Since the emergence of “fandoms,” the existence of the “ship” has dominated how people consume and engage with media. Shipping refers to the art of imagining, creating or supporting — usually romantic — relationships between characters in a fictional medium. However, I’m sure the 2014 Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson shippers wouldn’t expect that the ships of 2026 would not only include fictional characters, but also almost always involve social media celebrities and influencers.
Woah Vicky is a TikTok/YouTube influencer who gained notoriety in 2017. Known both for making false claims that she is 25% Black — saying the n-word regardless — and her public disputes with other internet celebrities like Bhad Bhabie, Woah Vicky was one of those influencers that people loved to hate.
However, after the money from saying slurs for views and fighting Bhad Bhabie in a recording studio in Atlanta had dried up, Woah Vicky went through a sort of ‘biblical reformation,’ according to her fans, and her bad girl attitude was replaced with a more pious and humble persona.
Clavicular, a TikTok personality primarily known for popularizing looksmaxxing as a concept and promoting extreme self-improvement techniques like “bone smashing,” has similarly gone through his own transformation, except that his baptism has been done by the hands of the internet itself. It seems that after speaking earnestly about his addiction on stream and getting brutally frame-mogged by an ASU frat leader, the chronically-online public now perceive Clavicular to have gone through an ego death, converting him from an insufferable looksmaxxer to a vulnerable victim to society’s unattainable beauty standards for men.
Although their respective fans have forgiven both internet personalities for their transgressions, these sympathies are largely concentrated in a small group of individuals. Well, at least they were.
Clavicular met Woah Vicky during his Mog World Order Subathon Stream, and, according to fans, they seemed to hit it off. Clav was seen stealing longing looks at Vicky, smiling more and even complimenting her in ways he had never done with his other female guests.
Initially, fans assumed that these little personality changes were being done for views and disregarded the pair's apparent chemistry. However, when they heard rumors that Clav had sent Vicky flowers with an alleged romantic note, the internet responded in an uproar. Before the week ended, multiple edits had been made, fanfics had been written in comment sections and think-pieces had been made on TikTok.
I was, quite frankly, shocked by how much media attention these two were getting, especially that it was almost entirely positive. Clavicular had never graced my screen before this livescreen, but now his face was plastered permanently on my For You Page, and I even found myself entertaining the possibility that Woah Vicky had changed him for the better, asking myself: Is love redemption?
It isn’t unheard of for fans to disregard the terrible actions of a character for the sake of shipping them with someone else. After all, one of the most prolific ships in Harry Potter was between Draco Malfoy — a character defined by his cruelty and prejudice — and Harry Potter — the main victim of Draco’s transgressions. Fans are attracted to the possibility that someone deeply flawed could be softened and changed through a true connection with the ‘right’ person, so the trope of ‘love alleviating all’ is not new when it comes to fictional characters. However, it is practically unheard of when it comes to people in real life. Because Woah Vicky and Clavicular aren’t characters with controlled arcs where the possibility of redemption is almost always possible, it is dangerous to project those expectations onto them. Doing so relegates their awful past actions to ‘lore’ instrumental to their character development, essentially stripping those actions of their real-world consequences.
Additionally, this trope’s application to real people would not apply to people of color. Black and Brown influencers aren’t afforded the same grace when it comes to bad behavior, as even the possibility of being ‘cringe’ could excommunicate them from the world of internet fame. We see this in TikTok personality Fannita’s push into obscurity in 2023 after she dared to alter her body as a Black woman and be ‘rude’ on the internet. I didn’t see anyone making ship edits of her with her then-boyfriend.
Woah Vicky has said racial slurs multiple times and continues to lie about her race. Clavicular is ruining a generation of teenage boys with his terrible looksmaxxing advice and promotion of addiction and eating-disorder culture. Yet they are both awarded the space to grow into better versions of themselves and use their supposed love for each other to speed up the process. This doesn’t work in real life; the ability to be emotionally intimate with another person is not equivalent to self-redemption, and it definitely isn’t proof of it.
So while the internet might want to believe in a redemption arc powered by chemistry alone, reality is a lot less forgiving and less narratively convenient. But hey, if you still want to write that Clav x Vicky fanfiction, you are free to do so, just send it to me afterward.
Tami Omole is a member of the Class of 2029 in the Brooks School of Public Policy. She is a contributor for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at ofo3@cornell.edu.
