Biggest Shipping Mistakes

Some of the biggest mistakes fans make during shipping.

For those of you who don’t know, shipping is a term meaning the pairing of two characters together. It comes from the word relationship. Some pairings are canon, i.e., what the writers intended, like Ryu and Kaori in Jetman, and others are paired by fans, like Masumi and Natsuki from Boukenger. Some people have preferences. Some do slash pairings (same sex pairings), some only stick with hetero, some only pair red with pink and green with yellow, and some pair siblings.

However, there are big mistakes that shippers often make. These mistakes apply to fan pairings, not official ones. And some of these mistakes can affect a shipper’s own romantic life. Here are some of the most common mistakes.

They are opposites, that means they belong together.

For those of you guys outside the US, there was a horrible sitcom called Dharma and Greg that managed to run for more than two seasons. The premise was that Dharma and Greg are complete opposites, met on their first date, and then got married immediately afterwards. Dharma was a “free spirit” while Greg was straight-laced. 

Anyway, the premise sounds cute, but it gets boring after a while. And in real life, opposites attract has been disproven (not with magnets, with relationships). Relationship sites like eharmony match people based on similarities—and they aren’t scams, the relationships usually work out. Even in real life, matchmakers (they still exist) pair people off of similarities. If you go out of your way to date someone based off of the fact that he’s the yin to your yang, you’re going to get hurt. It won’t be a productive relationship, because you can’t relate to each other. You both want different things, and have different ways of dealing with life.

I’ll use the fan pairing (not canon) of Marvelous and Ahim in Gokaiger. The MarvexAhim pairing can be traced back to the dime-store romance novels that housewives read while they eat bonbons, in which a pirate and princess fall in love.

Marvelous and Ahim is not a canon pairing, but a few fans treat it like it is, and I think part of their evidence is the whole opposites attract thing. Other than being a pirate and a princess, Marvelous is impulsive and extroverted, while Ahim is polite and introverted. Marvelous and Ahim both have different morals. Marvelous and Ahim both have different goals in life. They both have different interests. If this relationship happened in real life, it would be over in a month. Because they would realize that they have nothing in common.

Some people think you need to find an opposite because they would balance you out, create synergy, and make you a better person. But do you really want to change for someone?

One of the best things about Sentai and Kamen Rider is that they usually don’t use this as a reason to pair people together.

Take a canon pairing: Kouichirou and Chisato from Megaranger. They both are extremely studious, intelligent, and are over-achievers. Chisato is a bit more down to Earth and less serious than Kouichirou, but you don’t have to be twins with your partner. It helps, though, to have a lot in common, which they do. And together, they kind of hold the team down to Earth. So their relationship not only benefits each other, but also benefits the team.

One of my pairings, Takeru and Kotoha, is based on this. Both are only comfortable on the battlefield, both have been withdrawn from the rest of the world, both have confidence issues (Takeru doesn’t reveal it, though, till later), both don’t like to let out their feelings, and they are comfortable with living an abnormal lifestyle (being Samurai instead of modern teenagers). That’s a lot in common if you ask me.

When you look at Mako, she has different goals than Takeru. She wants a normal life, she’s lived in the real world, she wants to start a family, and she’s more extroverted. This difference of goals would cause a relationship to fail in real life.

They hate each other, that means they belong together.

This goes all the way back to a Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalytical psychology (keep in mind, I know all this because if I wasn’t going to be a dramatic writer, I wanted to be a criminal psychologist).

Freud believed that unconscious thoughts and impulses controlled are day-to-day life, emotions, actions, and decisions. When deep inside ourselves, we secretly want something that our conscious is afraid of, and become anxious, we use defense mechanisms. Such as repression, when we repress feelings or a bad memory.

One of Freud’s defense mechanisms that are constantly used in pop culture is reaction formation. Reaction formation is when you want something, but believe it’s wrong, and then focus and display the opposite. I’ll use an example from Akibaranger. Mitsuki/Akibablue acts as if she is above anime/otaku culture, but she secretly likes it, and is afraid it will ruin her image.

This seeps into the romantic aspects in fictional works. Sometimes, people also use this as sexual tension, i.e., just hook up already! In Japan, they even have a term tsundere, which applies to reaction formation.

