No, I was actually pretty young at the time, younger than a lot of the BNFs I was hanging with who were in their late 20s and even 30s. IIRC the fics I wrote started getting traction when I was about 18 and I think I was only about 19-20 when I bailed. Most of it's long since taken down so I can't even check dates now. It all happened when I was in college and I was living on campus without a car so I really didn't have a way of meeting up with anyone and then by the time I graduated and had a car, I already had backed away from it all.
That was another thing that made it all so surreal. I was actually fairly young, closer to the age of a lot of the teen fans in our little crossover fandom than the ages of my fellow BNFs, and these people throwing tantrums were close to 10 years my senior, if not older. I think one of them was even 40 so she was twice my age.
That was part of why I felt like I couldn't handle it. I just wasn't emotionally equipped to navigate everything at that age.
Re: former fandom BNF
That was another thing that made it all so surreal. I was actually fairly young, closer to the age of a lot of the teen fans in our little crossover fandom than the ages of my fellow BNFs, and these people throwing tantrums were close to 10 years my senior, if not older. I think one of them was even 40 so she was twice my age.
That was part of why I felt like I couldn't handle it. I just wasn't emotionally equipped to navigate everything at that age.