Shipping, or, to be pedantic ‘shipping, via “relationshipping”, is the fantasist’s version of match-making. Now, I have zero issue with day-dreaming, creative thinking, fantasising, or wishful thinking. When it’s staying in your head, or being adapted into original thought or content, it’s incredibly healthy and productive. That’s not always the outcome, though.

I only discovered this style of thinking this year. I’m more than half a century into life, so I’m feeling very out of touch! How it came to me was in the form of videos pairing two men, both Chinese idols, as a couple, despite zero sign that either is gay, after they starred together in a Cdrama based on a homosexual love story. In most countries it wouldn’t be an issue, but in mainland China it’s dangerous to be classified as deviant from the state’s Good Citizen mould.

Digging into it further, I found that one fan had so far fetishised this pair as to write a web novel about their imaginings. This publication had lead to a major uproar, altering the course for the publisher, and involving one of the actors in a degree that the scandal put his career in real jeopardy, and opened him up to actual danger. Note that had the fans of the actor designated as bottom not decided it was insulting to feminise their idol, and it might well have come to nothing, but avid fans are too invested in their own imagined wrongs to consider how they might harm the very person they’re claiming to protect. The Great Firewall of China gained a few lines, and the publication platform was invisible in that country. The top blew off the platform’s readership. The idol was labelled as problematic within the culture of mainland China, too, which endangered him for a while, and affected his ability to work in both of his fields of expertise.

I won’t reproduce the finer details of this disturbing example of fandom turned toxic, so if you want to know more look up the “227 INCIDENT”. It’s vile, and did the man serious harm, and it’s that fact that makes a creaking dinosaur like me angry. I’ve spent hundreds of hours of my life managing online fan interfaces, and I, while coming to adore most of the communities I’ve worked with and liking and caring for all of them, am most definitely there to protect the subject of the community above all else. Yes, part of my job is to care for the well-being of the individual members, and the general health of the whole group of them, as a unit, but a fan community has a lot more power than its subject. A game developer or artist has only a few obligations, but is so much more vulnerable than the great, hulking beast that is their fandom.

Think about it. The idol’s side of the implicit contract says they should:

• Be a good person.
• Produce the work/product they are idolised for.
• Engage, in a limited way, with their fans.

Their power allows only a few actions to enact as punishment for bad fan behaviour. The first is to withhold their product, either completely or partially. The second is to stop engaging. Both of those punish both the fan and the idol, so they must be considered double-edged, which is very far from ideal. The last is to call out the bad behaviour.

The fandom, be it on or off the idol’s official platform, has so many powerful tools at its disposal, and a large proportion of those can backfire if misused. They can use a wide range of distributed attacks, from boycotts; through denial of service; to actually hunting down, stalking, and physically harming a target, or a group of targets. The imbalance of power is enormous, and to most, seriously misunderstood. The fact is, that most people think all the power is with the idol.

They would be wrong.

Postscript: Xiao Zhan, the idol concerned in the 227 incident, is okay, and has made a very good recovery since, but the danger he was put in by the actions of an entitled group of so-called supporters could have lead to a much more serious, and terminal, outcome. Those who took part in the 227 campaign are responsible for doing real harm to the person they thought they were defending.