Anti said makorra shippers are basically nonexistent now and called that a beautiful thing, but I hate to burst your bubble, I don’t think the makorra fandom is nonexistent. I think it’s just dormant. Most shippers are either underground or only casually visible, like I am. My personal theory is that the biggest reason it’s stayed dormant is the lack of active fan artists. Artists create the content that gives people something to engage with, rally around, and get excited about. Without a steady stream of new fan art, a lot of shippers stay underground until someone sparks the fandom again by creating it.
It only went dormant because the artists we did have eventually left. This is just my personal opinion, not a fact or me speaking for them, but I think some probably left because of the embarrassment or hate, while others may have realized they were lesbian or bisexual themselves and naturally gravitated toward the canon ship. Those are just my theories. Once the artists left, the fans who mainly consumed content were left with nothing new to engage with, so many of them gradually drifted away because they no longer had artists to rally behind.
But I still think the mass harassment played a bigger role in why it became dormant. Back then, antis flooded the makorra tag with hate so much that some shippers felt the need to create a separate space just to safely post about the ship. The harassment definitely contributed, and that was honestly a big reason I left the fandom for almost a decade until I finally felt comfortable coming back.
