This document summarizes a study on conflicts between "shippers" (fans who support different romantic couples) in a Facebook group for the TV show "How I Met Your Mother." The study found that the group was split between fans of Ted and Robin ("Mosbatsky") and fans of Barney and Robin ("Swarkles"). Discussions between the factions often turned hostile and caused Mosbatsky fans to self-censor out of fear of backlash from the dominant Swarkles faction. The public nature of Facebook groups was found to facilitate conflicts by exposing opposing fans to each other's posts. Shipper debates ultimately ended when discussions grew exhausting for participants.

1. How a conflict changes the way
how people behave on Fandoms
An investigation of Shipper’s Fight in
Facebook groups
Cleyton Souza¹³, André Rolim¹4, Jonathas Magalhães¹³,
Evandro Costa¹³, Joseana Fechine¹, and Nazareno Andrade²
LIA-UFCG¹, LSI-UFCG², TIPS-UFAL³, IFPB4
Brazil

2. Schedule
• Introduction
• Methodology
• Understanding Shippers Fight
• The Role of the Virtual Space in Shipper’s
Conflict
• Conclusion and Future Work
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3. Introduction
• How a conflict changes the way how people
behave on Fandoms
– Fandom = Kingdom of Fans
• How I Met Your Mother [Brazil]
– It is a Facebook group with 15k members
– It reunites fans of the TV show How I Met Your Mother
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4. Context (Spoiler Alert!)
• How I Met Your Mother
– It is an American sitcom
– It ended in 2014, with
nine seasons
– Story:
• Ted (a narrator from the
future - 2030) is telling his
kids how he met their
mother
• The story starts in 2005
• “The mother’’ only appears
in the last season (2014)
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5. Introduction
• How a conflict changes the way how people
behave on Fandoms
– Fandom = Kingdom of Fans
• How I Met Your Mother [Brazil]
• A investigation of Shipper’s Fight in Facebook
groups
– What is a Shipper?
• Shipper ≈ Relationship
– Fans of couples
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6. Context
“Mosbatsky” prefer Robin&Ted “Swarkles” prefer Robin&Barney
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7. Introduction
• Our analysis focuses on mainly understanding
– Why Do people feel motivate to discuss about
fictional couples?
– How Do this discussions affect the members’
behavior?
– What is the role of the group architecture in these
discussions?
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8. Methodology
• This is a mixed research presenting a
constructive point of view
• The research method is called privileged
ethnographic or “aca-fen”
• We used three sources of data
– 25 Posts from the group
– Interviews with 10 members (5 ♀ 5 ♂)
– Google questionnaire answered by 403 members
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9. People who answered our
questionnaire (1)
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10. People who answered our
questionnaire (2)
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11. People who answered our
questionnaire (3)
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12. People who answered our
questionnaire (3)
Awareness of the Conflict × Time in the Group
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13. Understanding Shippers Fight
• How I Met Your Mother [Brazil] has
collectively decided rules.
– There were request to make Shipper’s discussion
forbidden.
– 65% of respondents believe that Shipper’s
discussion is a recurrent topic among the group
activities.
– It is notable that the Fandom is split in three main
subgroups: Shippers of Ted and Robin, Shippers of
Barney and Robin and Those Who Are Indifferent.
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14. Understanding Shippers Fight
Agreement Percentage about the Fandom Split
(aggregate by favorite couple’s choice)
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15. Understanding Shippers Fight
• Why do people feel motivate to debate about
fictional couples?
– “–It’s something that happens in almost every
show; Shippers struggling is common”
– “–They talk about that because have nothing
better to do”
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16. Culture
• “–some fans take the show to serious”
• “–There are people who raising the flag of a
couple and want to defend it as if it were a
football team”
• “–the show is a significant part of their lives”
• “–to everyone who keeping discussing about
fictional couples: go get a football team to
cheer; it is well better!”
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17. Identity
• “–People identify with characters and start to
wish their happiness; for this reason, it is common
a feeling of transference, where they imagine
themselves in the character place and create
expectations about what is better to each one”
• “–These things of prefer one or other couple have
no argument, we simply like and we identify with
different things. It is like everything in life”
• “–they wish other people feel the same way”
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18. Understanding Shippers Fight
• What are the consequences of this conflict?
– Swarkles are winning
• “–Mobastsky team lost a long time ago”
• “–It is like apartheid”
– Mosbatsky avoid post content about Ted & Robin
• “–It would be followed by a bunch of negative
comments”
• “–I said that I root for Ted & Robin and they scold me; I
even left the group, but decided come back”
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19. Understanding Shippers Fight
How Swarkles are seen in the group How Mosbatsky are seen in the group
Mosbatsky accepted a subservient role assigned by Swarkles.
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20. Understanding Shippers Fight
• Swarkles believe that, since Ted & Robin probably
will not end up together, it is nonsense cheer for
this couple.
• The most interest thing is that Mosbatsky
themselves think that way.
• The role assigned to Mosbatsky changes their
normative sense and makes most of them behave
different from others members.
– They assume that share Ted & Robin content is
prejudicial to the good living in the group (LS, TM).
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21. Why are Swarkles winning?
• Mosbatsky are minority and see the Swarkles as a
dominant group inside How I Met Your Mother
[Brazil]
• MAJORITY
• CANON
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22. The Role of the Virtual Space in
Shipper’s Conflict
• “Shipping” discussion is not usual outside the
group
– People tend to avoid conflict offline, where
discussion and possible aggressive outcomes have
high costs. Even more if the offline discussion
happens with relatives or close friends.
– In the virtual space, however, as opinions are
broadcasted in a common space, it becomes
harder to avoid conflict.
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23. The Role of the Virtual Space in
Shipper’s Conflict
• The architecture of Facebook groups favors these two
kinds of Shippers “find” themselves
– there is a public space where users can unsupervised post
content (video, photo or text);
– all content published in that space is visible to everyone in
the group;
– people can like and comment posts, according their
interests.
• Mosbatsky are exposed to Swarkles content and vice
versa.
– The discussions happen because “some members of the
group cannot ignore when they disagree”.
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24. The Role of the Virtual Space in
Shipper’s Conflict
• We inquiry respondents if they believe that the
way how Facebook groups works facilitate that
Shippers of different couples find each other to
discuss:
– 92% agreed. However, when we asked if a changing in
that way would reduce or eliminate these discussions
from the group, 58% disagree.
– This means that, they believe, even architecture
having its effect, these discussions would come to
light anyway, regardless the way how the group
works.
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25. When these discussions end
• According interviewees, a Shipper’s discussion only
stops when
– It becomes too much exhausting and people get tired of
defend their positions.
• This begins when the discussion attracts too much attention and
the number of people involved rises.
• Then, comments rate start to increase together with mean size of
comments.
• Finally, people loose focus and change the topic to “zoeira”
• Respondent’s answers led to the same observations;
“get tired of discuss” (28%) followed by “change the
topic to zoeira” (24%) were the two main reasons to
end a discussion.
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26. Conclusion and Future Work
• This work presented a brief overview about
phenomena that happens in a group called
How I Met Your Mother [Brasil]
• We observed that people change their
behavior due a conflict with others members
• We are studying how our observations related
to others contexts and how they can be used
to affect the living in the group
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27. How a conflict changes the way
how people behave on Fandoms
An investigation of Shipper’s Fight in
Facebook groups
THANK YOU
VERY MUCH!