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Notes -
Consider the ensluttification of Twitch. Humans are naturally horny, and every subculture that doesn't actively fight against it will inevitably succumb to the vicious cycle of more and more fanservice being normalized.
Sex was so central to otakuism in the late 1990s that Tamaki Sato could write Beautiful Fighting Girl, a book which proposed that the essence of anime obsession was sexual attraction to fictional characters. This was very controversial, of course, but the guy certainly had a wealth of material with which to make his point. There must be a couple hundred Martian Successor Nadesico doujins out there. Now, a lot of those were funny as well as sexy, and they were basically all made by people who were interested in the anime first and the sex second. This seems similar to the Twitch problem - titty streamers are not interested in video games, the median fan of a given anime is not interested in anime.
I have seen the cycle of which you speak consume various anime communities (along with other processes running in tandem), but this has always occurred after an invasion of more normal people who have no interest in the medium weakens the structure of the whole group. (Or after the well of discussion has truly run dry - Evangelion has been so thoroughly dissected, for example, that the only thing left to talk about is Red vs. Blue). Weirdos will post lolis and "official art" all day, then turn around and explain the entire history of Group TAC or Fujihiko Hosono. There's nobody to discuss the latter items with when everyone in a given sector of the internet consumes anime in 10-second bursts or has seen Patlabor 2 but not Patlabor On TV.
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