Sorry for being away, I was having a nap
eevee wrote:
I have so much to say. Not just at you, melon lord, but also Skeletorsrighthand and everyone else who agreed with either of you.
- Do you feel the same way about traditional celebrities? Is shipping them wrong? For example, singers or actors?
- What about shipping straight couples? Was shipping zalfie wrong before it was confirmed canon? What about after? How about Brangelina?
I feel that way about anyone, regardless of their job. Also about straight couples, it shouldn't make a difference if they are straight or not.
Let me put it this way: Nobody can stop shipping, as a thing that's happening. Whether it's a straight couple, not straight, fictional, real, taboo, etc. What people could try to hold in is the... ways they express it sometimes.
eevee wrote:What you're saying is, if you boil it down to just the bones, is it's wrong to treat celebrities like they're not human, but rather characters. I'm going to draw a lot of parallels between how we treat Youtubers and how fans treat traditional celebrities because I don't see a huge difference.
I don't see a difference either.
It's none of my business if they are a tiny channel with 50 subs or 50 million, or a multi-billionaire celebrity. Are they a person? Am I shipping Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter or am I shipping Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett?
There's the difference.
Are Youtubers characters? That's a whole topic in itself. I would say- partly. Actors personify a character for a year or two in a set of a movie, then they are out and are their real selves. A Youtuber's persona is when the camera is rolling. However,
the entire selling point of a Youtuber is that they are documenting themselves, their life.
I've mentioned before how I view danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil as personas. And it's true, I still do. But the difference with celebrities and Youtubers is that Johnny Depp is Sweeney Todd for a year and then leaves the character behind and it remains forever in a film and for the most part, fans understand that. But even though danisnotonfire is a "persona" because Dan edits and controls what to show and what to say, when that camera is off, it will still affect him. He will always be danisnotonfire, and danisnotonfire will always have Dan Howell. What happens to Youtube comments and tumblr asks and fanfiction is not JUST to a danisnotonfire vacuum, it bleeds into real life into Dan Howell. The internet is not a separate dimension of our beings, the lines blur but it's the creators that will receive the stream of sensory data from fans.
eevee wrote:By your logic, the paparazzi is immoral. You mentioned "stalking." Does the paparazzi stalk celebrities when they follow them and take pictures of them? Is that wrong? If it's so wrong, why is it legal?
I don't agree with paparazzi either. Or stalking. Paparazzi and what they do is basically a form of stalking, that is, intense following of a person over an extended period of time, to an invasive degree. Instead of being a garden variety creepy stalker who keeps the pictures for themselves, they sell it and call it a business. The common argument is that public spaces are fair game but if a regular person can get a restraining order on a weirdo who would follow you home or wherever you go and snap photos from afar and it be considered normal to do so, then so should celebrities be treated with the same respect. There is a cultural idea of a public space: it's both an open area which means "more things are allowed" and also an area full of people which means "the boundaries of multiple humans must be respected", ie. it's rude to pee in front of other people, or to masturbate, because it's a public area.
eevee wrote:By your logic, idolizing as well as hating celebrities is immoral. "Tunnel vision." So everyone who unconditionally idolizes Beyonce or Niki Minaj is immoral. As well as everyone who hates Taylor Swift. Everyone who views celebrities in a different way they would view literally anyone on the street. I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty impossible to view celebrities as complete equals. More on that later.
You're using extreme examples to highlight simpler values.
Idolisation
"the act of worshipping blindly and to excess"
That excess and blindly part are what we need to discuss. You can hate a celebrity if you want, but that doesn't mean that your hatred and feelings gives you the right to go and key their car or harass them or bully them online or in real life. On the flip side of the coin, your positive feelings to a celeb or Youtuber does
NOT give you the right or the motive to stalk them at airports or when they are outside, or to push your feelings on them forcefully in an ask, to spam them on twitter, to impose yourself in their life and bubble.
Let me repeat this:
Your feelings, whether positive or negative, give no person the right to impose them on to another human being. Your intense romantic feelings on another human may be positive and cute but it will NEVER give you the right to impose it to them with a forced kiss. Your dislike of a person due to jealousy, envy, bad memories or whatever, will NEVER give you the right to bully them, or treat them badly.
