Understanding the Followers - Codes and Slang

Communicating on Twitter requires one to be creative because tweets themselves are limited to 140 characters. Tweeters have to be creative in how they write posts and often use abbreviations as a way to maximize their real estate. It’s important to understand what the common abbreviations are, so you can understand what people are writing about. Let me just show you a few of the terms found in the Twitosphere.  

RT: Re-Tweet, as it you’re posting it on your own feed.
DM: Direct Message. Kind of lime email on Twitter.
FML: F*ck My Life
SMH: Shaking My Head
NSFW: Not Safe For Work

Truthfully, a lot of the general Twitter slang and abbreviations make sense. I mean, I like to pretend SMH means So Much Hate, but OVERALL, in general, I can figure them out.

There are also references to Shadowhunters in general. For instance, if you leave this blog today with nothing else other than the term Malec, I’ve done my job.

The biggest thing to know is the Mash-ups or Portmanteaus of characters.

Malec – mash-up of Magnus and Alec.
Clace –Clary and Jace.
Climon –Clary and Simon.
Sizzy – Simon and Izzy
Rizzy – Raphael and Izzy
Jimon – Jace and Simon.

Now, here comes the most important part. The slang terms that I have obviously been missing out on.
You should memorize these.

SHIP – Ship is my FAVORITE term right now. It’s a desire by fans for two people to be together in a relationship. Shipping a relationship shows that you are emotionally involved with the characters and have an affinity for them to stay together. Personally, I use it as a way to say I support a relationship – it’s a good pairing.

Curiously, I think this term has evolved a bit.
Let me explain.
One of my college students told me I couldn’t ship real people. That wasn’t cool. It was only for fictional characters.
But, I cross-checked with my 16 year old niece.
Okay, almost 17.
She said I could TOTALLY ship friends.
I mean, I feel like I trust my niece to know how these things work because she’s still a teen.

For example, I ship Malec.
See how easy that was? And how few characters it takes?

CANON – This term means true to the series. In relation to Shadowhunters, if Cassie Clare 

wrote a relationship into the book, that that’s canon. There are some liberties you can take with this – it’s acceptable with fan fiction to change up pairings. I mean, unless it’s Malec. No one messes with Malec.

OTP – One True Pairing. If you real love a particular pairing, they are your OTP.

Okay, and just to make this legit.
Malec is my OTP.

NoTP – Not a True Pairing. Use this to refer to your least favorite couple. These are two people who should not be with each other.

I’m going to say that, to me, Rizzy is my NoTP. 

BROTP – This stands for a couple you like as friends, but not as a couple.

Climon is my brotp. They shouldn’t date, but should legit be friends always. 

STAN – This terms is a portmanteau of the words “Stalker” and “Fan.” 

WHO KNEW?
Actually, the Internet did.
You use this term to describe your avid fanaticism for a celebrity, film group, etc,.
To the level of being obsessed!
I think I might stan Shadowhunters.
I’m kinda torn. I also stan Doctor Who.
Anyway, if you just want to call someone out for being obsessed with something, you can use the word stan.

Someone's TRASH – This term is not to be confused with calling someone trash. If I call someone trash, that means I don’t like them. That makes sense.
No, this term is about saying you’re someone trash.
Apparently this means that you admire the person you mention so much that, comparatively, you are trash. It’s supposed to be a compliment to the person.
Many Shadowhunter fans are Matthew Daddario’s trash.
There actually was this time when Matt asked about this term on Twitter. For a "friend."

I’m not going to say these are ALL of the slang terms out there. Just the ones I have encountered recently.

Hopefully you’ve learned something and picked up a few pointers.

And whatever you do, just remember, no one messes with Malec. 

Following Actors in the Shadow World

Christian Slater

Interacting with your favorite fans in the early 80s was so different than it is today. I was into
buying teen magazines that featured my favorite stars. I would tear (I mean cut, nicely) their pictures out and post them on my wall along with any personal information that was shared in the magazine. I was pretty into Christian Slater, so there were quite a few Christian pics on the wall. And seriously, if I find a good picture that shows my wall of shame, I will scan that baby and totally post it.

Anyway, my wall of celebrities was the 80s version of Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter. I wanted to way to share the things I liked and, truthfully, look at them frequently.

Now you can follow your favorite fans on a number of social media sites. I can see what my favorite actor or actress is doing and where they’re at. In some ways, this makes them more exposed than they were in the gold ole days because they are always sharing to keep their fans happy. On the other side, if they control their own social media does that mean less paparazzi following them?

