Lore: The Next-Gen Search Engine Powering Fandom Obsession in the AI Era

Online fandom is entering a new era: with the launch of Lore—a search and discovery platform tailored for “obsessive fans”—the internet’s culture-defining power-users finally have a tool built just for them.

What Is Lore?

• Lore, founded by Zehra Naqvi (ex-Headline Ventures, Z List newsletter), is a fandom-first search engine and content aggregator that lets users dive deep into the internet’s rabbit holes—and track every spark of their pop culture obsession.
• Backed by Village Global and Precursor Ventures, Lore just raised $1.1M pre-seed, signaling major VC belief in next-gen discovery tools and AI-powered curation platforms.

How Lore Works: Features for the Obsession Economy

• Personalized graphs of your “obsessions” across franchises and ideas, tracking every theory, easter egg, and interpretation from Marvel movies to global pop music.
• Unique “follow the thread” controls: zoom all the way into a single theory, or out to see how fandoms connect. Monthly reports on your top communities and themes.
• Feeds update fandom news, “stan” community finds, and trending topics—with a focus on playful interaction, not just another endless social scroll.
• Lore’s UX is designed for “lurkers” and super-researchers. It’s all about delight, play, and connecting the dots instead of just doomscrolling or passive browsing.

The Big Vision: Rebuilding Joy, Not Just Search

• Unlike Perplexity, Google, or Wikipedia, Lore is for building connections across interests—not just finding answers. Think: a living index of fan theories, cultural context, and the passionate web.
• AI search engines serve transactional and information needs; Lore is inventing the “obsession graph”—allowing fans to map, revisit, and visualize their journeys through digital fandom.
• Naqvi says it’s about re-injecting “play, color, and sacred obsession” into a fractured internet, where passive consumption has replaced the creative fan energy of Tumblr and early Twitter eras.

Why This Matters: Search for the Passion Web

• Lore’s approach comes as AI-driven search tools reshape how we find, bookmark, and connect online. Algorithms curate, but Lore lets users curate themselves—putting passionate digital citizens back in control of internet discovery.
• Other platforms (Reddit, Wikipedia) remain general purpose; Lore is “built for fandoms,” providing a lurker-first, human-first workspace for the Wikipedia-ification of passion.

Looking Forward

• The platform comes out of stealth on October 6, with early testers racking up over 24,000 searches and hundreds of hours “spiraling into obsessions.”
• Lore remains invite-only but plans to roll out to broader fandom communities in early 2026, with more social, memory, and graph-powered features to come.

Lore shows that AI and the future of search are not just about facts or speed—they’re about joy, personal meaning, and the thrill of the chase. The next frontier: giving superfans the tools to map, share, and celebrate their digital obsessions… and maybe bring some magic back to the web.

Source: TechCrunch, October 3, 2025