If you’re up to date with the ATLA shipping discourse on Twitter, you’ll see what I mean when I say that seriously devoting time to anti-shipping is corrosive to the soul. That sounds really dramatic, but when I see people hoisting themselves up onto the highest horse to tout their progressive politics by way of shipping discourse, it’s all I can think of.
Essentially, a particularly popular Zutara anti account made some extremely distasteful, edgy and racist jokes in service of disparaging the ship, and is now being turned on by their followers who are busy fretting over the optics this incident created for their corner of the fandom. Colour me shocked, lol. I need people to understand that this is not just some one-off incident, but is the natural consequence of the culture this kind of fandom behaviour creates.
Circles that actively encourage bullying and implicitly operate under the “shipping = activism” mentality will always succumb to this phenomenon. Their reasons for attacking other groups become more far-fetched and exaggerated to accommodate their stretching justifications for why doing so is the morally correct thing to do. This leads to edgier jokes, and bolder behaviour until they finally go too far and reveal their hand. Suddenly, their gleeful followers are hit with the realization that continuing to follow such a person is a bad look for them, and they need to distance themselves from the behaviour they once cheered on.
