Baiting would have been if he'd slipped in a couple tweets about saving them for his and Phil's actual future child, or if he'd tried to in some way validate that there was a chance they'd have children. Playing along with a twitter trending topic fans made up with ridiculous answers no one would ever take seriously is not trying to lead fans on, it's having a sense of humor.bluntedclaws wrote:I loved your post fancybum. I found myself nodding and reaching for the 'thanks' button about a dozen times. (Oh how I miss that button) The only bit that I didn't 100% agree with was this:I don't really get how joining in with shippers is any different from ship baiting? I mean, in some instances I do, like the 'Phan baby names' thing. That really was just Dan enjoying a fun interaction. but in Phil's the last video when Louise said 'or not accidentally' about groping Phil's butt and Dan made a HUGE show of agreeing with her and then Phil not only left it in during editing but zoomed in on him. IMO that was either ship-baiting or they are really trying to slowly come out.fancybum wrote:And what are people even calling shipbait these days with phan? That 'trash ranking' tweet was not shipbaiting; acknowledging a ship and teasing a ship are very different things. There's no point in pretending they're not aware of people shipping the fuck out of them; acknowledging the jokes and occasionally joining in (completely harmlessly in this case) just seems like a nice interaction with their audience.
I feel like a broken record at this point but re: the butt touching remark, yeah, I think slowly coming out is exactly what they're doing. They're very, very gradually normalizing things by dropping breadcrumbs.
But if you don't think they're together, then yeah, it would look like shipbaiting, I guess. (And on a somwhat related note, it's just hard for me to imagine why anyone would want to be a fan of someone they think would go that far to bait an audience. It makes me uncomfortable because it's almost like I have to address the fact that someone who thinks they are straight, or not together/shipbaits, but is still being a fan is probably the kind of person who is unsympathetic to lbgtq issues and thinks it's okay for people to manipulate a fanbase desperate for representation, and just... ick.)
but that's too real. The American border personnel is always so scary and intimidating. and they also know their power and show it.
