I'm confused how were those memes instances of cyberbullying from korrasami fans
Alright. Gather âround children and let me tell you the stories of some of the worst cases of cyberbullying Iâve seen in a long time: the âpopping bottlesâ post and the âfeudal lord and handmaidenâ meme, complete with links.
So @avatarskorra made an untagged personal post the day before the finale with the phrase âwe be popping the biggest bottles when Makorra happens tomorrow.â It wasnât actually meant in seriousness and was an inside joke between her and another user, largely because basically everyone in the fandom (including Korrasami shippers) accepted the inevitability of either a Makorra ending or a âKorra ends up singleâ ending given how Book 4 had progressed. Korrasami actually happening was not on anyoneâs radar, even the serious Korrasami shippers.
Fast forward to a couple of days after the finale. A Korrasami shipper found the post on her blog (because her blog was one of the recommended blogs in the makorra tag at the time), reblogged it and mocked it, and made it go viral. She was bullied viciously over the incident, sent death threats, told to kill herself, sent messages that said she was homophobic trash, and basically mocked to high heaven for it. For the first month or two, it was mostly by Korrasami shippers. Then somehow the post got out of the fandom proper and onto tumblr as a whole, where people who never even watched the show started mocking the post and sending her hateful messages. She is still receiving those messages a full year later.
On the âfeudal lord and handmaidenâ meme: so letâs rewind back to aboutâŚI guess it was March or so. Maybe April. A non-native English speaking Makorra shipper who didnât live in the West made a poorly thought out and poorly worded analogy about Korra and Asamiâs relationship that compared it to that of a âfeudal lord and a handmaiden,â basically stating that in the Korra/Asami relationship, Asami acted like a handmaiden to Korra and did âwhatever she needed done whenever she needed it doneâ and was basically only there as a character (by Season 4) to help Korra, etc etc. Basically a post that had a legitimate point in some ways but was very poorly worded, in poor taste, had homophobic undertones, and used a lot of social justice buzzwords like âheteronormativeâ and stuff because the girl wasnât actually familiar with how they were used in the West and thought it would help her case. It wasnât an okay post, but that still doesnât justify the reaction that happened because of it.
So there was some lowkey fandom drama about it; Makorra and Korrasami shippers alike called her out on it, though the Makorra shippers were exceedingly more polite and willing to educate her on why what she said was wrong. The Korrasami shippers basically mocked her to high heaven, called her homophobic as hell, and started sending her anon hate and death threats. A day or two later, some asshole Korrasami shipper submitted the post to genderoftheday, who made a post saying that âtodayâs gender of the day is: feudal lord and handmaiden.â The post gained 30K notes in two days and exploded onto tumblr as a whole. The entire meme was rooted in hate and the harrassment of a shipper. The girl got tons of death threats, anon hate, messages telling her to kill herselfâŚ.and the Korrasami shippers laughed the entire time and defended that. And very few of them called out the shitty behavior of the Korrasami fandom during that time.
And if you donât believe me, I have the proof in my tags: these posts have the bare bones basics of the whole thing.
And both of those things barely touch the surface: Korrasami shippers calling Makorra and non-shippers homophobic/biphobic just because they didnât ship Korrasami, telling Makorra shippers that they âwerenât really LGBTâ and/or âwerenât really POCâ because they didnât ship Korrasami, constantly crosstagging and throwing hate around, lecturing us about how Makorra was âabusiveâ and how we shouldnât ship it, the constant bullying and name-callingâŚthe list goes on and on, honestly.
Know your fandom history and learn about the shitty things your side of the fandom has done: it will serve you well in knowing who to avoid and who to actually blame for being a fandom known for hate and harassment later down the road. Happy one year anniversary everyone.