yeah no...this has been going on for a very long time. my first fic posted online was in 1999 and I definitely got weird comments. people were mostly positive but still aggressively enthusiastic about trying to influence the direction of the fic or any future fic.

it's possible a lot of people just didn't see this behavior in the wild for that brief chunk of time between when FF.net banned adult content and AO3 came up, when fics were either on independent shrines, forums, or LJ. and if they didn't see it happen, they also didn't see people react to it by calling out that behavior.