Ep 21: Shipping Real People
SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)
KAYLA: And a demi straight girl (that’s me, Kayla)
SARAH: Talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.
KAYLA: On today’s episode: real people shipping.
BOTH: — Sounds fake, but okay.
*Intro music*
SARAH: Welcome back.
KAYLA: I’m currently spooning the computer –
SARAH: Don’t tell them that.
KAYLA: As we record because I’m sleepy, so picture me, spooning you.
SARAH: No, I don’t like it. No.
KAYLA: I also two second ago kissed Sarah’s hand.
SARAH: I didn’t like that either.
KAYLA: Just as a gesture of my friendship and love. She didn’t like it.
SARAH: No.
KAYLA: It’s fine. I won’t cry about it.
SARAH: (groans) This week we have –
KAYLA: This week we’re going to kill each other.
SARAH: We’re talking about shipping real people.
KAYLA: Yeah. We talked about shipping, I think it was episode 3?
SARAH: A while ago.
KAYLA: I think it was episode 3, it was a while ago and I don’t think it’s one of our more popular episodes?
SARAH: No, it’s not. And yet here we are.
KAYLA: And yet here we are. Because I think fandom and stuff is very interesting and so do you. I’m taking a class on it this semester; we have to read some fanfiction for class next week.
SARAH: Exciting.
KAYLA: Yeah, we have to go on Archive of Our Own, I’m pretty excited about it.
SARAH: Do you just get to pick?
KAYLA: Yeah.
SARAH: Oh, nice.
KAYLA: What am I going to do? My Immortal, probably.
SARAH: You should do My Immortal, but also a good one.
KAYLA: I mean, I’m not going to read My Immortal for it, because that’s a long one, it’s a lot of time to put in for probably a five-minute discussion about it.
SARAH: Read good fic though.
KAYLA: I’ll work on it.
SARAH: We’ve both been a part of many a fandom.
KAYLA: Indeed.
SARAH: I feel like we’ve probably had slightly different fandom experiences?
KAYLA: Why do you say that?
SARAH: I feel like some of the fandoms I’ve been involved with have been bands and stuff –
KAYLA: Yeah, I’ve never been – See, for the most part I would say my fandoms have been book series or TV shows.
SARAH: I’ve been in those and I am in those, and movies. For me, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I was pretty involved with that. But I’ve also been in band fandoms, which is different.
KAYLA: It’s different and it brings a more real-person element into it, because when you’re a fan of a book or a TV show, for me I care about the characters more, at least when it’s about shipping or fanfic. When you get into bands, there’s no character there, it’s literally just the person.
SARAH: Right, and you’re treading in some weird water there, because that’s a real person.
KAYLA: Yeah, that is a human being.
SARAH: Yeah. I think one of the things you see often, you see this on talk shows, late-night shows where people are like, oh here’s this fanart that people made of your characters, and it’s like –
KAYLA: Oh, cute.
SARAH: But then they’re like, haha, this is funny or whatever, this is cute, and it is their face, it’s that person’s face.
KAYLA: But it’s not them.
SARAH: It’s not intended to be them.
KAYLA: It’s not about them.
SARAH: It’s very different when that fanart is of the person specifically. And some of it’s just art of them doing whatever and that’s fine, but some of it is explicit or it involves shipping them with another real person and that’s when it gets a little weird.
KAYLA: Right. Because I think, as much as I love fandom and I respect it, and I think so much good comes from it, there’s a lot of dark sides to it. I think people get very emotionally invested and that’s fine, but then people get upset sometimes when things don’t go the way they want them to. Or if they get so emotionally invested in an idea that doesn’t come true or is fake.
SARAH: There are literally ship wars in fandom.
KAYLA: And that’s one thing to me if it’s some fictional characters and you’re getting in ship wars [about] who you think would be a better pair. Sometimes those too, even for fictional characters, get a bit nasty and it’s like –
SARAH: Calm down.
KAYLA: Let’s chill it down, but that’s something we talked about in my fandom class is the reason people study fandom in scholarly journals is because it’s a replication of the larger society. If you look at a small fandom made up of a thousand people, it’s very interesting because you can look at it and it’s basically a tiny world with the same social values, and societal hierarchies are still in place.
So it’s very interesting, you’re basically looking at a mini-version of the world, and with that comes some shit. But that shit has even more implications when you’re talking and getting upset about someone who is real, as much as you are.
SARAH: They’re a real person, they have a life that they have to continue living despite whatever shit their fandom does to them. So going back to the fanart thing, it’s interesting – So Superfruit, we’ve talked about them before.
KAYLA: I was just going to bring that up.
SARAH: So we’ve talked about them before, they are two of the members of the a cappella group Pentatonix. They have a YouTube channel together, and then they also have their own music side project together.
KAYLA: And they are objectively the best music ever.
SARAH: Interesting. They’re great.
BOTH: (laugh)
KAYLA: Objectively.
SARAH: I wouldn’t call them objectively the best, but they’re wonderful. And they are two men, both queer, and a lot of people ship them together but they, as much as they’ve said, are not interested in dating one another. They actually did briefly date in high school, and were like, this is weird.
