Have you ever watched a series or a movie and thought the leads have such great chemistry on and off screen that they must be dating? Think Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s off-the-chart chemistry in A Star is Born that sparked dating rumors for months after the movie was released.
Or if you are a K-drama fan, you would have probably heard of the BinJin shippers (the name of the fandom who wishes actor Hyun Bin and actress Son Ye Jin to be together after being very taken with their characters’ love story in hit Korean drama, Crash Landing on You).
The Shipping Culture
The BinJin shippers is an example of a fandom where followers think two or more celebrities are very compatible and desire that they would be in a romantic relationship. This desire is called shipping (originated from the word relationship). Such a fandom is called a ship, and its followers are called shippers. As a result, the culture is called the Shipping Culture.
I am fascinated by the Shipping Culture, by the amount of passion and devotion shippers have in expressing their viewpoints and connecting with like-minded individuals.
Celebrity shipping can become an unhealthy obsession, and fandoms can become toxic. But that is not the topic of today’s post (let me know in the comment section if you are interested in hearing my thoughts on that).
As a content creator myself, I cannot help but observe that the Shipping Culture involves a great deal of passion (from shippers) and can be extremely controversial, which is the perfect condition for user-generated content related to this topic to thrive on social media.
How social media fuel the Shipping Culture
Because the Shipping Culture is relatively niche, chances of finding fellow shippers in real life are low. There is a natural tendency for shippers to look for online communities where they can connect with like-minded individuals and safely express their thoughts and feelings.
In these self-organized communities, there are usually two types of members: active contributors and passive consumers.
Be it Facebook groups, Reddit threads, forums, TikTok, or YouTube, active contributors are those who do the heavy lifting: looking for information related to the ship (such as analyzing the celebrities’ interactions) and compiling them into posts and videos.
On the other hand, passive consumers mainly consume and sometimes react to that information by writing comments.
Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, managed to leverage the Shipping Culture to keep its users engaged.
On Weibo, there are special discussion groups for couples ( CP 超话) that are publicly available. Anyone can search for and participate in them.
There is a wide variety of user-generated content there, from fans analyzing the couple’s interactions, coincidences in their schedules, their social media activities, their clothes, accessories, their horoscopes, and even fan fiction.
Members of the group are advised to adhere to the rules set out by the group moderators. Examples of the rules include “do not engage in fan wars with other fandoms” and “be respectful to other actors who are co-stars of the celebrities being shipped“.
For the popular ships, the discussion groups can be extremely active with members constantly publishing posts and interacting with them.
In instances where dating rumors about a pair of celebrities surge among the general public, there would be so much interest in the community that the discussion groups can show up on Weibo’s hot search.
The Shipping Culture is creating a new kind of demand
Shippers‘ primary motivation is to have their desire validated. They would like to see evidence that their ship could be real. That leads to much speculation and micro-analyzing of everything celebrities do and do not do. However, whether or not they are dating, only the celebrities themselves know.
Without access to the celebrities’ inner thoughts, some fans resort to tarot cards or energy reading to have their questions answered.
As a result, there have been a number of YouTube channels responding to this demand.
The cartomancers on YouTube can do celebrity couple readings based on their subscribers’ requests (sometimes paid) on camera, and upload them as videos on YouTube. (And yes, people are willing to purchase readings for celebrity couples of their choice.)
It is clear from the comments section that the viewers want to see if their beliefs can be validated. They rejoice when the reading implies that their favorite couple is the one true pairing, and could get upset if the reading says otherwise.
It is a pretty clever form of content marketing for the cartomancer YouTuber to advertise their service. Those who watch the videos because they are interested in a celebrity reading might end up paying for private reading for themselves.
Final Words
The Shipping Culture is a niche culture that stems from fans’ fantasy of seeing their favorite famous personalities getting romantically involved. Because it is highly contentious and sentimental by nature, members of the culture are highly invested in it.
In the age of social media, the Shipping Culture gives rise to an explosion of user-generated content on this topic. Platforms like Weibo have capitalized on the Shipping Culture to keep users engaged.
Other content creators including tarot cards and energy readers with an online presence also respond to the shippers’ need to feel validated by creating content that confirms a ship.
Yes more thoughts on shipping culture please!