Anyone who isn't residing on mars can describe the mass popularity of fan theory driven media such as Gravity falls, Steven universe, Five nights at Freddy's and even the illuminati jokes. Am I the only one that has noticed a huge armchair detective mindset amoung young people this decade?  Alot of games and TV shows are being made to pander to audiences whi seek deep meanings in seemingly simple plots and lore that leads to discussion. I was looking at fan Tumblrs for shows like Star vs the forces of evil and notice how the fans have been clawing around looking for hints or deeper undertones in an otherwise spongebob-esque show. For example, the time 3:57 would frequently appear in several  episodes leading fans to believe that the particular time is hinting at some future plot point. This blew to such large proportions that the show's creator took ti Twitter to dismiss assertions that the recuring time is hinting at anything and that it just saves production time to keep the time at 3:57 when clocks are featured in a scene.

I'm using this as an example along with Game/Film theory to make a point that people really are looking for high writing standards this decade in storytelling, more so than the previous decades and it's been leading to some truly interesting plots that one wouldn't expect to see amoung that given media's kind, notably Gravity falls and FNAF.

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No. I just think that social media and the Internet has made crazy psycho fandoms so much more obvious in general, that it just seems like it. Frankly, I think the late 20th century had better story lines. Maybe the children's media is more serious than that of, say, the '90s, but not the adult stuff. I also notice that the idea of "young people" watching television has also faded away. There are no longer any shows aimed at the 18-24 age range. It's been this way for years, actually. Anything that does come up tends to get cancelled quickly because the storytelling and the acting sucks!

The "fan theory" trend of the 2010s makes sense because it's consistent with the decade's prominence of hipster-think, which encourages people to look at all sorts of things more ironically than ever before, going by what they've learned through social media.

If you meant by the crappy fan theories, including the Game Theory videos, that have been around since 2010? They were annoying as hell, even by now it's getting obnoxious. I just wish this decade was already over with its godawful pop culture. It's just depressing to see these people make the most annoying videos possible, with having millions of other people watching it forever. If the 2020s doesn't make anything better, then I don't know if humanity should have mercy in the future.