KAYLA: So in Pentatonix there’s also a girl member, and all three of them grew up in high school together and they each kind of dated each other before everyone knew that they were gay and so it was weird. But I remember them talking about when they were on the sing-off, they almost hooked up –
SARAH: They tried to hook up –
KAYLA: And then they were like, no this is gross and weird, we’re best friends. But a lot of people do ship them together.
SARAH: And they are best friends.
KAYLA: They are best friends and they’ve made funny videos, because their ship name was Scomiche and they made a video about is Scomiche real? And they basically lead everyone on and didn’t say no and were joking about kissing, so it was really funny and they’ve taken it very well.
SARAH: Yeah. They had a music video that came out recently where the premise of the music video was that they were doing this speed-dating thing and it was going really poorly for both of them and then at the end they find each other and they almost kiss, and then they don’t.
KAYLA: And then they stop and they’re laughing about it.
SARAH: So they know what’s going on.
KAYLA: They sell shirts that say Scomiche, they’re marketing it.
SARAH: I don’t think they sell them anymore, because I wanted to buy one.
KAYLA: Well they were for a while. Tragic, we’ll make our own.
SARAH: They’ll retweet art of them being cute together and they take it pretty well, but at the same time I feel like either you take it well and you just embrace it, or you push it away. For your own sake it’s healthier to just embrace it, I would feel? Because people will get mad.
KAYLA: Yeah, if you openly said this is stupid and I hate it, people are going to be pissed and stop being your fans. What they’ve done that I think is really cool is when their album came out, people were making fan art for every specific song, and so they added it to their Facebook page. They have albums on their Facebook page of people’s fanart, so it’s really cool and they’ve embraced it a lot.
What I think is interesting that I was going to bring up about Superfruit is that Mitch, one of the members, is dating someone and I’ve seen a ton of fanart of them, and the guy he’s dating isn’t famous. I think he’s still a student?
SARAH: He’s a college kid.
KAYLA: He’s a university student and they recently went – Mitch went to Paris with some friends and his boyfriend was with him and so there was a bunch of pictures on Instagram but that’s as much as I think anyone knows, that’s as much as I know about him –
SARAH: Yeah, I don’t know much about him.
KAYLA: There weren’t videos about it or anything, I don’t think anyone knows much about the boyfriend, but I’ve seen fanart of them.
SARAH: Really? That’s wild.
KAYLA: Yeah. I mean, it’s cute, it’s good drawings, but you have to think how does he feel, this kid who’s a nobody and all of a sudden he’s dating someone that’s kind of famous, and this is happening. But also how does he feel about the whole Scomiche thing? Obviously he would know they’re not a thing, but you have to think if you see it enough, don’t you think it might bother you a little if you keep seeing it?
SARAH: Yeah. And I think the reason why the whole Scomiche thing works okay is because they’re both very comfortable in the fact that they don’t want to date each other.
KAYLA: Yeah. They’re best friends.
SARAH: So that’s the only reason it works. If there were any doubt, it wouldn’t work. And part of me is like, I kind of want to ship it, but also like no, I don’t also want to ship it.
KAYLA: At first I kind of did, but the more I watch them and feel like I kind of know them, the more I’m like, ew, I also feel gross.
SARAH: I absolutely see why people would ship them.
KAYLA: Oh definitely.
(10:00)
SARAH: For sure. But also I would feel weird if they were actually dating. And I feel like that brings us to the idea of ship names for real people, and shipping celebrities who are dating. If they’re already dating, on one hand I can understand it, because you’re like, these two people are together, whatever. But also, what happens if they break up? I remember when Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone broke up.
KAYLA: Tragic.
SARAH: A lot of people were really upset.
KAYLA: Tragic, it was.
SARAH: It’s like if you place so much value, if you place so much of yourself on a relationship between two strangers who are real people, that can become problematic for them.
KAYLA: I watch a decent amount of YouTube and there’s several YouTubers I watch that are couples but there was one, Colleen Ballinger, she plays Miranda Sings. She was married, and her and her boyfriend had been dating for a really long time, they had come up on YouTube together and so a lot of people were very invested in their relationship. Their wedding video was online, the engagement ring was online –
SARAH: I remember watching it.
KAYLA: The wedding was so beautiful, I’m so sad. So it was a big deal, they divorced after only a year and they each made videos about it but it sucked because the relationship was so public, and then their divorce also had to be a decent amount in public. And then people were sending hate comments to both of them because each of them were obviously upset but people were like, why did you do this to them?
SARAH: They each had a fanbase –
KAYLA: Yeah, so people didn’t even know the real situation why they divorced, because they never really talked a lot about it –
SARAH: It’s not totally clear what happened.
KAYLA: Yeah, it’s not totally clear which is fine, no one needs to know. But people were trying to take sides and blame other people and it was so hateful, and you have to imagine these people are going through a divorce and they’re also dealing with total strangers telling them that what they did was wrong and that they’re terrible people.