A contemporary example of this can be Helga from Hey Arnold! For those of you who don’t know, Hey Arnold! was part of the Golden Age of Nickelodeon in the 90s. I grew up with this. Like a lot of the Golden Age Nickelodeon shows, there was substance that made it watchable for people of any age. Helga is the female protagonist, an extremely creative and intelligent 9-year-old girl, who has the writing abilities of Lord Byron.

Now, this part is extremely deep for a kids’ show. Helga has a horrible home life. Her father (voiced by the versatile Maurice LaMarche) is hinted to be a former Vietnam vet, who is a successful, and possibly corrupt businessman. He owns a successful Beeper store, Big Bob’s Beepers (remember Beepers? If they did a sequel to Hey Arnold! taking place now, Helga’s father would be out a job), and is extremely devoted to it. Her mother, Miriam, voiced by the lovely Kath Soucie (is it just me, or did Hey Arnold! have the best castmembers who played the adults?) was hinted to be an alcoholic, walked around in a drowsy daze, and was extremely irresponsible, and withdrawn from Helga’s life. Not only does Helga get no attention from her parents, but she has an older sister in her 20s, Olga, who is just as intelligent and creative as her, and who gets all her parents’ attention. Also, she doesn’t have a unibrow. It was shown in a flashback, that her parents were too occupied listening to Olga play the piano, that they forgot to walk Helga to preschool, leaving Helga to walk herself. So Helga’s homelife sucks. And so she has to put on a tough front, making her kind of a bully, and an unpleasant person to be around.

And she has a huge, obsessive crush on the title character, Arnold. But Helga is afraid to show love to Arnold, because the people who are supposed to give her involuntary love in her life don’t love her. Therefore, she’s mean to him. She bullies him. And she can’t control it. And it makes for a great case, but here’s the thing:

This is television. This isn’t real life. People don’t do this in real life. And Hey Arnold’s! approach to love, might have influenced my generation, and the writers that followed.

I used to like Freud back in high school. And people knew it. But then in college, on my first day of my Modern Theatre class which focused on theatre past 1860 (it was an English class, and it was before I officially declared my major. It was my first day of college too), my professor talked about how Freud went to the theatre. A lot. And this was before theatre started using realism. It was still melodramatic. And Freud took a lot of his theory from theatre. Now, I love theatre. I’m a theatre studies major. And certain shows (specifically ones written past 1860) you can take a lot of important lessons from that will help you in the long run. Other shows can actually give you some bad ideas.

So Freud saw these shows, where people were behaving like caricatures, with a woman always in distress and hysteric. He also saw some old Greek plays, like Oedipus Rex, a play when a young man, Oedipus is fated to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Guess what happens? And guess which Freudian theory it influenced? Gross, right?

So Freud was kind of misogynist, who believed that women were hysteric, and who based his theory off of some really old plays.

So some of Freud’s stuff is true, but some of it isn’t.

Reaction formation isn’t true. If it was, you’d be dating the girl who gives you swirlies. When a girl is mean to you, it doesn’t mean she secretly likes you. It means that she just doesn’t like you. And that’s true for guys, too.

So, and this is one of the ways shipping can actually ruin someone’s romantic life, if you like a guy or a girl, don’t give them wet willies, because they will assume you hate them, and think you’re weird if you tell them you like them, and don’t assume that the girl who’s giving you wet willies likes you, because she doesn’t. FYI, I fortunately never applied this to my life, but I can imagine what would happen if someone did.

Unfortunately some novice fan fic writers, and even professional writers still use this.

In Icarly (and I was pissed that they caved into this common cliché) Sam was mean to Freddie. Guess what happened later in the series? I was like “Aw, crap!” and my little sister was like “They hate each other, so they belong together” and my mom then sided with me and corrected her, and my sister got pissed, it was hilarious.

We like seeing characters argue with each other. And when they hook up, it kind of ruins it, and destroys a part of a show.

Now let’s take some fan shippings. Marvelous and Ahim shippers will usually ship Luka and Don together. These fans can be younger, so they are more influenced by some of the fictional stuff they see on tv or in the movies.

