It’s often not about the celebrity themselves but the entire brand they build for themselves. Kpop bands will literally ask their audience for loyalty over other bands and invite parasocial connections, and the company around them will do everything they can to foster shipping communities. All kpop bands know their shipping pairs and names and will refer to them directly.

This is one of those things where I find a lot of people on the internet are a bit willfully naive. Like “We know about shipping here on the internet, but how on earth could writers, corporate boards and celebrities looking to raise their profile by any means necessary know about it?? They are just innocent bystanders with shipping thrust upon them.”

Believe me when I tell you that writers and managers and social media directors and brand strategists and stylists and dancers and singers and actors know ALL ABOUT shipping. They know it better than almost anyone. They lean in to it all the time, even if you don’t think they’re doing it on purpose. It’s calculated. Almost always, it’s a deliberate move to make people buzz about them on the web.

I know this shatters the magic a bit to think of it this way, but the flip side of that magic is that fans will then defensively run RPF writers off the internet and make them feel ashamed...for doing the exact thing those celebrities and bands are trying to get them to do in the first place. Believe it or not, even that arguing between fans is deliberately sought after by the corporate side of celebrity. Because it’s all talk. It’s all buzz. It’s all their names in the trending topics.

A lot of people don’t and can’t think about it this way, and ok. Good. That’s how it’s supposed to be. But it’s so infuriating to see one side of fandom think they’re the only ones who know who you’re allowed to enjoy a band, or a person’s brand, and making life hell for others who are simply reading the signals these people are putting down.