SARAH: I know he said something along the lines that he didn’t really want the divorce.
KAYLA: He did say that.
SARAH: But she did and so he was going to respect that, but then people were getting so pissed at her, because it was like, why did you want the divorce? Why did you make him do it?
KAYLA: It was unfortunate because he did share a bit more than she did, and he did say some things that I feel like I would have kept private had it been me, so it did make it difficult. Because she was trying to keep it really private, and he was saying things like that, and he made several videos about how his mental state was not great which is fine, but then it also lead people to hate on her, and it was a whole thing, which just sucks.
SARAH: Right, and I feel like that’s the reason why a lot of famous people try to keep their relationships very private because you see these relationships that are super public and if they go wrong, it blows up. It’s not just a breakup, everything is going wrong.
KAYLA: Everything’s bad.
SARAH: I find it interesting that Hannah Hart, she’s had a couple of relationships over the years. She dated Ingrid Nilsen for a couple of months –
KAYLA: Really?
SARAH: Right after Ingrid came out. She was her first out relationship.
KAYLA: Out girlfriend.
SARAH: And they weren’t together that long but then I think she dated someone else and now she’s dating –
KAYLA: She’s dating someone on BuzzFeed.
SARAH: That one girl from BuzzFeed. But their relationship, I don’t know how long they’ve been dating, but she’s been sharing kind of a lot?
KAYLA: They live together.
SARAH: Yeah they live together, they do videos together and I was just kind of surprised, because I know she’s had public-ish relationships before and I feel like if I were her, I wouldn’t want to be that public with my relationship.
KAYLA: I wonder if people just get sucked into it being public? There’s this one YouTuber that I kind of follow, her name is Kim Ty, she does beauty and lifestyle stuff and she recently started dating this guy that she met at school, because she goes to college still. [He’s] some guy that she met at school and she started being a little open about it and then she was like, you know I don’t think he’s going to be on my channel, I’m trying to keep things personal. Then all of a sudden, he’s on her channel all the time, they’re doing Q&As and mukbangs together, he’s all over her Instagram.
I remember seeing that tweet of her saying that and I was like, that’s really good, I’m glad she’s doing that. And then all of a sudden, he’s everywhere and she’s tweeting about – It’s kind of cringey to me, because you know how people in high school tweet about like, oh I’m going to marry this guy and we’re going to have kids, she’s tweeting stuff like that and so it just makes me scared for her if it goes wrong.
And I also know Shane Dawson was dating that girl for a while before he before he came out as –
SARAH: Oh, Lisa Schwartz.
KAYLA: Yeah, Lisa. And then they had a really public break up and it was really bad for him and now he’s dating this guy Ryland and I remember him saying in a video one time, oh yeah I said I would never do a public relationship again and now here I am. They both have YouTube channels, it’s super public, whatever.
So I wonder if you just kind of get sucked into it, you know?
SARAH: (whispers) Hi, it’s Sarah from the future and for some reason, something didn’t get recorded but we’re talking about Ingrid Nilsen and that’s all you need to know. We’re sorry, bye.
KAYLA: (whispers) We fucked up. We’re sorry, bye.
SARAH: So she dated Luke Conrad. I don’t know if you remember him but he was, in the early 2010s, he was out there, he had some fans. They were very openly dating, they did boyfriend/girlfriend tags –
KAYLA: Who is that? Do I know him?
SARAH: I’ll explain, give me a minute. They did Vlogmas and stuff together. Then they broke up and it was not the greatest, could have been worse but it wasn’t the greatest and then not super long afterwards, the internet found out that he had been soliciting nudes from underage fans and he tanked because of that shit –
KAYLA: Uh yeah.
SARAH: I was like, oh shit, ugh.
KAYLA: Yeah I know.
SARAH: Then her next boyfriend –
KAYLA: God.
SARAH: We knew him, she was dating him for a while, she was still dating him when she decided she was going to come out and then she told him and she was like, I’m sorry. Anyway, we knew his name was Kurnov, but that was his last name, we didn’t even know his first name, or that was his nickname or whatever. So we knew she was dating him and she was open about that but he was never on her channel, I think I only saw him on her Instagram once. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like –
KAYLA: That’s the way to go
SARAH: And I think she learned from that first one that that’s not what you want to do and when she was dating Hannah Hart, they were dating but it wasn’t in your face. I feel like some of them learn and then some of them don’t. Because she’s had a couple of relationships since but they’re usually maintained to Instagram pictures, they’re never on her channel, she doesn’t talk about them a lot, she keeps it pretty private.
KAYLA: I feel like that’s the way to go. But on the other hand we’re big fans of Jenna Marbles and Julien –
SARAH: That is true.
KAYLA: And I –
SARAH: We’re waiting for them to get engaged.
KAYLA: Those are people that like, as much as we say it’s bad for people to get invested, we’re total hypocrites in this one circumstance because we are waiting for them to get engaged. If they were to break up –
SARAH: I would die.
KAYLA: I literally think I would actually cry. I’m not exaggerating, I think I would actually cry.
