User blog:Phenglei Kai/Seddie Domination - The Self-Perpetuating Cycle

It is very admirable that the Seddie shippers are making such an effort to draw more Creddie and Cam shippers to this Wiki, but I am skeptical as to whether it will amount to anything. I'm not saying that they should give up, but I think they should understand what they're up against.

In my view, this has become something of a self-perpetuating cycle. Over time, the Seddiers increasingly dominated the Wiki, the Creddiers got discouraged and left, and now the Seddiers have basically taken over (whether they intended to do so or not).

A while back, somebody deleted the word "Crush" from Carly's entry on the Freddie Benson page and revised it to say that Freddie had gotten over his crush on Carly, and then did the same thing on Carly's page, writing that she no longer had any feelings for Freddie. In her case, even the phrase "Possible crush" apparently wasn't acceptable to leave in. And nobody did anything or said a word about it.

A day or two ago, that all happened again.

(When it happened for the first time, I wanted to change it to something that was at least neutral, but I felt afraid of overstepping my bounds, since I was still new to the Wiki.)

I've always wondered if there were any people, particularly new members, who at least liked the Creddie relationship, but got discouraged when they brought up the characters' pages and saw what basically amounted to, This community has now decided that Creddie can't happen anymore.

Nobody likes to feel overwhelmed, ganged up on, or that they have to shout in order to be heard at all. So, the more that the Seddiers dominated, the more that Creddiers got discouraged and gave up, and that, in turn, caused the Seddiers to dominate even more, which caused yet more Creddiers to leave, etc.

It's a self-perpetuating cycle that has now reached the point that, I think, new members who support Creddie aren't likely to stay here for long before they feel put off and leave. And, of course, no new Creddiers = no change in the status quo.

And while we're on this subject ... I'm sorry, but sometimes I feel like the Seddie shippers want to have their cake and eat it, too.

A good example of this is how they keep disparaging iSaved Your Life, saying that Carly and Freddie's relationship didn't mean anything, that the kiss in iKiss was so much more romantic and meaningful than any of Carly and Freddie's, that Carly looked like she was trying "to eat Freddie's face," and so forth ... and when some Creddie shippers got depressed and began hoping for a better Creddie episode to come along, the Seddie shippers got all upset and said, "What? You already got 'iSaved Your Life.' What more do you want?"

Well, you can't have it both ways. You can't dismiss iSaved Your Life as being meaningless and then argue that the Creddie shippers should have been satisfied with having it.

Similarly, the Seddiers keep saying that they want a stronger Creddie presence on this Wiki, but just a few days ago, they posted a long series of comments from another message board dismissing the Creddie relationship, saying that it couldn't possibly go anywhere, that all Carly and Freddie would ever do is kiss, and that it was boring and had about as much spark as a piece of dirt. One person generously acknowledged that Dan Schneider could probably come up with some Carly/Freddie plots that "aren't entirely uninteresting."

Let me tell you something ... I am a neutral shipper. I don't even want Creddie to happen (although, for the record, I don't want Seddie to happen, either). But even I got depressed reading all that.

Though, to be fair, in my case, it was at least partly because I wanted there to be some suspense in the Carly/Freddie/Sam love triangle. I didn't want either relationship to happen, but if one was going to, I would have liked it to be more even-handed, with strengths and weaknesses in both relationships, and some real reason to wonder who Freddie was going to wind up with. I didn't want it to be a clear, cut-and-dried case of one relationship being the obvious choice.

My reaction, however, was nothing compared to my sister's. She's not really a Creddie supporter, either, but she very much disagreed with those comments, particularly the one about how the Sam/Freddie relationship sends a positive message ("The girl who was always told she wasn't good enough, gets the guy") to teenaged girls ...

... Well, actually, the word "disagreed" may be a bit of an understatement. When my sister read that, she hit the roof. I haven't seen her that upset since the time I mistakenly sent a text message to her boyfriend, telling him that my sister had ... Uh, well, never mind what I texted him. Point is, she wasn't happy.

My sister will probably post a blog herself before the week is over, expressing her own thoughts on that (the Sam/Freddie relationship, that is, not my text message).

Anyway ... To the folks who are trying to get more Creddie shippers to join this Wiki, I wish you luck, but I'm afraid that this is something that I, for one, really can't help you with. I don't know anybody who watches iCarly. At least, nobody who is not already familiar with this Wiki. But if I did know any Creddie shippers ... Honestly, I don't think I could justify asking them to come here.

Maybe if things around here were less heavy-handed, it would be different. But as it stands right now, if I knew somebody who was just really enjoying Carly/Freddie on the show, I would probably feel it best to just let them have it and be happy, rather than send them someplace that's going to crush them. For their sake, I would likely decide that it's better to just leave well enough alone.

I'm sorry.