No matter how much you admire someone and look up to them and it's okay to do so, when you impose yourself to them and to others then that becomes excessive. When a Youtuber is accused of sexual abuse and other nasty things and your first instinct is to defend them and to ignore the evidence and witness accounts, that's blind idolisation. When you hate a singer or celeb and you spend your time sending abusive, hateful or spiteful tweets, asks and messages to the person itself and to other fans of the person, then that's wrong.
It's impossible to view celebrities as equals. And they never will be. That doesn't mean they don't have the same rights!
Minorities and white people are not equals, but they both deserve respect. Taylor Swift is not my equal, but she still has the same rights to be treated respectfully that I do as a regular human being. Her lifestyle and mine are night and day but it doesn't excuse or permit me to treat her badly.
eevee wrote:By your logic, sexualizing celebrities is immoral. "look[ing] at [them] like [they] are two pieces of meat." So every magazine, poster, advertisement, movie, song, performance that relates celebrities in any way to sex, whether it be lyrics, provocative dress, provocative poses, whatever, is immoral. I'd hate to break that to the advertising industry...and the pop music industry, and Hollywood...
Yeah, I dislike sexualisation and I detest the business of selling bodies, either in a seemingly innocent fashion like music and Hollywood, to porn and dirty magazines.
Sex isn't wrong. It's the most normal thing in the world. If I, for example, have sexual thoughts about Dan, then it's a common physical response to seeing or thinking about someone I consider attractive. Does it allow me to act inappropriately at him, either through the internet or otherwise? Nope. If I wrote a fic about Dan and Phil having sex in the showers then that's most likely just a creative way for me to develop a hobby, writing, and maybe explore my sexuality and feelings in a safe way. It doesn't mean that I can delude myself into believing it's true or that I can shove it down Dan and Phil's throats. If I keep it to myself, then it's mine to peruse. If I publish it, then I want fans to enjoy it and maybe leave some feedback to help me improve. It does not mean that what I fantasise about is real, or that because it's about them that they MUST know and read about it.
If you are going about sexualisation through the feminist angle, then I'm afraid you'll get nowhere. Nobody will ever agree on this in a unanimous way because simply, confidence and sexuality are different for everybody. For a lot of women, Beyonce and Niki Minaj are role models because they own their body and their sexuality and they are confident and don't give fucks about displaying it, and they are role models because for most of the people admiring them, they have had their body or sexuality squashed out, diminished, cheapened or discouraged, and these women are symbols of ownership and power.
For other people, they look up to the "I won't stoop to acting sexy just to get ahead in life" model of thought like Annie Lennox, etc. And that's just as valid because for Annie Lennox and Joan Jett and unconventional women, they fought hard to be considered valid and equals in an industry that pushes them to reveal their body to achieve maximum success and who knows what happened behind closed doors. For these people it's a symbol that you will stoop to no one no matter how you are or who you are and your body and brain and have worth regardless of how much you show.
Two very opposing philosophies in feminism that often clash because they see the other side as a blockade to the success of their own. Annie Lennox sees Beyonce as someone who succumbed to using her body to move forward in a harsh and rough industry for women. And Beyonce might see Annie Lennox (for instance) as someone who shames her right to display her sexuality and as an outdated model of feminism because feminism right now is about displaying and
"owning". Both of these sides are perfectly valid and it just shows that we will never arrive at one conclusion because there are too many experiences that will always collide. All we can do is try to pick apart the bullshit from the diamonds and always be critical and smart.
eevee wrote:And finally, by your logic it is immoral to "ship" real people.
What is "shipping"? If you believe shipping is shoving a perceived relationship in the face of the celebrities it involves, whether that be via fanmail, in person, tweeting, whatever, then I feel you. That's pretty shitty. But let's be real. 99% of fandoms don't pull that shit.
Shipping is discussing the possibility of or logistics of a possible relationship. Between two or more fans. Talking about it. Not to the celebrity. Possibly even thinking about it by yourself, which is even less harmful.