SARAH: I’ve told you this before, but back in the day when Jenna was dating MaxNoSleeves –
KAYLA: (boos)
SARAH: I remember them breaking up and I was really sad, but now I’m like –
KAYLA: Fuck him.
SARAH: I don’t even care. Julien is so much better.
KAYLA: He still has a channel and does shit.
SARAH: Yeah, he does. But Julien’s great, I love them.
KAYLA: I love Julien.
SARAH: I know, oh God.
KAYLA: That’s another thing though, Julien was not a YouTuber when they met, they met because he was a bartender, and she went into his bar and they met and they were dating for a while. I wasn’t following her at the time that they first started dating so I really don’t know how it went.
SARAH: That was the time where I didn’t watch her as much, so I don’t quite remember it.
KAYLA: But then they started living together –
SARAH: They’ve been dating for several years now.
KAYLA: Yeah. Let me just tell you the whole history of their lives. But he was working in a radio station, and he started helping her more with her videos, and then she encouraged him to start vlogging and now that’s his career. He vlogs, he has a production company.
SARAH: He’s a very videographer and cinematographer.
KAYLA: He went to school for production.
SARAH: So he’s very good at that.
KAYLA: It’s not like he just started because “Oh, my girlfriend’s a famous YouTuber, I guess I’ll like, whatever.”
SARAH: He has his own separate brand apart from her.
KAYLA: Yeah, he has his own production company. But they also have a podcast together, they have a Twitch stream together which I love.
SARAH: There are a lot of YouTube channels though that are couples, and they were started as couple YouTube channels.
KAYLA: That doesn’t happen as much anymore but that was definitely a thing back in the day.
SARAH: There were definitely some. Then it gets to the issue of when you have YouTubers – A lot of times it happens where they’re just similar friend groups, and this happens with celebrities too, it’s just I’m more familiar with the politics of it on YouTube. They’re in the same friend group, they’re seen with each other a lot, people start shipping them, but they’re not together.
KAYLA: That can ruin friendships.
(20:00)
SARAH: Yeah, I know with Troye Sivan and Tyler Oakley, Troyler was such a big thing and they kind of just went with it but I think part of the reason they went with it is because Troye I think was actually dating Connor Franta at the time –
KAYLA: Who was not dating each other at this point?
SARAH: So he was letting the Troyler thing ride so that he didn’t have to you know, whatever. But that happens. And so back to the whole band thing, I have –
KAYLA: Take it back now.
SARAH: I have literally no shame, I’ve been in One Direction fandom and 5 Seconds of Summer fandom primarily –
KAYLA: No shame. Sarah was obsessed.
SARAH: Literally no shame. Proud. #1DAF.
KAYLA: Oh no. One daf. I hate it.
SARAH: But back in the day, the very early days of One Direction, when they were still young, Harry and Niall were under 18, a lot of people shipped Louis and Harry. They called it Larry Stylinson because it was Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles
KAYLA: Ha, I’ve never heard the last name, that’s really funny.
SARAH: People became obsessed and they would ask them about it, it got brought up a lot. People would write fanfiction, people would do fan art and at the time, they were both still pretty young and so, neither of them are homophobic as far as I’m aware, especially not Harry –
KAYLA: I don’t really, I don’t know.
SARAH: From what I understand they’re both pretty open to that sort of stuff, but they were young and I think that freaked them out a little bit.
KAYLA: I think it would have freaked them out no matter what gender their bandmate was. I feel like being questioned about that so much, has to be super overwhelming.
SARAH: So they were really good friends at the beginning of this, and that’s why this whole Larry Stylinson thing took off is because they were such good friends. But they over time grew further and further apart, and by the last time that One Direction was still doing stuff together, they were friends but nothing near what they were at the beginning. And a lot of people blame it on the fact that there were [such] aggressive shippers of them two together, and then it ruined their friendship. And I can totally see that happening.
KAYLA: Yeah. My professor that I have for my fandom class, I had him before and he has done studies on the Larry fandom in particular, because it’s wild. And like I said, people get so invested, and so when people hear them say they’re not dating, people get mad at them, saying it’s their fault, why aren’t you dating? It’s weird.
SARAH: You’re supposed to be stanning these people. If you stan a person, you should stan them regardless of who they are not dating, you know what I mean?
KAYLA: People get so invested.
SARAH: They get so invested and they think they’re entitled to something? I don’t know what it is.
KAYLA: And that’s definitely, like I said, that’s the dark side of fandom and that’s something you have to deal with if you want to be involved with fandom, it’s not really going to go away. It doesn’t make fandom terrible as a whole, but it’s definitely there and it’s something we talked about, especially for young fans who can see maybe other people doing this and get swept up in it, especially when you’re at that age where for a lot of people, relationships are all-consuming.
SARAH: Because the One Direction fandom really has grown up with One Direction.
KAYLA: Oh, definitely.
SARAH: I think a lot of people view One Direction fans still as a bunch of teenage girls, but that’s not necessarily –
KAYLA: It’s definitely part of it.
