Fansplaining Shipping Survey

[forestofglory]

Recently the hosts of the podcast Fansplanining ran a surrey about shipping. I'm totally fascinated by the survey at its results.

Here is the episode (with transcript for those who prefer that) where they go over the results.

There's cool Data Visualization. And an article on the top-line results form shippers who responed and one on the technical aspects of the Methodology.

Its really interesting to see what people said! What do you think about the results? Do they reflect your experiences?

Comments

[allekha]

I had problems with how some of the questions were formulated, and from the way the hosts reacted to some of the survey outcomes (e.g. surprise that lots of people have too many ships to list), I don't think they have had a similar fandom experience to me or a lot of other people I know in fandom, which may have contributed. I also don't agree with some of their conclusions and speculation.

I was surprised at just how high the percentage of people saying they weren't straight was, though. I know previous surveys of this kind have gotten a lot of not-straight respondents before, but I wasn't expecting the number to be quite that high when I clicked on the tab.

[forestofglory]

Oh interesting. Which questions would you formulated differently?

[allekha]

There were a few, but the main one was the 'tell us about your ships!' one. I was one of the people who put down 'way too many', and when I looked at the data, I also saw a lot of people putting down 'too many' and then listing a couple of most recent or most beloved ships, or putting down things like X/everyone, X/despair, or general ship dynamics that they're into. I just don't think it was a good question.

The race question - I'm American myself, so I get the temptation to just use the standard American version of the question, but as you can see from the answers, it doesn't work well for an international audience, and some people were either confused or upset by it. There has to be a better way to do it. Or just leave it out. I'm not sure it contributed much and the hosts don't talk about the context it supposedly provides.

I also thought that the follow-up questions about how other fans have affected what people ship or how they feel about a ship were kind of vague. I would have at least separated it into positive/negative experiences based on the previous questions, and added an inverse for the 'have you ever started shipping something because of other fans' question.

[beatrice_otter]

Huh. Interesting, because I am polyfannish and love many characters and pairings, but to me "X/everyone" is not a ship. It just means that you're a fan of that character who also likes romance or porn or whatever. If "X/everyone" counts as a ship, then any fannish consumption or production of any kind is a ship, and the term has lost all meaning.

For me, "shipping" something (be it a pairing or a threesome or moresome) means you are specifically invested in that relationship. Not just one character and whoever they happen to be with, but both/all characters in that relationship and the dynamic between them.

I dunno, maybe it's from coming up in fandom during the ship wars of the early 2000s when you had your One True Pairing and that was shipping. I mean, I never had an OTP because I'm polyfannish and love lots of pairings, but shipping to me is definitely about the relationSHIP. Using a character as a little black dress (they go with everything!) is awesome, but not the same thing.

But, obviously from the results of the survey, there are a lot of people who are closer to your opinion than mine, and that for me was really interesting.

[forestofglory]

Given what they wrote about the data clean up it seems like they could have made life easier for themselves if they had provided more instructions for the question about listing ships.

[lazaefair]

and from the way the hosts reacted to some of the survey outcomes (e.g. surprise that lots of people have too many ships to list), I don't think they have had a similar fandom experience to me or a lot of other people I know in fandom, which may have contributed.

Haven't listened to the episode, but having listened to the podcast before, this doesn't surprise me. One of the reasons I stopped listening is that I persistently could not relate to the way at least one of the hosts experienced fandom or the conclusions she drew as a result, and I also felt just enough subtle disapproving judgment of my way of doing fandom (a lot of "really? that's weird" kind of reactions) that it just got too stressful to listen to.