internet for a long time, I've seen many people come and go in a blink of an eye, especially in fandoms.
I cannot stress how sterile and saturated everything feels nowadays, I rarely sense a feel of community on most sites anymore, I feel like the longer you stay in one circle of a fan base the more likely you'll end up burning out in my opinion. With the current state of the touhou fandom I can only express disappointment towards the lack creators willing stop outside the box and make something that isn't another cutesy or "funny" meme, sure we have some fans who make some high-quality content but that pales in comparison to someone who has step outside the boundaries of is typically done in a Touhou fanwork (I think), it's just a shame sites like YouTube, Reddit or Twitter don't promote this kind of thing, people are too afraid to step outside their comfort zones.
It's a shame honestly since I do believe there are creative and inspiring fans who can make beautiful works art and yet that rarely (if not, ever) happens at all.
After my experience with Touhou on YouTube I can say that I am not optimistic for the possibilities for video makers since they pretty recycle meme formats in order to gain views or they just play it safe and make something by the books basic by making the characters cute but with no substance behind it or worse make videos pandering to the lowest common denominator and appeal to horny weebs with AMSR videos while neglecting the fact the characters would never do this in canon, I'm also tried of all the hype behind fumos since there so over hyped up by man children who pay for these overpriced plush dolls that are limited in stock anyway, you can enjoy these thing all you want but I just find all this to be ridiculous, call me a pretentious asshole all you want but when things are so depraved of humanity or decency then it becomes a problem when a fanbase loses touch with reality and becomes a joke of itself, a shell of it former self.
I feel like the whole "Less work = More points" thing on the internet has overstayed it's welcome and has done more harm than good, everything is monitored and when you do something slightly risky like say: bring up dark topics of death, trauma, mental illness, dark humor ETC. Than you're likely to meet with disapproval but it depends on how dark the subject is, I get some people are not comfortable with it but at the same time why does everyone have to be concerned with safety all the time? I swear at this point censorship is going to get so bad to the point where it's all just sparkles and rainbows on screen.
Feel free to disagree with me, honestly I wish I could write more but honestly I don't know what more I can say.