SARAH: There are definitely a lot of teenage girls, but there are also plenty of people who aren’t teenage girls –
KAYLA: That were teenage girls at the time they started and have grown up.
SARAH: Or weren’t even teenage girls at the time it started. And so, at the time though, a lot of the fanbase was quite young, like high school aged. So they don’t necessarily know how to deal with that sort of thing in a way that is healthy for everyone involved, and I think that’s part of the reason it got out of hand.
KAYLA: Oh yeah. In some of my classes we’ve talked about the psychological meaning of being so attached to a celebrity, and seeing them as someone you actually know and being attached to them. A lot of people think it’s a way for teenage girls in particular, and this is something – The fact that the studies are focusing on teenage girls is a little like, okay, there’s other fans.
SARAH: There are.
KAYLA: They’re not- not everyone is straight, chill out. But it’s a way for a lot of young teenage girls to navigate how a romantic or sexual relationship is, but without any risk, because they’re never going to meet the person, they can all just imagine it in their head. So if you imagine if that’s true, and people are using these celebrities as a pseudo-relationship to learn the norms, and to learn what goes on in a relationship, it make sense that people get so emotionally attached. You feel like you know this person, and then they do what you don’t want, it makes sense that you would feel upset.
SARAH: I mean, obviously not all people who like boy bands are straight teenage girls. I remember very clearly one time my sister said something to me to the effect of you only like, or people only like One Direction because they think they’re cute –
KAYLA: I think most of them are ugly.
BOTH: (laugh)
KAYLA: Just putting it out there.
SARAH: That’s funny.
KAYLA: They’ve grown up well but especially at the time when they were big, like that your sister would have been saying that, none of them looked good.
SARAH: I mean I found them esthetically attractive to different varying degrees, but that wasn’t why I liked them.
KAYLA: Especially not you.
SARAH: Especially with the knowledge that I’m aro-ace. Yes, I can find people esthetically attractive but I wouldn’t want to date them, like what? And so I think that’s just a very basic misunderstanding of how fandom works and how stanning boy bands works, but that’s fandom politics.
KAYLA: Well that’s a whole – To not get into a whole other fandom politics, a lot of things with this happens in fandom studies which is people just see it as a fangirl, and it’s 12 year old girls who don’t matter, and their opinions are just blah, and so we shouldn’t pay attention to them. But it’s not all that, and even if it was, it’s still fine.
SARAH: It’s also the issue of, as you were saying, you think you know them and you think you are reading them correctly, you think you’re reading their life correctly and that might not be the case. And that’s really interesting too, because one of – So Agents of Shield. It’s a prime television show, highly underrated.
KAYLA: No comment.
SARAH: But my favorite character/also one of my favorite actors on the show, his name’s Iain De Caestecker. He is quite low profile, his cast mates had to force him to get an Instagram, he doesn’t use social media at all, he doesn’t like having pictures taken of him. It’s not like he’s –
KAYLA: But he’s so pretty.
SARAH: He’s so pretty, but I really like him and from what I know about him he’s really funny, but he doesn’t talk a lot in interviews so when he does it’s like, everyone listens to him because he’s actually talking, and he is very funny. But also, because he keeps such a low profile, I don’t really know that much about him and I feel like it’s a good way to keep myself in check. Like, okay yeah I really like him as a person, but do I really know that much about him as a person? I can’t assume anything about him.
KAYLA: But also even if you did, and even for those of us, it happens to everyone that you feel like you know a celebrity or a character, it’s not your fault either. Looking at the psychology behind it, the studies that have been done, it’s not like it’s your fault. You shouldn’t feel bad about it, it happens and I think it can be really useful in a lot of ways, especially if you’re a socially anxious person or you’re struggling with your identity. Becoming attached to a celebrity or a character that you see yourself in or you see as a role model, I think that has a lot of great benefits. It’s when we get to this place where it’s harming actual people that it needs to stop. But there’s nothing inherently bad about it.
SARAH: Right, I agree. I just think it can get harmful and I feel like, especially back to this whole idea of shipping real people, there’s only one time that I’ve ever shipped people who weren’t together and I felt weird about it at the time. I felt weird that I was doing it, but also I couldn’t help it. I try very hard to avoid shipping real people and if I do, it’s usually because they are in a long-term relationship, are married –
KAYLA: And then it’s like, it makes sense.
SARAH: Then it’s kind of okay. But also you see there’s some – I’m a big proponent of fanfiction, however, when the fanfiction involves real people –
KAYLA: It’s so weird. Have you ever seen videos of people reading fanfic about themselves?
SARAH: I cannot watch those videos. I literally can’t watch them.
KAYLA: They’re so funny.
SARAH: I know back in the day Tyler Oakley and Marcus Butler were the first ones to really sail that ship of re-enacting fanfiction of yourself and I still have never watched that video. That was back in the day when I used to watch every single one of Tyler Oakley’s videos and I couldn’t, I could never do it.
(30:00)
KAYLA: That’s so funny.
