THE FLASH: THE REALITY BEHIND THE APPARENT HATE AGAINST CANDICE PATTON

When you arrive to a series fandom, you hope to live a wonderful experience, to meet people who like the same things as you and to be able to enjoy the fandom's culture: draws, videos, fanfics, edits... However, what no many people know before starting is that not everything is rossy. There are hate and hostility between fandoms, which is spread by small groups of people who don't respect the rest of opinions or likes and who try to impose theirs. This causes fights between fans which usually exasperate everyone but they don't give importance to it . It becomes a real problem when fandoms' fights and hate reach actors and even the series. This is exactly what has been happening in the emblematic series "The Flash", which is being emitted since 2014.

Along 6 seasons The Flash' episodes have made us to dream, to laugh, to cry and to live good and bad moments. However, this is being overshadowed by the war that fandoms are living, a war full of ciberbullying, contempt and hate which are promoted by an important group of accounts related to the actress Candice Patton, who plays the role of Iris West-Allen. There is no a justified reason why Patton's fans need to claw out in favour to their favorite actress, but they continuosly spread disatisfaction inside The Flash 's fandom. Along this article I'll analize what is happening inside the fandom in the most possible neutrality and truthfulness, since an external point of view to the series'fans.



There is not an especific date when the pressure between fandoms started, but everyone knows who is promoting it:,the couple of Barry and Iris' shippers, whose name is "Westallen". This movement defends that Candice Patton deserves a higher visibility in the plot (even if she is one of the main protagonist characters and appears in every single episode of the series) and they defend her from alleged insults by other fandom's members related to her Afro-American appearance. Another of their aims is to decimate people whose favorite couple is integrated by Barry and Caitlin Snow (which is called "SnowBarry"), played by Danielle Panabaker, which is one of the most beloved series' ships besides Westallen. So, why are a lot of people from the fandom complaining about?

As I have said, after an exhaustive investigation, the movement of hate and discrimination which is spread by the Westallen collective (obviously, I'm generalizing...of course, not every people on the fandom who loves this couple and Candice Patton is part of this movement) is causing serious mishaps inside the fandom and even the series, making even some actors to close their social media not to witness the direct hate against them and their family. Next, I'll show the facts we have witnessed to expose the tricks that Westallen shippers have used to damage the res of the fandom

USE OF BOTS AND FAKE ACCOUNTS

Even if there is no way os checking if a lot of accounts are bots (or fake accounts which are created to support a cause no need of real followers or supporters), we can consider 3 parameters to analize them: the lack of a low number of followers/followed, the lack of pictures, tweets no pictures, massive hashtags or links which repeat of the same sentences, or a big number of followers in contrast with the number of likes (3000 followers and 2 likes, for example), no conversations with people, or variaty of likes, besides polls where most of the votes appear at the same time or more or less at the same time instead of slowly)

These accounts are being used with the aim of supporting a fight in favour of Candice Patton, one fight where the actress has never participated or mentionated. These accounts usually pretend to be haters from other fandoms who insulted their own idol, Candice, and Westallen ship, or pretend to be Danielle Panabaker's fans and SnowBarry shippers, or to support a defense against non-existent attacks to Candice. In the first case, the aim is to pretend a fake movement of hate to this actress, to victimize about it and to denounce racism and bullying which doesn't really exist just to ask for more scenes. This causes that a huge number of people who doesn't analize those accounts, react defending Patton and criticize unfairly other actors, fandoms or ships to defend her favourite actress. What a lot of fans don't know is that they are contributing to a huge lie which is growing more and more and which is based in a non existent hate.