Today I want to talk about the internet phenomenon known as SHIPS.

At least, if you watch YouTube.

So, for those of you who don’t know, ship is modern slang for “Thinking two characters on any given show/movie/ or book series, should be together in a romantic relationship, thought the rare person may use the term for friendships also.” (Personal definition.) It’s relationship  mayhem in some places

Usually shows are the worst for shipping. Too many diverse characters who may have a heartfelt moment or two per season, and it can get pretty annoying trying to figure out if the show actually intends for them to be together. Even harder when often show writers are swayed by fan reactions.

Shipping is the bane of some internet surfer’s existence online. And with good reason, I’m not against shipping, but there are huge problems with it.

You might ask why I’d even bother writing about something so stupid. And my answer would be, shipping can be stupid, but it also tells you a lot about what people take seriously, what they look for in relationships, what’s on their mind 24/7, and what kind of standards they might have, particularly in their viewing pleasures.

You cant ell some people who watch porn are the ones leaving shipping comments.

Also, gay and lesbian ships have become unavoidable. Even when each character in question is confirmed to be straight, in a different relationship, and perfectly happy. Shipping is not rational for many people.

The problem is, we can all laugh when it’s a show (or roll our eyes) but unfortunately, people often are irrational in real life as they are online. Many people date with about as much discretion as they ship. So I think shipping may tell us plenty about what passes for romance nowadays.

Lewd humor and jokes and porny comments are hardly a new form of substituting for romantic love. IT’s as old as the hills. (Read any Shakespeare Romantic Comedy if you don’t believe me.) However, thanks to the internet, you can now find people like that mixed in evenly with people who are just genuinely having fun and enjoying the content. I’m starting to think some shippers just don’t enjoy anything till they sexualize it.

Aside from being gross, it often disrespects and minimizes the message a show may be trying to communicate. It often saddens and disgusts me to see a heartfelt scene between friendly characters, and to find it reduced to sexual subtext by fans. Fans, who quite frankly, couldn’t care less if they ruin the video for anyone else.

Now, the simplest solution is not to read the comments, but many people read comments to ask questions, and see some interesting feedback or innocent humor. Also to communicate with the channel host, which there may be some good reasons for. Yet they’ll see this other stuff too, and some of it is hard to forget.

I won’t give any examples here for that very reason, I’m sure you can fill in the blank form experience.

Some people just don’t give a rip whether you want  certain ideas in your mind or not, and they can be the most infuriating to encounter, that’s in real life too. It’s like how some people don’t care if you want them to cuss in front of you or your kids. An attitude of consideration for other people would, if adopted by everyone in the world, wipe cursing and inappropriate humor off the face of the earth.

Shipping can reveal the worst in humanity, and how shallow we can be. And how corrupt. It’s not all that uncommon to see people shipping siblings with each other…or people and animals…yeah….

I really don’t know what more to say on that, except that if this is becoming acceptable, even in fiction, what have we lost?

I really think as far the porn part of this goes, anyone using fictional characters for that is taking them way too seriously. And yet, not seriously enough.

If all someone’s honest art means to you is a sex object…why even watch it? And I have a hard time believing anyone who justifies that kind of attitude really treats real people with much more respect.

What you think, and what you imagine, it is not separated from your character. You are what you think, and what you dream, as much as if not more than you are what you do for a living and school.

One might wonder why I don’t talk about how unrealistic shipping can be, since fictional relationships are famously portrayed as better than real life. My answer would be: Not in this case.

In the case of YouTube shipping, no, it’s never better than real life when it’s what I’ve been talking of. In fact it’s much, much worse, than many people’s reality would be. I’ve seen people endorse a sadistic, abusive relationship…I guess they get a kind of pleasure out of it.

The problem worsens because the more of that you see, the more you find it enjoyable, and not horrifying. The whole trap of using art to change minds is in what it makes look appealing, even if the real life experience would not be so.

And guess what, it’s not usually the victims whose minds are influenced by this, it’s the perpetrators. It’s far easier to be deluded into thinking something is natural and pleasurable when you’r the one doing it to someone else, not when it’s done to you. Isn’t that just the way with human beings?

Stealing might look admirable until you get stolen from. Punching looks cool until you get punched.That’s not the worse of it either.

And I couldn’t close this article without saying something about the HATE wars.

I don’t take what people say to be online to be particularly serious. Good or bad, they know nothing about me. But some people do take it seriously, and others will still let out a lot of venom and aggression toward people that seems unhealthy at best…and out of control at worst. 

It’s pretty dumb to tear someone down over a fictional relationship. To have a “one true pairing” that you will not give up on, even after all’s been written and done. As much as I hate some ships, I don’t want to destroy the people who support them.

I find it odd that anyone takes it seriously enough to do so. However, I do really like some ships, And I even think they can be beneficial, for reasons I’ll expound upon in part 2

Until next post–Natasha.