>>150095999 (OP)
I've actually had a hypothesis about this phenomenon for a while now.
Now, I'm obviously not in a position to do any actual study on it, so this is still only hypothetical, but the idea is that as people, especially young people, form a romantic bond, these bonds don't just go away as people grow older.
The amount of old people who'll tell you about someone they fancied in their youth, even though it's more than 50 years ago, and they probably haven't even seen the person in nearly as long, is staggering.
In the olden days, characters in stories existed mostly in oral, or written form, and had a less concrete form for people to grow attached to.
So back then, if you developed a crush, your crush would grow up with you.
But with the advent of character with a more concrete appearance and personality through visual mediums, that someone could get a crush on at a young age, you'd see more and more people who still harbors an affinity for said character, even though the character wouldn't grow up with them.
This in turn likely effects their tastes, particularly their tastes in fictional characters, so as an example, if they had their crush on a younger character they might be more okay with loli stuff, or if their crush was on a teenage character, they might be okay with sexualized teen characters, but veer away from loli.
There's likely also a similar connection with the rise in other areas likely furries, monster fuckers and such.