Luka doesn’t like being touched, or shaken. And Don frequently touches her, and shakes her, because he’s afraid of a lot of thing that are going on in the world of the Gokaigers. Or, and no one would like it if someone did this, he’ll hide behind Luka, making her kind of a human shield for him. Don gets on Luka’s nerves, and Luka will hit him or punch him. You can make a drinking game on how many times Luka punches Don. I wouldn’t say she hates him, but she gets pissed at him. Don’s the only person who Luka hits and treats the harshest, and sometimes for no reason. And fans assume that when she hits him, she wants to kiss him. Which is not true. There isn’t really anything other than friendship and Luka’s wrath between Luka and Don. In real life, this relationship wouldn’t work either. Other than not having a lot in common, he gets on Luka’s nerves. That’s why she hits him. Because he pisses her off.

Now, I’m not going to ignore the fact that there have been several tension-ridden relationships in both Sentai and Kamen Rider. But these usually have reasoning behind this, a non-romantic, non-Freudian reasoning.

In Kamen Rider Kiva, Megumi works for the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization, an organization that seeks to kill Fangires. An organization that her mother worked for, before dying. Megumi has been working her ass off so that she can have the honor of using the Ixa system, and to become Kamen Rider Ixa. She’s strong enough. However, her boss, Shima, gives the Ixa System to the over-righteous Nago, because he’s stronger than her (code for, this series is targeted towards boys, so the second Kamen Rider should be a boy). Can you imagine what would happen if it happened to you? You’d be pissed at Nago alright! But at the end of the series, Megumi gets over it (she even gets to use the Ixa system a few times), realizes that she does have feelings for Nago and vice versa, and they get married.

Another example is the slash fan pairing of Kakeru and Gaku in Gaoranger. This has quite a few shippers, and the show is a goldmine for evidence. I’m not sure if the writers intended this or not. So Gaku has been fighting the Orgs as Gaoyellow for a year by himself, sacrificing his career in the military and going AWOL, in order to do so. Then Sae, Kai, and Sotaro join, and Gaku, having the most experience in both fighting orgs, and as a soldier, is kind of their leader. Imagine what happens when a new guy comes, who has had no experience, but has something that you don’t have: he can communicate with animals. And now, he’s the leader, after all the hard work you did, and after what you sacrificed, considering you could be court martialed for going AWOL. You’d be kind of pissed at this guy, wouldn’t you? That’s what exactly happened to Gaku. But then they gradually warmed up to each other, Kakeru usually trusting Gaku, and Gaku retaining some leadership as second-in-command. And they become friends. But then the series progresses, and you can see that there is something that is evolving beyond friendship, whether intentional or not.

This goes to show that not all hate-based shippings are wrong, as long as they don’t simply hate the person or are annoyed by them, but if they have a reason consciously to hate them, and if they have chemistry.

They are standing next to each other, they belong together!

Look at this picture. This is what fans will actually do. Fans will grasp at straws sometimes. Sometimes, this is towards an ambiguous gesture, such as touching someone’s head, or a glance, or sometimes, it’s as banal as sitting next to each other.

Shippings such as Takeru and Momoko from Maskman are built on this. Shippings where nothing really happened.

We all will get a little desperate, however, building a shipping on trifles is ridiculous.

The double standard

This goes along with ambiguous gestures. It’s friendship if a character does it to another character, but its romance if the same character, or type of character does it to a different character.

I’ll use an example from Shinkenger. It’s the ambiguous forehead touch. So, in the “Lord Butler” episode, the episode where some of us believe that Kotoha realizes she has feelings for Takeru that are more than just loyalty and admiration.

So, Takeru’s pretending to be Kotoha’s butler, and she’s uncomfortable with it, because she feels that she needs to be the one serving him. These feelings come to surface, when Takeru is dining with Genta’s rich friend, who has become smitten with her.  Kotoha gets uncomfortable with Takeru serving her, and she leaves the room. Takeru catches up to her, and she tells him what’s wrong, and he tells her that just because she’s a vassal doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to question him once in a while. Kotoha says one of her “catchphrases” “Tono-sama is tono-sama,” and Takeru touches her forehead, and smiles.

So a few years later, we have episode 41 of Gokaiger, the episode which is like the bible for MarvexAhim shippers. So, Ahim is about to leave the ship, and possibly die fighting the man who destroyed her planet. So Marvelous, and the rest of the crew confront her, and say that they’re joining her too, and give her one of many pep talks that are in this episode alone. Marvelous touches Ahim’s forehead.

