I did get into this fandom due to a juggernaut fic being recced on FFA, but I also transitioned to my own team very quickly, and some of the first stories that I read and loved and that kept me in the fandom were rare pairs for rare teams. So I think how much community you feel or felt as a result of popular ships probably varied a lot and may not have been there much at all for some rare pair shippers. For me, yeah, sure, I probably got some comments from people who also read popular teams and who were okay reading for other teams as well, but I also got negativity from popular pairing shippers and, in some cases, an epic fuck ton of OTT shit, so my whole experience in this fandom has been either not having a community, only having one anon, or wandering around trying to find people to talk to around the perimeter of things.