The children’s sitcom iCarly ended over five years ago, but that doesn’t mean the show’s wiki is over. Not that this is a new phenomenon; fandoms often last years after the original show or series ended, through their own adoration for the fandom. However, I was somewhat surprised to learn that iCarly still had existing fans that continue to argue over pairings. Over the last weekend, I explored the entire wiki and decided to present and analyze my findings of the strangest pages.
The first page of the wiki appears like most other types; there is a summary of the show, a featured episode, a featured character, among other things. There also exists a warning to not engage in ship warring, which when clicked upon, leads to an article where at the bottom in bright red bold lettering, it reads, “Ship warring will result in severe punishment.” This punishment is explained further in the comments;
Shipping is very serious.
The article I decided to analyze first was on one of the main characters, Spencer Shay. Spencer’s wiki article is largely inoffensive and normal at first, at least until you start scrolling down. Apparently, Spencer has dated about 16 girls over the course of the show, but, even more shocking than that, is the fact that someone sat down and counted how many dates or girlfriends Spencer had.
Ladies Man. (Source)
Spencer’s article led me to an even more perplexing article; that of minor ships in the show. These are ships that either lasted for one episode or are generally just strange. One such pairing is Cart, which no, does not mean shopping cart. It’s actually the pairing of Carly and Cort, a character who appeared in one episode. One of the pieces of evidence for the ship is “On Cort’s pad he wrote Carly looks hot,” with hot bolded, as though the word is scandalous. Cort’s standing is somewhat controversial within the fandom, as shown by this screenshot:
There’s even a ship with one piece of evidence for the two liking each other; Gandy. This evidence for the ship is; “When Gibby sees Mandy quacking, he asks Carly who the duck is. When Carly says, “Our manager,” Gibby says that Mandy is weird.” Truly, this is love.
Something I also found strange was the amount of flirting and shipping between minors and adults throughout the wiki. There is an entire page on the iCarly wiki about the romantic ship between Sam and Spencer, with a detailed list of every interaction the two have had.
(Source)
There is also a whole section on the iCarly wiki dedicated to innuendo within the show, with many interactions between minors and adults. One scene from “iParty with Victorious” involves Gibby massaging a half-naked Spencer, and another such scene listed is the character from Victorious, Rex, flirting with Gibby’s actor, a 15-year old at the time. While Rex is a puppet, he is voiced by a man who was at the time 32 years old, and is implied to be an adult.
This sort of behavior isn’t really surprising coming from Dan Schneider, but it’s especially creepy seeing young fans proclaim how they would want to date Spencer or have Sam and Spencer date. It just goes to show how allowing behavior like this normalizes this behavior for kids, which is extremely dangerous.
Besides the shipping, the last focus of interest for me lies in the comments. I decided to compile a list of my personal favorites;
And my favorite one:
Genderneutral icon Maurice
The iCarly wiki is both somehow a dark place, and an inviting place. I encourage you all to spend a few hours searching through it, and experience what I had: nostalgia and disgust mixed with confusion.