So, when Takeru touched Kotoha’s forehead, it was dismissed as he was being her “big brother,” by several fans. When Marvelous did the same thing to Ahim, it was considered romantic. So it’s a brother and sister relationship when a red does it to a yellow, but it’s a romantic relationship when a red does it to a pink. This double standard is extremely unfair.

Not only that, but a lot of fans say how awesome Luka is. But then they say that Ahim, not Luka, deserves Marvelous. So it’s okay to be tomboyish and kick butt, but you still aren’t good enough for the hero.

Assume that the ship that has the most fans, the most art, the most fanfics is the OTP (one true pairing) and canon.

I’m going to quote your parents. If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you do that? Come on, don’t be a lemming.

And don’t assume that a shipping is a fan-preferred shipping. And don’t assume that the fan-preferred shipping is the canon ship. Some fans don’t express themselves on the internet as much as other fans, or feel that they don’t need to. Some fans, however, are overbearing, and produce several videos, fanfics, and fanart. And sometimes people who are new to the media will assume that this is the dominant ship. And some of these videos focus on trifles from a few episodes.

Don’t let other people who interpret actions their own way decide the ship for you. Watch for yourself.

And a lot of the works you see are usually made by one person, two people, or a very small group of like-minded individuals.

I’m going to use an example regarding a group of shippers on fanfiction.net. To the writers from this group who I am cordial with, please don’t get upset with me.

Starting around December/January, there was a sudden burst of MarvexAhim and DonxLuka fics on fanfiction.net. You’d think they’d be by a bunch of fans, but they were by two writers. These writers say they are in their teens, but from what I can tell from their writing, grammar, and interactions, they are probably in their tweens. They also use a lot of gratuitous Japanese, which isn’t spelled or used right, which has been corrected by writers who are fluent in Japanese. Within the past few months, this clique has grown to a bunch of writers who are probably within the same age range. They have changed their usernames to reflect that they are members of this ring of writers. And they refer to themselves as a family, and as “oneechans.” Even though some of them don’t know each other in real life.

They will usually say how great a fic is, and give it positive comments, even if it is an extremely horrible fic, if it has their favorite shipping.

And if someone gives a negative review, or a constructive review to a member of their “family,” they can go on the offensive.

This clique has also built up their egos. By getting constant positive reviews, and ignoring negative ones, as people attacking them, they don’t grow as writers.

The fics also reduce the characters to Marvelous’s girlfriend, or Ahim’s boyfriend, and nothing more.

Some members of the “family” I have encountered have been extremely nice. Others have been rude, to some other writers. These writers are older, and more mature, and they have pretty much become annoyed with the “family” being rude to writers who don’t write the ships that the approve of.

So there’s a war a-brewing.

So this “family” is comprised of tweens, who probably hadn’t have real world experience with romance, and who watch Sentai with blinders.

Do you want to take their word for it?

IRL Ship

Even if an actor is playing the love interest of a character, that doesn’t mean that they are going out in real life, or that they should be going out.

Some actors will hook up if they have been in a play, movie, or television show together, in which they play love interests.

For example, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hooked up after playing husband and wife in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And they finally got engaged.

However, if an actor and actress do hook up, a lot of their feelings can be artificial. If they dive too much into a character, or are constantly together because of their filming schedule, they might develop artificial feelings for each other. Take Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. Both were in that deplorable High School Musical movie that effectively destroyed both the institutions of theatre, and the high school experience. And they were constantly together during filming, as they were the two romantic leads. And they hooked up. And they finally broke up last year.

So if an actor and actress are dating because they played a couple, it’s highly likely that the relationship will fizzle.

It’s one thing to ship actors IRL if they are playing a couple. It’s another thing, however, if they aren’t playing a couple, but are shipped by fans in real life. So you have these fans who are essentially demanding you get together.

You have no right to say that two real-life people deserve to be with each other. It’s their choice.

An example would be two facebook accounts that someone set up for both Ryota Ozawa and Yui Koike. This person was obviously (I’m guessing, but it’s likely that it’s true) a MarvexAhim shipper. The person who set up these accounts then made them “engaged.” Not only is that libel, but it’s a horrible thing to do. You can’t choose a real-life person’s destiny. They aren’t characters.

