How 'Heated Rivalry' fans took over the internet

There's something different about the "Heated Rivalry" online fandom from what I typically see — something strange brewing in the feeds, something I haven't seen in a long time, or maybe ever.

It's easy for a topic to suddenly take over my Instagram Reels or TikTok feeds — those algorithms seem so sensitive that interacting with just a handful of posts on a topic can instantly send you down a rabbit hole. What made me realize that "Heated Rivalry" fandom was breaking through to some new level was that it managed to take over my X feed. X tends to be far more resistant to change on the "For You" feed, and seems to think I always want to see the most awful people saying the most infuriating things.

And yet in the dead week between Christmas and New Year's, something finally broke through — "Heated Rivalry." Videos, edits from the show, memes, jokes, discussion, breathless fanning out.

Finally, something dragged my X feed out of the turgid mud. That's when I understood the show had broken containment — normies and people who don't usually act thirsty online were suddenly enlisting in the fan army.

'Heated Rivalry' fandom has broken out of normie containment

"Heated Rivalry," a show about a secret romance (with a lot of explicit sex scenes) between professional hockey players, showed up with little promotion on HBO in November, and it's been a surprise hit. The romance is between two men, but the fans are, in large part, straight women (although there's also plenty of queer fans); I find this not too complicated to understand: It's sexy, it's romantic, there's yearning, hot guys, high production values, and pacing to make the six episodes easy to rip through. What I'm observing in the countless posts of video edits of the characters exchanging glances and kisses is that people are enjoying this as a safe excuse to be horny on main.

The show's breakout stars, Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, are charismatic and slightly under-media-trained in interviews. The fact that Storrie and Williams were relatively unknown actors before the show has actually helped fuel the fan excitement, my colleague Callie Ahlgrim observed.

"Heated Rivalry" fandom has grown so big and fast that it is breaking all the previous "rules" that were in place about how fandoms operate, as well as where they're posted and who sees the content— a sort of Cambrian explosion of a new fandom is emerging. The posts are not tucked away on Tumblr or fanfiction site Archive of Our Own, existing purely for the superfans who seek it out like horny Gollums; it's taking over the TikTok and Instagram feeds of normies who post under their real names.

Fandoms have always been online

To understand better what's going on, I spoke with Yvonne Gonzales, a doctoral candidate in communications with a focus on fanfiction at USC Annenberg. "Something unique is happening where 'Heated Rivalry' has lit a bunch of different fires in a bunch of different places to build the fandom that we're seeing right now, Gonzales told me. "Which feels very networked in a way that is less connected than historically they have been."

Fandom has always been a major part of the fabric of the internet. Kaitlyn Tiffany writes in the book "Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It" that "there is no such thing as fan internet, because fan internet is the internet." It's nearly impossible to go on social platforms without encountering some pop stans (Swifties, Barbz, BTS Army, and so on). Platforms like Reddit, Tumblr, and X have long had thriving fandoms for TV shows like "Supernatural" or "Twilight". A big chunk of early '90s message board internet was dedicated to "X-Files" fandom.

Platforms and tech in 2026 are making the fandom different

Ultimately, the "Heated Rivalry" online fandom is mainly a bunch of people posting online about how they enjoyed a popular show. That's not new or radical. But there is something new happening that's shaped by the tech and media landscape of this particular moment.

For one thing, the types of fandom posts — specifically video edits — are so easily understood and familiar now, and the tools to create edits are so accessible, that there's a new layer of "deep-frying" around them, taking it to a new point where it's only recognizable to someone deep within the fandom.

Like, to be able to understand this TikTok, you have to be several layers deep already:

There's bizarre new ground being broken in signal transmission, too. I keep seeing people chatter cryptically about a "Google Drive edit." I Googled to find it (you can do this yourself, I won't link). Sure enough, it was an edited version of the most explicit scenes, apparently too hot for social platforms and only to be shared by fans around under the cover of cloud storage. I had to chuckle at the ingenuity.

Our current moment on platforms with algorithms favors video, easy access to video editing tools to make these edits, and a streaming television ecosystem where a show could get added to distribution with just a few weeks' notice is what has led us to what's happening right now.

Me? I'm all for it. I, like many people, would far prefer to see videos of sexy actors than engage with whatever awful thing is happening in the real world right now. Enjoy!