Video killed the fanfic star

Y/N deserves better than AI-generated slop

OpinionsSafa Hachi — Published November 10, 2026 0 minutes

I couldn't tell you the plot of most of the fanfiction I read. A lot of it was smut, admittedly. But I could tell you I had a pretty elevated reading level for someone in elementary school.

Not to toot my own horn, but some of the smartest people I know were reading fanfiction from a young age. We were learning new words, developing our imaginations and engaging with the media we loved long before we knew we were building literacy skills. Who knew this would all be possible from being in a secret relationship with Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds?

We could rewrite endings, explore identities or imagine relationships mainstream media never gave us, all without needing money for books or a publishing deal. Just an internet connection and an embarrassing amount of free time.

There was also something beautiful about never quite knowing who was behind the story you were reading. You could stumble across a story written by a tween that was genuinely better than something you'd find on a bookstore shelf (I'm talking about you, Colleen Hoover).

The internet has changed how we consume stories, but until recently, it felt like a person was still behind them. I remember when Episode became popular in high school, and people spent money on virtual currency to make choices in interactive stories. The format was different, but someone still had to write the storyline. The same is true for commissioned artists and short-story writers. Now, increasingly, all someone needs to do is type a prompt into an artificial intelligence (AI) tool and let it generate the story.

My TikTok feed is a fever dream of poorly fabricated AI versions of low-tier fanfic tropes: mafia bosses cheating on their wives with secretaries, the shy girl losing weight to finally win the attention of the school jock and the romantic “bond” between the bodyguard and princess of some made-up nation. 

Beyond the environmental costs of running these systems, something is depressing about automating creativity and replacing reading and writing with an endless stream of content to scroll through. 

But the problem exceeds simple brain rot. As more of our online spaces become centred around consuming content rather than creating it, the spaces where people once learned to write, experiment and share stories are also becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.

These debates matter because platforms aren't just places where we consume stories. They're also where young people discover their voices, experiment with writing and learn to share their work. If the internet is becoming increasingly hostile to certain forms of human expression while making generated content easier to produce and circulate, the next generation of readers and writers might be doomed.

We keep joking about the literacy crisis in younger kids, but we're building an internet that makes creativity and critical thinking feel optional. 

Somewhere, a teenager capable of writing the next great novel is currently working on a Charlie Swan x Carlisle Cullen fanfiction. I'd rather wait for that great piece of literature than see another crappy AI-generated story about fruit cheating on each other.

This article originally appeared in Volume 47, Issue 5, published November 10, 2026.