#cp fandom

The idea of a CP community being allowed to continue on for purely economic reasons isn’t unreasonable if that community were the primary target audience for the two individuals who are being shipped in the CP.

However, in the case of BJYX in particular, we can see that the market size is roughly 3 million. If we combine all of the followers across all platforms who are GGDD’s fans, we get a rough market size of around 60 million, give or take. 

3 million is only 5% of 60 million. This means that BJYX actually comprise a very small percentage of fans. The majority (95%) of fans either do not identify as BJYX or are not publicly supporters of BJYX. 

Let’s run a hypothetical exercise. Let’s say that each artist generates around $100M RMB a year. This will give us a combined total revenue of $200M RMB. Of that amount, 5% can be attributed to BJYX, or $10M RMB -- roughly $5M RMB per artist. In contrast, $95M per artist, is brought in by solo fans, or fans who aren’t open about supporting the CP. 

Would destroying the CP potentially lead to a $5M RMB loss per artist? Possibly, especially if 100% of the fans involved only support the artists because of the CP. (To those of you who are more familiar with USD: $5M RMB = $773K USD.) 

So, it could be potentially argued by some people that yes, BJYX is allowed  to continue thriving due to economics, if both artists’ companies are determined to hold onto every single penny they could possibly squeeze out.

The question remains if $773K USD is really worth the headache of having to deal with the constant in-fighting between each group of solo fans and the CP fans, as well as fielding rumors and other potentially image-damaging speculation that could hurt an artist’s marketability, and therefore their brandability. (In GG’s case this is absolutely a big concern, especially after everything that happened last year.)

As @potteresque-ire​ mentions in this post, generally after the promotional period ends for a project, a CP is forcibly broken.  

There’s a term related to the breaking of CPs: 提純 (“increasing the purity”). It describes the ultimate goal of breaking CPs: increasing the proportion of solo (”pure”) fans by breaking up the CP and having the solo fandoms of each lead absorb the CP fans. Because solo fans are *perceived* to be more loyal (won’t jump ship the next romantic drama comes along), less likely to draw criticisms (especially if the CP is M/M and/or affect the RL lives of their stars), and have more purchasing power (as CP fans have to divide their resources between the two leads and equally).

Technically, BJYX could have been shut down at any point. Of course, there would be some level of attrition and a slight economic hit - but either side would be able to absorb at least some of the fans. Even if they lost 50% of fans for breaking up the CP officially, that still leaves $2.5M RMB per artist on the table. 

Increasing the purity of the fandom seems to suggest more economic stability for both artists in question, especially as it means increasing purchasing power for one artist or the other. It would also reduce in-fighting within the actual fan bases themselves, as there would no longer be any CP fans, only each respective artist’s fans. 

Most importantly, it would get rid of any speculation of the artists’ sexualities, which may have actually prevented some more conservative brands from wanting to collaborate due to certain image standards that they have for their brand. (Which means, even more money could be potentially earned.)

However, it doesn’t look like either YH or XZS have any interest in actually breaking up the CP officially. (By shutting down the supertopic once and for all.) If anything, BJYX is still allowed to happily flourish without any interference whatsoever, even though their continued existence might actually limit certain brand collaborations and causes ongoing and very toxic internal strife within each artist’s fan base.