SamCait shipping would have probably happened anyway, but the extreme shipper (ES) leaders are the ones who kept it going
Recently, I saw a comment on @cant-resist-temptation’s blog from a fan who couldn’t understand why shippers believe in the secret S & C “marriage” and the multiple secret “boos.” As I recall, CRT said that she thought that they were initially led to believe in the ship by S & C’s over-the-top flirting. However, now that it is clear that C & T are married and have a child, she really doesn’t know why people persist in believing in the SC ship.
I was a SC shipper myself for about two months in 2015. Certainly S & C played up their chemistry for a few years to sell the show. But from what I can tell, S & C probably would have been shipped whether or not they played up their chemistry. To understand a little bit about that, I recommend reading this article by Beth Thorne on the That’s Normal website:
What Jim and Pam Taught Me About Shipping
It is well worth the read. Beth talks about how she started to initially ship the fictional couple from The Office: “JAM” (i.e., Jim Halpert & Pam Beesly, played by Jenna Fischer & John Krazinksi), but then the lines for her got blurred between fiction and reality when
“Karen Filipelli was introduced as a smart character: a pretty, funny and interesting woman who made a viable choice for Jim when he was rejected by Pam. I hated her instantly of course. But Karen was played by the very talented, Rashida Jones, whom I did not know before she was cast on The Office, and whom I also instantly hated. Notice there is no ‘of course’ at the end of that sentence because my hatred of Rashida Jones was totally and completely … untenable.”
"Satan, basically"
You have to read the article to learn why the addition of Karen/Rashida to the show ended up blurring the lines between fiction and real life for Beth, but it doesn’t appear that Jenna and John’s behaviors outside the show had caused her confusion.
Given how ubiquitous real person shipping has become, including in fandoms where the celebrities in some One True Pairings (OTP) are married to or have been romantically involved with other people (e.g., the Damie and Robsten ships), I tend to think that whether or not S & C had played up their chemistry to sell the show, they would have been shipped by some fans anyway.
However, I believe that the reason the SC shippers in this fandom have become so extreme over time had a lot to do with the shipper leadership.
Fans From Other Fandoms Brought Extreme Shipping Beliefs With Them
SC shippers were lured onto the ship from the very beginning by seasoned shipping veterans from other fandoms (e.g., One Direction, Twilight, The Hunger Games, etc.) who had crossed over to the Outlander fandom. These fandom veterans were already familiar with the 5 foundational beliefs of extreme (tinhat) shipping. Below is an excerpt from an earlier post I wrote that delineates these beliefs.
In fairness to these early shipper leaders, I think that many really thought the above nonsense was true and didn’t realize they were propagating “tinhat” beliefs. After all, these beliefs have spread far and wide across many fandoms, as illustrated nicely by a chart from @louche-laid-back-glory.
But the underlying premises of the beliefs aren’t real. We no longer live in the mid-twentieth century where film studios had nearly a complete say over what actors could show the public about their personal lives. There is no legal way that studios could do that today.
SHIPPER LEADERS: Withholding information, lying, and reposting debunked/misleading “receipts”
LIES OF OMISSION: The shipper leaders also led their followers on by withholding information that contradicted the ship. Typically, they wouldn’t release the info until it was about to come out anyway or only if it was way after the fact. We will never know all the information that they withheld from their followers, but some information eventually did come out. Examples include shipper leaders initially withholding:
The fact that there had been multiple photos of Abbie at S’s April 2015 birthday party.
The knowledge that Abbie had been seen visiting S in Scotland in May 2015.
The reality that T had been seen at a Jan. 2016 Starz party.
The knowledge that there was a photo of S in NYC in June 2017 (when shippers claimed he wasn’t visiting MM because he wasn’t there).
The fact that there had been a photo of T holding C’s hand at the end of her April 2018 marathon.
In addition, although SIS Brazil appropriately withheld info in April 2018 about what S’s nephew said about S, C & MM--they nevertheless implied that what he said was supportive of the shipper position. Yet, when it all finally came out in Aug. 2019, it turned out that what he said did not support the shipper narrative.
LIES OF COMMISSION: Perhaps the worst of the shipper leader lies of commission was the one where some leaders have claimed they have seen a copy of the S & C marriage certificate from Spain! 😱 But of course they conveniently cannot show anyone.🙄 Furthermore, even SIS Brazil said that they had seen such a certificate--but then a couple of days later said they were only joking.🤦🏻♀️
We also have the coffee stalker claiming that S & C not only live together but were together the entire April 2018 Easter weekend when in fact there is a lot of evidence that S & T went to Ireland and S was hanging out with cast members.
VISUAL DISINFORMATION: There are also visual ways of lying using gifs, videos, and still images. For years, the shipper leaders kept reposting long debunked visual “receipts” over and over again, including faux Cait at the Laophroaig distillery (Sept. 2015), faux S & C at the June 2016 baseball game, faux Sam in Paris (Oct. 2016), and the infamous Feb. 2017 fist bump photo to name just a few. (See this post for other examples and debunks.)
