I do think some people view old fandom with rose-tinted glasses and seem to forget the wank explosions, the heated ship wars (old flavor), the sporking and bashing of fic as a normal "acceptable" pastime, the cliques and bad modding and sock drama, etc. etc. That has always been there or in some cases peaked in the past and is now less of an issue.
But fandom really hasn't always been like this in terms of the anti phenomenon. Like, yes, ship wars were always vicious and involved trying to come up with moral reasons why ship X is better than ship Y. But back then, even people who were deep in the trenches of the ship war conceptualized it like that: this is a ship war, I'm trying to have my ship "win" in the endgame, I'm competing with other ships, this is fandom drama/wank. Nowadays, the people who are doing the same old ship war shit don't actually conceive of themselves as engaging in a ship war and trying to compete with other fans or "win" against other fans. They just think they are engaged in a righteous campaign to promote morals in fandom and anyone who opposes them (i.e. ships a "bad" pairing they "shouldn't" like) is a bad person who is the enemy of the good. There's no self awareness and no layer of irony and no sense of friendly competition, all of which makes these people especially horrible to interact with.
There's also a LOT of anti behavior that doesn't fit the ship war mold and which I think is a new phenomenon. Like, antis get really het up about adults who ship canon gay ships in children's cartoons because the characters are teenagers. I think there's a real difference between (old style) having some random homophobe call you a sinful person for shipping a non-canon slash pairing in a kid-friendly canon and (new style) having an LGBT teenager call you a pedophile and a groomer for shipping a canon slash pairing in a kid-friendly canon. The former is someone who thinks slash pairings are categorically bad which is just "whatever, you're wrong" to me. The latter is someone who thinks slash pairings are perfectly fine except when *I* look at them with my sinful eyes and that is just... I don't know. A horrible way to treat other fans and way different from the phenomenon of having to deal with homophobes in fandom.
And like people have mentioned, different social media platforms have dramatically changed the way fans relate to each other. Like yes, moderated spaces had the tendency to have drama, bad modding, failed handover of admin positions, etc. that caused a nice space to suddenly break apart. But moderated spaces (where there are rules and codes of conduct and someone responsible for enforcing them) are a huge step up from the fandom anarchy we have now, where any rando can come at you in a public space where you're trying to share something, and harass and try to police you.
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But fandom really hasn't always been like this in terms of the anti phenomenon. Like, yes, ship wars were always vicious and involved trying to come up with moral reasons why ship X is better than ship Y. But back then, even people who were deep in the trenches of the ship war conceptualized it like that: this is a ship war, I'm trying to have my ship "win" in the endgame, I'm competing with other ships, this is fandom drama/wank. Nowadays, the people who are doing the same old ship war shit don't actually conceive of themselves as engaging in a ship war and trying to compete with other fans or "win" against other fans. They just think they are engaged in a righteous campaign to promote morals in fandom and anyone who opposes them (i.e. ships a "bad" pairing they "shouldn't" like) is a bad person who is the enemy of the good. There's no self awareness and no layer of irony and no sense of friendly competition, all of which makes these people especially horrible to interact with.
There's also a LOT of anti behavior that doesn't fit the ship war mold and which I think is a new phenomenon. Like, antis get really het up about adults who ship canon gay ships in children's cartoons because the characters are teenagers. I think there's a real difference between (old style) having some random homophobe call you a sinful person for shipping a non-canon slash pairing in a kid-friendly canon and (new style) having an LGBT teenager call you a pedophile and a groomer for shipping a canon slash pairing in a kid-friendly canon. The former is someone who thinks slash pairings are categorically bad which is just "whatever, you're wrong" to me. The latter is someone who thinks slash pairings are perfectly fine except when *I* look at them with my sinful eyes and that is just... I don't know. A horrible way to treat other fans and way different from the phenomenon of having to deal with homophobes in fandom.
And like people have mentioned, different social media platforms have dramatically changed the way fans relate to each other. Like yes, moderated spaces had the tendency to have drama, bad modding, failed handover of admin positions, etc. that caused a nice space to suddenly break apart. But moderated spaces (where there are rules and codes of conduct and someone responsible for enforcing them) are a huge step up from the fandom anarchy we have now, where any rando can come at you in a public space where you're trying to share something, and harass and try to police you.