So a few of the MarvexAhim shippers want them to get together in real life, and I think a few believe they are a real couple.

Believe it or not, though, one of the more prominent TakeruxMako shippers has said that she doesn’t ship them in real life. It’s nice to hear that.

Apply these mistakes to real life.

Please don’t date someone because they are your opposite, or assume that someone likes you because they are mean to you, or that if someone is sitting next to you, or offers you a stick of gum, that they are in love with him.

Because that’s extremely delusional. You don’t live in a TV series. You live in the real world.

Not Everything is a Shout-Out or Fan Service

Man, this post will piss people off...

I view Sentai and PR as two separate entities. Although if a season of PR is a blatant word-for-word adaptation of a Sentai season, that's different.

Toei and Sentai creators, as well as actors are aware that they have fans overseas, not just in America, but in Brazil, Indonesia, France, Thailand, Singapore, The Philippines, other parts of Europe, South Korea, and tons of more places. However, their target audience is the people of Japan. Series may be dubbed in certain countries (like in Brazil and in The Philippines or South Korea) but it's not like while writing the original series the writers

They don't write stuff for foreign fans, and they don't write stuff for PR fans. Although specials on Sentai have discussed PR, and they have dubbed a few of the series in Japanese, the main audience is Japanese children (and Japanese Sentai fans).

And Sentai series are written in advance before collaborating with Saban or Disney.

Don't act like a show owes you a shout-out. Because that's selfish.

And don't desperately scrounge each episode for something that might be a reference. Everyone's been trying to do that for Gokaiger.

If you see a Yellow Ranger in a skirt, especially if in PR they didn't have a skirt, they're not giving a shout out and saying "oh, in PR GoYellow and GaoYellow were girls, so we're having Gokaiyellow wear a skirt as GoYellow and GaoYellow because of that!" They are wearing skirts to make it more uniform-ic with what GokaiPink is wearing because essentially they are female versions of said warrior.

And wait until the subs come out before you jump to conclusions. I'll have to repeat myself again: Marvelous didn't know which key was ShinkenGold, and Gai told him it's the one with Kanji on it. KingRanger has Kanji on it for King. Then Gai said that it was the other one with Kanji on it, the shiny, sparkling one. It was a hilarious moment, but it was in no way a reference to the fact that in PR KingRanger was called Gold Ranger, and is no way referring to the fact that Saban has adapted Shinkenger into a PR series, and it is airing currently. In Japan, they are only vaguely publicizing it. They probably turned into Shinkenger because Shinkenger is a recent series, and they finally have ShinkenGold's Ranger Key and it is nice to see a whole team represented.

These moments are just coincidences. Not planned coincidences, but coincidences. And they can be what's called "hilarious in hindsight" but using this phrase (trope) to describe these certain nostalgic moments applies mainly to PR fans, unless it's referring to something else.

Using another TV Trope word, "Word of God" refers to something a creator, writer, director, producer, or actor on the show said, that is canon, or what will probably come up in the near future. If you are looking for PR references, then Koichi Sakamoto is God in this situation.

This is by far the only PR reference when Sakamoto (who was stunt coordinator and director on a lot of PR series, and is now directing some episodes of Gokaiger) said this on his blog.

And don't assume that Saban is going to adapt Gokaiger. A lot of the other bloggers have instead been saying "if Saban adapts it." which I like. But other people say that Saban will adapt it. Which, by the way PR Samurai is going, I hope they don't.

So, in conclusion, you can feel nostalgic about Gokaiger, with regards to either Sentai or PR, but don't try to scrounge for stuff you view as references and assume that Luka's purposely wearing a skirt as GingaYellow because Hikaru's counterpart was a female. Or if they turn into Zyuuranger it's not blatantly because Zyuuranger was the first series to be truly adapted in the US. The writers don't purposely do this as fan service. Don't think they owe you something, or be selfish.

And sorry if this offended some of you

How to Annoy People on Forums

Yeah, not a lot of pictures for this one.

Okay, I don't comment on forums. Mainly because the two major ones: ranger crew and ranger board, are associated with power rangers, something I don't want to be associated with, and I'm busy enough as it is. I still read forums for news, updates, links to subs (I found out about one of the major sites I use to get subs thanks to these forums), and the occasional larf (that's laugh in britspeak).