I follow a number of the actors from Shadowhunters on a number of social media platforms. Let me make a little chart for you of who I follow from Shadowhunters and where.

Actor	Facebook	Twitter	Instagram	Snapchat
Harry Shum Jr.	X	X	X	x
Matthew Daddario	X	X	X
Katharine McNamara	X	X	X	x
Dominic Sherwood	X	X	X
Emeraude Toubia	X	X	X	x
David Castro	X	X	X	x
Jade Hassoune	X	X	X	x
Alisha Wainwright	X	X	X
Alberto Rosende	X	X	X	x
Isaiah Mustafa	x	x	x
Alan Van Sprang		X	X

Now – let me make you one more table.

Actor	Tweets	Following	Followers	Likes
Harry Shum Jr.	17.2 K	771	1.19 M	1590
Matthew Daddario	840	51	394K	559
Katharine McNamara	64.1K	9,223	934K	39.3K
Dominic Sherwood	2533	669	393K	471
Emeraude Toubia	7,329	284	733K	1,231
David Castro	1,294	142	102K	5,358
Jade Hassoune	4,164	680	53.7K	8848
Alisha Wainwright	956	114	19.4K	1790
Alberto Rosende	3,312	704	205K	6741
Isaiah Mustafa	5,851	2,214	188K	3,964
Alan Van Sprang	2,413	210	85.8K	694

And.. to put it into perspective. Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in the Avengers movies, has 3.28 Million followers on Twitter. Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) has 7.86 million Twitter followers. Just so you understand what popular on Twitter looks like. The actors/actresses of Shadowhunters have a solid fan base, but they aren’t, you know, OBSCENLY POPULAR.

Harry Shum jr - Always Classy!

Except Harry Shum Jr. He’s POPULAR. Just not OBSCENLY POPULAR.

Truthfully that’s nice. We should leave something to the imagination. No need to get obscene.

Thanks for keeping it classy Harry!

Anyway, let’s just look at this data and see what we can gleam from that.

First, I know that these actors and actresses are out on social media.
Do they post every day? No.
Are they active on every site all the time? No.
Are some better than others at engaging and entertaining using social media? Yes.

I’m focusing on Twitter because there is more potential for interaction between the actors and fans. Fans are encouraged to ask questions about the show, the characters or about the actors themselves through Twitter. Sometimes you get an answer or a like on your post.

Do you know how excited I get when that happens?

I mean – there are a whole slew of people I run around and tell because I’m so low on the Shadowhunter Twitter echelon that I rarely get noticed.

People think I’m CRAZY!

Jade liked my tweet!

Nope, let me re-phrase. They already know I’m crazy.

This is more of a reinforcement.

Also, in this moment, let me just say that Jade Hassouné gave me my first actor like.
  So… shout out to Jade for noticing my posts!

               

I mean, here you are, one person out of hundreds of thousands of others posting questions, trying to get noticed. The odds are not in your favor my friend. Your tweet has to be appealing enough to stick out among all the other fan tweets. And, seeing as I’m at the bottom of the Twitter world, I feel like more likes and retweets kinda push you up on the feed. I’m just not that cool yet. 

First time for everything?
 

Proof that everyone has a crush on Matt Daddario.

I’m really bad at coming up with good questions or things to say.

Am I supposed to ask them, “hey what’s your favorite book?” “Who’s your celebrity crush?” Because they’ve been asked that.

A BAJILLION TIMES.

Also, fun fact, unless your name is Harry Shum Jr, I think your celebrity crush is Matthew Daddario. No need to ask. #spoilers

Sometimes you get fans demanding an answer or acknowledgement. “I just sent you this message, please answer it!”
 I’m not quite that aggressive with my posting. 

So where does that leave me?

I mainly tweet images or articles I’ve found online.

I retweet things I like.

I try to make comments.

I make snarky comments, especially during #ShadowhuntersChat.
That's just my personality!

Also, I feel like timing is essential. Apparently not everyone gets up at 5:15 am. Posting when actors seem to be active tends to get a better response.

Do you know what that means?

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on the Twitter-sphere, but let me leave you with one last thing.

A friend of mine told me it’s hard to break into Twitter.

He was never so right!!

And he’s very rarely right, so THANKS ALEX!

              He deserves that shout out!