#i don't need to be bombarded with more than a bromance<3 tweets to see that they care for each other

[leqclerc]

I think Ferrari had no idea to do marketing wise with Sebchal, probably the age gap, Seb having no online presence, Ferrari still being in the stone age of the internet...And now they have two young, popular, handsome guys that seem to like each other, I guess someone said you're Carlando now. To me Carlando felt lile McLaren leaning too much onto the ~this is more than a team~ rebrand (idc if they are friends irl, that's not the point) and I guess Ferrari want some of that too

I'm gonna go ahead and address these asks in one reply because they're all kinda pertaining to the same topic. I totally get this and I agree! For me it's less about the queerbaiting (not my phrasing, someone else put that notion out there) and more just lamenting the fact that Ferrari didn't modify their race recap formula a little earlier, or that they didn't do those the drivers give their thoughts on the race things with Seb and Charles. It feels like a missed opportunity.

I get that Seb's a family man and he likes keeping his private life private and I respect him for not getting involved in the mess that is social media because lbr it can be a cesspool out there sometimes and the less braincell-robbing stuff you see the better. I'm not saying put the man on TikTok but they were doing PR stuff anyway, be it silly UPS or Shell sponsor content or whatever. So it's just kind of a shame that Ferrari hadn't thought to expand their race recaps to something beyond 1-2 minute fast-paced music video type content or done those post-race debrief things back then. I just like seeing them interacting in a way that isn't scripted. I like learning more about the behind the scenes, the inner workings of the team, or as much as they're willing to show anyway. Getting to see glimpses of their team briefings in DTS was really cool. And all those interactions were their own. In fact, I think most of the stuff that could potentially be taken as queerbaiting largely just came from their own mouths; those were unscripted moments. Maybe the situation they were put in (challenge video, DTS) was planned, but how they acted and what they said in those came from them.

Also it's like... how unsubtle the Charlos thing is? On Ferrari's end, I mean. It just feels like a near-constant bombardment of content and increasingly questionable captions/responses and it's just tiring, lmao. How many more times do I have to be told that they're close in age, play chess and padel, etc etc etc. They're riding the wave now but surely there will come a time when there's just an oversaturation of this kind of content. It’s so heavy handed and so on the nose (“more than just a bromance”?????) that it’s kind of exhausting.

I get that they're primarily active on Twitter and Instagram and those two operate a lot differently to Tumblr, especially on the so-called stan Twitter side. Afaik Carlos is still quite beloved on there and he never I guess got "cancelled" or turned fans off the way it seems to have happened on Tumblr some time ago. So he's still a popular figure on there, you're right.

It's something I've been noticing and thinking about and even discussing with other people, but like...this blurring of lines between fans and official team social media accounts is kind of a double edged sword. Yeah they're catering to these people's desires and reward them for their engagement by mentioning them by name and making them feel special so they keep coming back, but that (and the fact that the vast majority of stan Twitter fans engaging with the teams are in their teens or early 20s and no strangers to fandom culture) has led to this kind of breech into fandom terms that honestly (to me anyway, and to the people I've spoken to) feels a bit weird and borderline uncomfortable. Ferrari's not the first team to do this, but they are jumping on the bandwagon with ship names and things and it's kind of 🥴to watch. I always found it weird when fandom members would [@] or even DM actors or showrunners believing they have some kind of friendship going on because of this social media engagement, and I find this just as weird.