Fandom

A fandom is what happens when an audience starts talking to each other instead of only to you. It produces fan art, edits, wikis, subreddits, Discord servers and a shared vocabulary, and it carries on between uploads. The difference from an audience is direction. An audience receives; a fandom makes things.

It is the strongest asset a creator can have and the least controllable one. You can feed it by naming things, repeating running jokes and giving people somewhere to gather, and you cannot manufacture it or steer where it goes. Fandoms also turn on creators, and the same intensity that made them valuable is what makes that hurt.