SARAH: Because it just makes me really uncomfortable, and that is why so many people, they exist on Twitter, they exist on Instagram, whatever, but a lot of people do not delve into Tumblr because of that.
KAYLA: I mean, even if that wasn’t happening, I don’t know that I would recommend going into Tumblr for any celebrity.
SARAH: Yeah, looking up yourself would be terrifying. You see fanfiction, and sometimes it’s fanfiction with – I once read a fanfiction, one time in my life, it was 5SOS fanfiction but it was with the characters, but all of the other characters in it were original characters. So it’s almost like you’re turning the real person into a character and it’s not really them.
KAYLA: Not as bad.
SARAH: So I don’t feel as weird reading stuff like that because yes, it’s the person but it’s really a caricature of the person. What weirds me out is when you have imagines or that sort of thing, where it’s like them and then they do y/n, like your name.
KAYLA: I hate that.
SARAH: I hate it.
KAYLA: Well I hate that for any type of fanfiction, it can be fictional fanfic.
SARAH: Like self-insert fanfic?
KAYLA: Self-insert makes me feel gross feelings.
SARAH: But I feel like with real people, it makes me so uncomfortable. Because again, I’ve mentioned this in previous episodes, when I see y/n I view that as a person, that’s a character, that’s not me. But the reason people write those imagines and read those imagines is because they do want to imagine themselves in that situation and that makes me a little uncomfortable.
KAYLA: See here’s the thing though, it makes me uncomfortable too, I don’t want to read it. However, I know that most people have had those thoughts in their head, imagining themselves meeting a celebrity and things happening. That’s the thing, we all have those thoughts, so is it so wrong to write it down?
SARAH: I guess not, I just especially when there’s the really explicit ones, and it’s like, sometimes people will literally send them to the person that it’s written about, and that’s an issue.
KAYLA: Well yeah, when it gets that far, yes I agree and the explicit is a little much, but I still can’t tell people don’t write it, because I know that it’s a human thing and we all think it, so who am I to tell you, stop that, when I know for a fact that a lot of people have those thoughts and feelings, and it’s totally normal to have those thoughts and feelings –
SARAH: That’s fair.
KAYLA: So who am I to censor you when I’ve been through the same thing, you know?
SARAH: It’s just it’s kind of on that line –
KAYLA: Oh it’s definitely, yeah it is.
SARAH: Where you’re very close to crossing it and you’re not necessarily, but it’s very easy to cross the line.
KAYLA: And I mean, even though I’m saying who am I to censor that, I can’t as easily say that when it’s about someone that’s real, because it does come with implications and consequences. So on one hand, everyone’s having these thoughts and feelings, on the other hand, should we be having these thoughts and feelings?
SARAH: People, if they see a person they’re a big fan of, and it’s usually in some sort of situation where it’s not like they just ran into them on the street, they’ll yell things at them, they’ll be like “Fuck me!” and it’s like –
KAYLA: Don’t say that to a person.
SARAH: Like, what are you doing?
KAYLA: Well it’s like 2017 comments, did you watch that podcast episode of Jenna and Julien’s that they did?
SARAH: No, I didn’t.
KAYLA: Okay, so you know how in 2017, a lot of people were commenting things that were very violent and sexual –
SARAH: No.
KAYLA: OK, please pause. So there’s this concept called 2017 comments, and I’ll read you a few examples and maybe you’ll be like, oh I’ve seen these before.
SARAH: Okay.
KAYLA: So I’m sorry for the explicit, but they’re meant – I’ll get into it, okay. Let’s see, “trample my taint with a stiletto and call me 2008 hot”.
SARAH: Oh, yeah.
KAYLA: “Choke me with your DIY flower crown and smuggle me across the Mexican border”.
SARAH: Yeah, I’m familiar now.
KAYLA: “Force feed me pancakes at a popsicle stick table and see how many balloons it takes for me to fly.”
SARAH: I don’t get that one.
KAYLA: Okay, anyway, so it’s basically just very shocking and violent things that people often comment or tweet at celebrities. So when Jenna and Julien did this, they did it as a joke and they did a game with it where they put phrases together and they made some really funny ones, but it’s interesting because later in 2017 they all became a joke because people were like, oh my God, these are ridiculous, and people purposefully came up with ones that were extremely ridiculous. But that started from somewhere, you know?
SARAH: I’ve definitely seen BuzzFeed – What?
KAYLA: (laughing) I found another good one.
SARAH: What is it?
KAYLA: “Snort cocaine off of my ovaries and hum the “I Love Lucy” theme song into my right ear violently.”
SARAH: Okay.
KAYLA: I’m going to have to stop or I’ll just keep laughing at these.
SARAH: I’ve seen BuzzFeed Asks type stuff where they’re interviewing movie stars or whatever and they’re like, oh, we’re going to be relevant to the internet –
KAYLA: And they read thirst comments? I saw the Star Wars one, it was a funny video.