After looking through the three big forums: rangercrew, rangerboard, and henshinjustice unlimited, I was able to find out different patterns of posting or posts themselves that pissed users off, and somehow pissed me off as well. Most of the perpetrators are newbies, but those who are still a little green or regular users shouldn't be making these mistakes. Usually they will be corrected by a moderator or a veteran, however, sometimes moderators don't have to correct them (and they have every right not to, moderators are busy people to). Either a bunch of other users will vehemently correct them. If the user doesn't learn from their mistakes, it will become kind of their signature, like you can tell who is making the comment even if they changed their name, or a forum war will erupt--and although these are hilarious, they are still somewhat useless and annoying for people who use the forum or just read it.

So here is a list on how to piss people off, specifically on tokusatsu forums.

Do not adhere to the basic rules. This includes formatting, quotes, signatures, spoilers, all that good stuff, which usually requires some html. This goes for any forum. Now, a lot of readers aren't annoyed by this, but the more meticulous users are.

Start a fandom war. This goes for pr vs. sentai, pr vs. kamen rider, kamen rider vs. sentai, etc.

Start a shipping war, or dominate the ships. Now, I admit it, for Shinkenger I am a diehard Takeru Kotoha shipper. I was intimidated and discouraged while reading the forums after the support the Takeru Mako shipping got, and how people worshiped Mako. I talked to my fellow Takeru Kotoha shippers, and they said they don't even bother to look at the certain forums that are dominated by the opposite shipping. I'm not sure if they scared us or we just got sick of it. So don't be an instigator. You can write once in while about it, but you shouldn't make every other post raving about the ship, and saying stuff that isn't evident at all. Because you're bound to attract an shipper from the opposite side who is bound to be upset. And behold: shipping war. Also, a lot of these shippers are self-inserters. Therefore, if you blatently insult one ship, you are indirectly insulting the shipper who sees themselves in this kind of relationship, whether if it is a real life relationship with someone that is a lot like the character, an crush on someone who is like the character, or an admiration for the character or actor. So you make the shipper feel bad.

Start a political war. Back to shinkenger, I remember when some people were upset with how Mako wanted to be a housewife and a good mother. Some feminists were upset about that, and said that it's non-progressive. Some feminists who were realists, or realists who weren't feminists said, it's just a kid show, and then more conservative people felt insulted, because they were or knew people or were married to people who are homemakers. Then people actually started insulting the conservatives, and the conservatives insulted the feminists, and I swear I saw a few death threats. I myself am an equalist. I believe everyone has the right to choose what they want to do--even if they are a fictional character, but fictional characters have no free will and--whoa existentialism. But yeah, it can get that dirty.

Rite gramaticaly incorrect massages with speeling misteaks that sond like u r righting this wile u r drunk. This usually invokes the wrath of grammar facsists. And you don't want that.

Discuss something that isn't in the forum topic.

Although this doesn't count as a fan war, just make one offhanded comment on how, for example, pr samurai is better than gokaiger in a gokaiger topic forum. This isn't fanwar bait, but it does make a lot of people frustrated that someone is on their turf: a forum specifically for their interest.

Troll. Period.

Attempt to act as moderator or dominate the forum. Forums have moderators. Don't try to steal their job and then claim you are the original one, or are better than them.

Repeatedly ask, "when is the sub coming out?" "when is the episode going to be on the internet?" "who uploads the movies to the internet? Or even worse "when is the episode going to air?" or "when is the movie coming out?" Subs take either a short time or a long time to make depending on the language strength of the subbers. Instead of asking, go to the sources themselves to see when the sub is coming out. Who knows, they might have released it already. Also, usually a nice poster will just post a friendly link without being asked to to a stream or episode. You know when the episode is going to air, and when  the movie's coming out. Google it. Finally, it's not a good idea to repeatedly ask which specific person uploads episodes or movie (especially youtube). Why? Because Toei has been purging copywritten videos from youtube, causing people to create several accounts, and make unlisted videos. People's accounts are being disabled because of it. If enough word is spread around, the people who are doing purging might catch wind of it, and it will be hard to find sentai on the internet. These uploaders like to be secretive.

Ask the above questions after being answered or corrected. You got a response, an answer, or you upset a bunch of people who told you to stop. So stop.

Any other forum peeves? Feel free to comment!