oh my god? the x files-fandom was the fandom that invented the word ‘shipping’? JESUS CHRIST I LOVE Y’ALL
Yes, back in the early days, there were two camps of fans: “Relationshippers” (people all about the MSR) and the “NoRomos” (people all about the platonic partnership.) Relationshippers was eventually shortened to “shippers.”
The X-Files popularity just happened to parallel the birth of the internet. Philes took it by storm with the creation of fan forums, chat groups, and hundreds of websites devoted to the show, characters, and the actors. :)
The X-Files fandom also coined the term UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension) as a fanfic descriptor. :D Fandom history is pretty neat.
Sweet baby Jesus, I actually remember this and feel really old now.
Every time I get wind of youngsters trying to push older fans out of fan spaces, I need to trot this out because there are a number of terms still in use in fandom today that were first coined on the X-Files relationshipper mailing list that I created and ran for years (this was WAAAAAYYY before social media; we posted our fic to Usenet, y’all.) That list has its own Fanlore entry.
So, for anyone who still things fandom is no place for older people: junior, we invented the fan spaces you want to exclude us from.