SARAH: Some of them go off well, some of them are very funny. Some of them, if the person reading the comments about themselves doesn’t understand the culture, you can tell it’s making them really uncomfortable. And so I think it’s important – You have to understand it, and if you understand the culture of it, you know not to take weird shit personally. Because there’s also this culture of negging, where you insult the people that you love –
KAYLA: You drag them.
SARAH: Right, you drag them. And if you understand the culture of negging, of 2017 comments, you understand to some extent, this is a joke and it’s not ill-intended. But if you don’t understand that, and they’re saying this stuff about you, they’re saying this stuff about shipping you with someone and being really aggressive about it, they might just be being aggressive about it but usually you can tell. If you’re not familiar with the culture, you can’t tell.
KAYLA: For me, I can tell when comments like that are a joke and when people are part of the fandom, but yeah, there’s a certain amount of media literacy that I feel celebrities have to have at this point, or else you would be constantly bombarded with this stuff and totally overwhelmed, if you didn’t realize it was a joke or coming from a place of fanship, you know?
SARAH: And it’s like, there absolutely is horrible shit said on the internet about a lot of people, and that’s another reason why a lot of famous people don’t use social media. I remember Daisy Ridley used it for a while, and then she was like, I can’t do it anymore.
KAYLA: That was so sad, she took her Instagram down.
SARAH: And I respect people who do that, that’s absolutely their choice but I think it’s still important whether or not you have use of the internet, that you understand the difference so that when it’s shitty, it can be properly addressed and be like, hey, this makes me feel uncomfortable, maybe can you all stop?
KAYLA: Maybe don’t?
SARAH: Or just do it in a sector of the internet that I can’t see? But they also need to understand when it’s just a joke.
KAYLA: It’s just difficult, especially for people that didn’t grow up on the internet.
SARAH: It can be hard to tell, so understandable. I really just think the most harmful thing is when you’re really aggressively shipping people who aren’t actually together.
KAYLA: Yeah, I think that’s the worst way it could happen, because that gets into a way where it affects those peoples’ actual personal lives, and they can’t go anywhere because the paparazzi is also now shipping them. So that’s definitely what I think is most harmful, and people should be most aware of, and like I said, we all have those thoughts and feelings where you might see some celebrities and be like, oh that would be fun if they would date, but you have to stop yourself before crossing a line.
SARAH: And also, some people it’s like, no I would never date that person, what the fuck? Other people though, it’s an even more complicated situation.
KAYLA: Like what if there were feelings?
SARAH: There might be feelings but they might not be there yet. I remember with Zoe Sugg and Alfie Deyes, both YouTubers, they were both in the same circle. People shipped them for a while and they always were like no, and then there was a vlog done by their friend Jim Chapman, and Jim was at the time engaged to another YouTuber, and now they’re married and they’re very cute.
They were at VidCon or Summer in the City or something so they were all together and he was just vlogging them in their hotel room, and in the vlog, he really quickly panned over the desktop of Zoe’s computer and he didn’t notice it and he didn’t realize it. So he posted it to YouTube and then everyone freaked out when they got to that part of the video because if you paused the video, you could see that her background was a picture of her and Alfie kissing.
And so people were like, oh, they’re dating, and they were like, shit, we weren’t going to tell people yet because we weren’t ready yet, but now we have to. And it’s fine, because they’re still dating five years later –
KAYLA: Oh that’s nice, I’m glad it didn’t get ruined.
SARAH: They live together, it’s really annoying though because people come to their house all the time, and they’ve had to call the police multiple times.
KAYLA: God, that’s another thing, you guys. Don’t go to people’s houses. I trust you all, it’s fine, but don’t do it.
(40:00)
SARAH: That’s the fucking worst. In that case, happy ending, it turned out okay.
KAYLA: But still not what you want to deal with.
SARAH: What if that relationship hadn’t worked out, and they had just started dating and it didn’t quite work right. That would have been the worst –
KAYLA: That would have sucked.
SARAH: Not only are they in the same social circle, but they’re in the same YouTube circle.
KAYLA: That’s their work.
SARAH: So that’s a struggle. But now they live in a giant-ass house in Brighton.
KAYLA: Good for them, I guess.
SARAH: They recently moved and their new house is huge.
KAYLA: Same, I too have lots of money and a stable relationship.
SARAH: I just think if you’re going to ship real-life people, I can’t tell you not to, I just think you need to think about it.
KAYLA: Be careful about it.
SARAH: Be careful about it and think about the fact that the people on the other end are real people with real lives and real relationships.
KAYLA: This feels very lecturey. We’re not trying to lecture you.
SARAH: We’re not. But I think it’s important to think about.
KAYLA: No, it definitely is. This hasn’t been an issue forever, this is a very recent thing that we have to deal with, with people that are micro-celebrities. They’re people that are celebrities because of the internet and so they’re even more real people than maybe A-list celebrities, so it’s something we all have to deal with.
SARAH: Or even if you are shipping them, say they are gay but they’re not out yet and you’re shipping them, that could be a roadblock to coming out because if you aren’t ready to face that, that can be a whole struggle. Also, if someone shipped me romantically with someone, I would be like, what the fuck?
