1. I don't know that fandom is *that* much younger than it ever was - I started in online fandom on FictionAlley, and that was both very young and very shipping-focused. And actually Hermitcraft fandom, which I'm currently reading a lot in, skews significantly older than DSMP but is still very gen.
I think it's definitely partly true that fans of different ages are mixed up more in the age of AO3, though. And youngsters are different than they were back in my day! I think part of it's the general shift back toward prudery but also I think like, when I started, shipping at all was kind scandalous and dangerous when you were twelve or fourteen (...partly because there was no way to avoid stumbling on explicit rapefic half the time), slash shipping even moreso, and that was part of the appeal for young people. These days I feel like it doesn't have that same feeling, shipping of all sorts is super mainstream and passe, so it may not have quite the same kind of appeal for young fans.
2. I would like to say it's down to aroace people being cool now (and that's probably some of it) but a lot of the & fic I'm seeing doesn't identify as ace. (even in cases where it would make a lot of sense for the characters.) But I think that sort of connects to my second-to-last point, that in general there's a growing sense that pinning everything on falling in exclusive romantic love with The One is not really that great when it's your only culturally available narrative - and some of that comes from aro people but some of it is from poly and some of it is just that the queer community as a whole has never really been that normative about that kind of narrative as wider culture, like "this person is my life partner even though we broke up years ago and exclusively have sex with other people" I feel like was pretty accepted in the gay/lesbian community for a long time? And I think some of that wider range of possibilities is leaking out to fandom culture.
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I think it's definitely partly true that fans of different ages are mixed up more in the age of AO3, though. And youngsters are different than they were back in my day! I think part of it's the general shift back toward prudery but also I think like, when I started, shipping at all was kind scandalous and dangerous when you were twelve or fourteen (...partly because there was no way to avoid stumbling on explicit rapefic half the time), slash shipping even moreso, and that was part of the appeal for young people. These days I feel like it doesn't have that same feeling, shipping of all sorts is super mainstream and passe, so it may not have quite the same kind of appeal for young fans.
2. I would like to say it's down to aroace people being cool now (and that's probably some of it) but a lot of the & fic I'm seeing doesn't identify as ace. (even in cases where it would make a lot of sense for the characters.) But I think that sort of connects to my second-to-last point, that in general there's a growing sense that pinning everything on falling in exclusive romantic love with The One is not really that great when it's your only culturally available narrative - and some of that comes from aro people but some of it is from poly and some of it is just that the queer community as a whole has never really been that normative about that kind of narrative as wider culture, like "this person is my life partner even though we broke up years ago and exclusively have sex with other people" I feel like was pretty accepted in the gay/lesbian community for a long time? And I think some of that wider range of possibilities is leaking out to fandom culture.