So what you're telling me is that talking on a part of the internet about people that these people are in no way forced to read, see, or associate with or even privately in a closed chat room is inherently wrong and harmful. How could that possibly be harmful?
How about instead of telling people that thinking about a possible relationship, to themselves, or to their friends, is wrong, you attack people who are actually doing harmful things in society. Things that actually affect other people in a negative way.
Shipping is a very large grey area. There is a large spectrum. Some people just enjoy watching people interact and think "aww that's cute" and some others will harass and abuse any person that comes within feet of the person they ship. So what part of shipping are you referring to? Because one is infinitely more harmful than the other.
Also I'd say that, respectfully, you're wrong about the 99%. Dan and Phil's comment sections are... 99% Phan related. I mean let's be real, the comment section of Youtube is an unregulated Wild West, it's not the place for nuanced conversation, but if I was Dan and I put in a lot of effort to make an entertaining video and all I saw in the comments was ZOMG PHAN!1!11!!! then I would probably be a bit miffed.
What I mean is that Phan™ is not the product that Dan and Phil intend to sell. That's not the reason they are making videos (whether it's a large part of what got them attention is different). When a video comes out, most of the gifs will be Phan related. Fics are phan related. A lot of gifts, videos and memes are phan related.
If I was Dan I would worry "if Phil wasn't in my life, what would fans want to see from me?" where would Dan be without the Ph- part of Phan? What is his worth outside of Phan? What's his quality that people would pay attention to?
Shipping is not just discussing, as I said there is a lot of grey area. Some ships are just enjoyable or fun. But a lot of shippers transcend the idea of "could be fun" to the land of "it's true" and then everything becomes tainted with a desire for it to be real. That's when you tread lightly because your perception will always be skewed to fit a narrative in your mind that you want to be true, whether because you find it cute or you admire it or just enjoy it.
If you are in a group chat with fans who also believe it's real, or want it to be real, regardless of the truth, then the harm is done more to yourselves than the people it's directed to, but the problem is that a lot of the time the actions don't stop at just discussing. The line between keeping it to yourself and ultimately you are the only one who will be disappointed or overjoyed (depending on what is true), and to pushing those emotions out to other people, to comment sections, to attacking people who don't agree with you, to pushing it on to the people themselves, is a very thin line. It's extremely thin. How thin? That depends on the person so of course you can't say for sure it's so and so.
But a lot of the phandom are young and have not gotten to that point of thinking yet. They think it's okay and funny to do a lot of things that you just don't. Or they feed themselves so much into this perfect, idealised image of Phan that they don't see past their own blinkers. Phan is MEANT to be ideal. It's this cute, romantic story of two dorks on the internet who met and became best friends and soon lovers and are disgustingly adorable soulmates. It's a beautiful and desirable narrative. They will NEVER see the arguments Dan and Phil have behind the camera. Or the days when it's not so fluffy and cute. Or if they dated other people. No, no it's just Phan, just Dan and Phil forever, reality be damned. Even if it's real in reality, even if they date, it's not the Phan they imagine.
People on facebook, couples I mean, try to portray the best parts of themselves. They post the cutesy statuses, they tag each other in pictures, they seem perfect and happy. You'll never see the bullshit behind it. That online persona of the couple is like Phan. What DanxPhil would be like in real life is not Phan. It may be close, but it won't be, because Phan will never be flawed.
So to conclude, a lot of what shipping can result in is wrong. A lot of shippers can keep to themselves and keep to a respectful degree. But a lot of them cannot. And it's not just me saying this about real life couples. It's a philosophy I've seen a lot BECAUSE people often cross the line between acceptable and not. Because a fictional character will never be affected in any way. But the actions of extreme shippers, or the delusion goggles of some shippers, will affect real people. I'm afraid it really is that simple. If you feel that what you do is within the realm of sane then pat yourself on the back because not a lot of people can admit to that, even if they don't want to.
Sorry for wall of text.
so excited. has anyone here not bought it? just a general question. i had student loan money come through so didn't mind £10 out of my bank, but wondering peoples views on it/if you're going to get it. i like having books, physical copies of things are always awesome 
