Internet volcabulary | Shipping, Fandoms & Fanfiction

Hello everyone! So after spending mass amounts of time on the internet these past 5 weeks (it's the summer holidays) I have realised how foreign the internet can be to so many people, especially the older generation. What I mean by this is that over the last 5 years, 'fandoms' have been created, by word of mouth, people, films, bands, TV series etc have now got a massive following. In these fandoms, new words have been created and more words now have different meanings. So with the ever-changing world, I thought I would go over some words which I & and millions of others use :-)

"Shipping"

This is a commonly used term on the internet which I have used in previous posts. It is normally used around two celebrities who are with each other a lot. Shipping means that the fans of those two people will pretend that they are in a relationship (hence 'shipping') & many people ship celebrities in an romantic way, however most likely that the pairing is two males as the people who ship the most are teenage girls, who are most known as 'Shippers'

An example?

For example, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson from One Direction are often shipped together because they always look at each-other in a certain way or have a very close friendship, that's all it takes for a fandom to say "oh they must be in love!". However instead of just saying the "Harry Styles & Louis Tomlinson shipping" You merge the two names together to create "Larry Stylinson" which is the name of the relationship, or 'Larry' for short. Another example would be 'Zalfie' the shipping of Zoe from Zoella and Alfie from Pointlessblog. 

Sometimes, people say "my ship has sailed" implying that two people who you ship are in an official relationship, like 'Zalfie' is genuinely real. On the other hand, some people might say "my ship has sunk" if the two people who you 'ship' have had a falling out or both married, something like that.

Can you only ship one couple at a time?

Absolutely not, many people have multiple 'ships'. However, there is something called an 'OTP' which stands for One True Pairing. This is the ship that you most believe in and put all your effort in to believe that it is real, basically your overall favourite ship.

*If you want to ship people, go wild but the internet (especially twitter and tumblr) are very sensitive over shipping. All you have to do is not offend anyone's OTP by saying "It's fake" because they will get mad at you 70% of the time and please respect other peoples views*

Ironic Abbreviation

This factor is so commonly used that I was blind to it until Mr Dan Howell aka Danisnotonfire cleverly pointed it out in a video called "Ironic Appreciation". Basically, in 2012 using the words 'lol' or 'brb' so was 'uncool' shall we say that you might as well be shunned to hell, that's how unaccepted it was. Then in 2013, people started Ironically saying things like "lol" and "brb" as a type of mockery to previous years. However over the course of the year, so many people are using text talk ironically that it has become serious and people, including myself, are genuinely using text talk seriously.

So as you know there are the common "Lol" which means laugh out loud and "brb" which means be right back, but now things have to developed into "s2g" which means Swear to god (for example, "s2g if my otp is real i will cry") or "ygm" which means "you get me" ("i s2g if my otp is real i will cry ygm")

The more most popular people in the fanbase use text talk the most, as it's funny and will get retweets.

Emotive Words

Seeing as there is a lot of emotion on the internet due to obsessions and bands etc etc, the use of capitals and adjectives has become very common. However, it is always very unclear which emotion the fangirl is trying to portray. For example, the use of upper and lower case can represent anger, excitement & humour ('I'm scREAMING)

Adjectives can also portray didn't emotions. "I'm crying" for example could mean happiness,anger,sadness or excitement. 'Crying' is the most common adjective however now people use words such as 'sobbing' or 'snorting' depending on how intense the feeling is.

Fandoms

oh god, where do I start? well, people who are fans of something are called fangirls as the majority of the fans are girls. (Also, fangirls are known to be excessively obsessed) A group of fangirls create a fandom, a magical place where you can rave about your favourite thing with many others like yourself without your parents telling you to "stop talking about that boy" or "you have already made me listen to that album 4 times". 

However, obviously in fandoms everything becomes more intense because more people see the same beauty it whatever you obsess over, and 'ships' are born, then obsessively wrote about in 'fanfictions'

Fanfictions are very creative I would say and are stories about your 'otp' forming a relationship. However, they are mostly horrifically sexually and I, personally don't read them because i will probably throw-up everything I had previously eaten within the last 9 years. 

((be careful when joining a fandom because they are ife destroying and you end up just on twitter for days on end, I come from personal experience))

Well there you have it, now you are ready to enter the internet! I hope you enjoyed this post, I tried to use a style of "act like being internet-obsessed is an actual art so that I have a talent" ha! 

Also, sorry if this offended you in anyway because I can see how it could be slightly patronising, but I wrote with the best intentions :-)

~Thanks for reading!~

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