#but the utter distregard for human history when it comes to discussions of fandom. Irks me

[beardedhandstoadshark]

Do you think that Shipping is what helps a fandom stay afloat? 🫠

For (by now hopefully obvious reasons) my answer may be a bit biased, but depends on the fandom? In the Onceler or Sansverse fandoms it sure did lmao. But I don't exactly see people having ship-wars about Mario everywhere, y'know? Yet the fandom stands. And then you've also got things like Genshin that, despite being 90% shipping, are just so big that the other 10% could easily carry as well. Zelda-fandom is extremely dependant on what corner you're in (youtube's side is pretty much exclusively fueled by the lore and theory side!) Also fnaf exists. Look me in the eye and tell me its shipping that fuels this fandom and not the lore craze started by MatPat (formerly) GameTheory. Also furry porn but you get the point.

Imo what actually sustains fandom isn't shipping itself (though it makes up a big part of fandom in many fandoms) but rather the overlying emotion: Indulgence in scenes that you think would be pretty cool yo! Be it shipping scenes or mary sue self inserts or crossovers or whatever. Fanart, fics, self-insert manifestos and whatnot all add to fandom as a whole, and they're basically all going "what if we took these guys and put them in these situations".

People just love putting their blorbos in situations, and a lot of those situations happen to be romance.

ALSO that doesn't even include subcategories of fandom like speedrunners etc, who're basically a completely different thing but technically still fall under fandom, but that's getting too nitpicky here XD It really depends on what you'd even define as a fandom.