*puts on her ranting boots*

I know that sometimes it feels like fandom ceases to be a collection of different people with different opinions about a common interest, and becomes more like some kind of hive mind groupthink place. If that's true, then the hive mind of Bleach is a kid with obsessive-compulsive drawers who meticulously labels every drawer in his kitchen, each of which contains special holders for whatever utensils or other items go inside. In Bleach fandom, there is no such thing as a drawer labeled "Misc."

This is entirely my personal view and not something I would try to enforce upon fandom, but here's a little guide I've made just now to answer the question of whether you should start a new community for the pairing you just love.

1. Do you like this pairing?
2. Do other people like this pairing?
3. More than ten?
4. Are they all on your friends list?
5. Does this community offer anything that cannot already be found easily elsewhere?
6. Are you aware that creating a comm will not in fact drastically increase fic or art output?
7. Hit yourself in the head with a shovel.
8. Do you still want to make the community?
9. Make the community.

For the sharp-eyed Bleachfen on my flist, yes, this was prompted by the brand-spankin' new bya_ulqui community, but I have nothing against the pairing in particular and I bear no ill will when it comes to the mods. I am just so fucking tired of Bleach fandom's need to divide as if on a cellular level. Pairing comms for the more popular pairings make sense. They're always in business, and people who don't like them would probably get annoyed by all the traffic. They even make sense for pairings that are low traffic but still keep chugging instead of going dormant.

But seriously, why make a new comm instead of using the ones we have? Did asterisk_plus and bleach_yaoi and hell, even bleach_het suddenly turn invisible? Especially when it comes to pairings of characters that haven't even met or don't already have crack-loving fans. Nine and a half times out of ten, having a comm for a certain pairing isn't going to prompt new stuff for the pairing. They almost always end up with a small flurry of activity and then die.

It doesn't bring fans together. It's more likely to divide the fandom because once a pairing comm exists, people start feeling like that's the place where everything for that pairing should go-so either the audience is drastically reduced because it's a crack comm, or they just crosspost it-which makes the pairing comm redundant.

What happened to communities bringing fandom together instead of spreading it out?