Ever heard of shipping? Unless you’re a YouTube or Tumblr addict, chances are this trend has passed you by. Shipping is where a community ‘ships’ together two together as a couple (shipping = relationshipping). Essentially, they post about how they’d love for those individuals to be together as a couple. It’s a HUGE thing on Tumblr to ship together YouTubers, although celebrities, movie and TV stars and book characters also get the shipping treatment from the keyboard tapping micro-bloggers (Harry Potter and Ron Weasley seems to be a persistent one….)
Seeing as YouTube seems to be the place for observing would be/should be/actual couples, here’s our top five to watch!
Zoella and Alfie
Zoella and Alfie are YouTube’s dream shipping-come-true couple. For several years, the people of Tumblr hoped that one day, popular beauty blogger Zoe Sugg and comedy cutie Alfie Deyes would get together. In 2013, the pair announced that they were officially dating (after a screensaver of them together was caught in the back of another vlogger’s video).
Visit PointlessBlog (Alfie’s channel)
Fleur and Mike
2013 was a good year for romance in the YouTube world – last year, beauty vlogger Fleur De Force married her long term boyfriend (now husband) Mike. Fleur and Mike vlog together often, in their little country home with their two dogs, and also vlogged throughout the run up to their wedding.
Tanya and Jim
Tanya and Jim are university sweethearts. Tanya has gone on to launch her own make up range, while Jim has built up a decent career doing presenting jobs on YouTube (and now has a show on ITV2).
Tyler and Troye
Not strictly an official couple, but the amount of shipping done about Tyler and Troye on Tumblr means they may as well be. How ridiculously cute is this gif of them?
The Holy Trinity (nope, not that one)
The Holy Trinity is made up of American YouTube heavyweights Grace Helbig, Mamrie Hart and Hannah Hart. They’re so close that they went on to do a movie together and constantly star in each other’s videos. Sure, there’s no romance there. And there are three of them. But we still think they deserve a mention (plus half of Tumblr seems to be shipping them at the moment).