>>528339374chan shipping is a novel phenomena, it does give the vibe of mostly male and is solidified and accelerated by competition and fighting as opposed to making art or fics. Best girl bowl and powerlevel wars adjacent
Girl shippers are on twitter and tumblr and ao3 and try to pretend they don't want to fight, but they're always on the lookout for some moral slipup of rival shippers or ships that gross them out, so they can make a callout post and shame them and feel vindicated
When I put it that way it makes it sound like the boy 4chan shippers are more palatable. But shipping wars is a cancer that completely envelops the general threads they turn up in, annoying everybody who wants to talk about other things, and the points of argument is insanely repetitive and goes on for years.
At least the girl shippers on the art and fic sites have ways to quarantine themselves from general and rival fans through use of tags, and they get productive - coming up with new scenarios, headcanons, alternate universes, sharing all kinds of art; they go full into creative exploration of the ship, and some of the greatest art I've seen in my life has been from chicks completely obsessed with a ship and encouraged to develop that obsession in their space. Whereas shipfags in 4chan threads post the same shit over and over