KAYLA: Sarah, I think people ship us.
SARAH: No, they don’t.
KAYLA: Mmhmm.
SARAH: But that would make me feel kind of weird.
KAYLA: Would it make you feel uncomfortable if people shipped us, Sarah?
SARAH: Probably not.
KAYLA: Is it because we’re already married?
SARAH: Yeah.
BOTH: (laugh)
SARAH: I think for me it would depend on who it was. Some people I would find funny, like if I’m very close to the person, I would find it funny.
KAYLA: If people shipped us, I feel like we could do a good Scomiche out of it, we could market it, I think we could profit –
SARAH: Ride the wave.
KAYLA: I think we could ride the wave really well, probably profit a little bit off it –
SARAH: But yeah, people –
KAYLA: People are people, you know?
SARAH: People are people, everyone is –
KAYLA: A people
SARAH: A complex person whether or not you think about it or not.
KAYLA: Sorry, I accidentally just paused our recording.
SARAH: You idiot. So what’s our poll Kayla?
KAYLA: Oh boy. I don’t know. If Kayla and Sarah had a ship name –
SARAH: It’s Sayla, we know this already.
KAYLA: It’s so lame though. I want a new one. Kaszycello.
SARAH: Ew, God, people can’t even say my last name when it’s my last name, no.
Okay, after some deliberation –
KAYLA: We’ve done it.
SARAH: And also watching a Facebook video about tapeworms –
KAYLA: No, oh my God. No, no.
SARAH: I mean, they’re pretty gross.
KAYLA: Stop.
SARAH: Anyway, we have a poll. So it’s “Have you ever shipped – “
KAYLA: Never have you ever –
SARAH: Shut the fuck up.
KAYLA: Okay.
SARAH: “Have you ever shipped real-life people who weren’t already together?” So the first answer is yes –
KAYLA: Press one for –
SARAH: Press one for yes, and I was fine with it. Second one was yes, but I felt weird about it or felt bad about it. And the third one is just no.
KAYLA: And the fourth option is worm.
SARAH: No, we’re not putting a fourth option.
KAYLA: We’re not.
SARAH: So that’s our poll, you can find that on our Twitter @soundsfakepod.
KAYLA: Also on our Twitter is a gif of a little ace worm. Not a gross worm, but you can go and see that, it’s cute.
SARAH: It’s an ace worm.
KAYLA: I’ve retweeted a cool thing, this art piece that this girl did.
SARAH: That’s nice.
KAYLA: Have you seen it?
SARAH: No, I don’t think so.
KAYLA: You should look there on Twitter, it’s really cool. So that’s on there also.
SARAH: That’s exciting.
KAYLA: That’s pretty neat.
SARAH: You know where she got the worm was Tumblr.
KAYLA: Where I found the worm.
SARAH: She found the worm on Tumblr, our Tumblr is soundsfakepod.tumblr.com, it’s hopping.
KAYLA: It also has some worms on it.
SARAH: Actually it’s slithering – do worms slither?
KAYLA: It’s wiggling, they wiggle. Have you seen the videos of the salamanders that look like worms with two front legs?
SARAH: Oh I hate it.
KAYLA: They’re so cute. Have you not seen it?
SARAH: No, I have.
KAYLA: So cute.
SARAH: You can also email us, soundsfakepod@gmail.com
KAYLA: You know what else you can do? We have stickers.
SARAH: We do have stickers. They’re on Redbubble.
KAYLA: Rudebooble.
SARAH: We don’t have our own special URL I don’t think.
KAYLA: No, I made a tiny one. I think it’s tinyurl.com/sfbosticker. I’m not confident but there are links –
SARAH: I feel like you should be more confident –
KAYLA: But I’m not. There are links on our Twitter and our Tumblr. And our SoundCloud.
SARAH: Stellar, you can get cute little stickers if you want to support us that way. You know what’s another way to support us?
KAYLA: I don’t know Sarah, what is it?
SARAH: patreon.com/soundsfakepod.
KAYLA: I’m riveted, tell me more.
SARAH: We have four patrons currently –
KAYLA: I can’t believe we just turned our podcast into an infomercial. Wow, branding.
SARAH: So our first $5 patron is Sydney Mook, her Instagram is @sydneymoo. You should say hi.
KAYLA: Why do you have to sing it like that?
SARAH: I don’t know, I feel like it’s got to be interesting every week.
KAYLA: Oh my God.
SARAH: It just gets boring, I change my intonation at the beginning as well.
KAYLA: Okay. Whatever.
SARAH: Anyway, our second $5 patreon, patron, I always accidentally say that wrong, is Jennifer Smart. You can find her on YouTube by looking up Lehen Productions. Our third patron is Asritha, her Instagram is @asritha_v.
$10 patrons, we’ve got Emma. She’s got her new YouTube, you can find her by looking up Emma T Fink on YouTube. I killed that, that went great.
KAYLA: Oh my God Sarah, you are such an asshole.
SARAH: Thanks for listening, tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears.
KAYLA: And until then, take good care of your cows.