They also created misleading gifs by taking videos of S & C out of context, leaving the gif focus fuzzy, and/or slowing their speed down. In doing so they made them look like they were more meaningful than they were. (See this page on my main web-based tumblr for many examples of this.)
SHIPPER LEADERS: Indirectly “teaching” their followers to think like conspiracy theorists
ERRONEOUS CONNECTIONS: Shipper leaders indirectly “teach” their followers to think like conspiracy theorists through consistently making erroneous connections between people and events. An example of this is shown above in the The Australia Brief “conspiracy board” created by SIS Brazil in an attempt to convince their followers that the S & T engagement wasn’t real. In following the convoluted reasoning of The Australia Brief board, SIS Brazil’s followers indirectly “learned” to confuse correlation with causation and to engage in numerous logical fallacies.
Using correlation to “prove” the SC narrative is ubiquitous in Shipperville. So if S & C were vaguely in the same geographical location at the same time (even though they could be miles apart), then they had to have been together. Or if they were on social media at the same time, they had to have been right next to each other.🤦🏻♀️
CONFIRMATION BIAS: One of the major errors that certain SC shippers repeatedly make is that they focus intensely on a few specific pieces of supporting evidence for the ship and ignore or rationalize away much of the other information that does not support their assumptions.
The name for this phenomenon is confirmation bias or the tendency to overvalue information that supports one’s beliefs and to undervalue or overlook information that does not. (For more information about confirmation bias see this post.)
The SC shippers have taken confirmation bias to a new level though, in that they are often on overdrive to “find” information to confirm their ship.
And so over the years we find SC shippers scouring photos and videos of S or C, looking for people in the background who vaguely look like S or C to “prove” that they were actually together in various places. Even C’s father’s funeral was not taboo. Someone showed me photos that certain ES are passing off as being S from the back, while claiming that it is either “one of Cait’s brothers or a friend holding their own blonde child to give the illusion it’s Tony.”🙄
SHIPPER LEADERS: Controlling what blogs their followers see and encouraging groupthink
Another way that the ES leaders manipulate their followers is by encouraging groupthink and by serving as gatekeepers regarding the information that their followers see and don’t see.
GROUPTHINK: Because of processes like group polarization, the persuasive-arguments theory, and social comparison theory, group pressures and norms can lead groups to become more extreme in their thinking. As the group becomes more extreme and more unified, groupthink can set in. When this happens, any form of disagreement with the group’s core beliefs is discouraged. Discussions focus on evidence that supports the group’s beliefs; other evidence is often not even up for discussion. (For more information about this phenomenon, see this post.)
MINDGUARDS: When groupthink happens, certain individuals in a group assign themselves to serve as mindguards to ensure that information that contradicts the general consensus is left out of group discussions and decision-making. They use different ways to shut down dissent, which in turn furthers the goal of group unity and the appearance of consensus.
We see extreme shipper leaders often serving as mindguards by giving newbies block lists of who to block and telling lies about those of us who debunk the SC “receipts.” They also frequently block anyone who questions the ship or who follows someone on their block lists. In this way they control the kind of information about S & C that their followers see.
If an opposing position is presented by an “anon,” it is assumed the anon is from the nonshipper camp (whom they refer to as “antis”) and the argument is usually dismissed outright.
The ES leaders also create fear in their followers of being blocked if they question the ship too much or visit an “anti’s” blog. This leaves the ES who value their community particularly vulnerable to groupthink and biased conclusions.
The ES leaders also like to pretend that most of the fans on tumblr believe in the ship, so anyone who comes to their blogs and disagrees with them has to be a sock account of one of the major debunkers.🙄
Although I can’t speak to what other SC debunkers might do, I don’t create sock accounts to follow or comment on shipper blogs. But I do occasionally learn what they are discussing when people send me info in DMs, or someone I follow reblogs one of their posts, or I stumble upon a shipper blog thinking it was a regular Outlander blog, etc.
Many shippers might still hang on to the ship because of a need to “win.”
As illustrated below by the (2010) Twilight parody Vampires Suck, shipping feuds occasionally can get a tad out of control.😱 Sometimes it feels like certain shippers are engaging in a “team sport” and they won’t stop until they “win” and are proven “right.”
In the “shipping-as-team-sport” analogy, the shipper leaders seem to take on the role of “coaches,” motivating their “team” to keep “fighting” until they “win.”
In Conclusion
In all the ways described above, the extreme shipper leaders nourish the ship and keep their followers clicking on their blogs. Most of the old shipper leaders like Jess at least had the integrity to admit years ago that the ship wasn’t real and pretty much left the fandom.
But the extreme shipper leaders who persist are either so far down the rabbit hole that they actually believe the nonsense they spew, or they are liars who just like the attention of their followers.
Either way, at this point (after C’s marriage to T and their having a child together) it seems to me like the ES leaders are a major reason why the ship remains afloat.
______________________
Gif sources: 01, 02 (via That’s Normal), 03 ( aa + bb), 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12 & 13, 14; note that all gifs except 02 were modified from their sources. Image sources: Conspiracy board: SIS Brazil; Harper Lee Quote: (Shutterstock + Ms. Gallagher); Magnifying glass (before edits): Shutterstock
