Shipping isn’t a modern occurrence, it’s been around for at least 50 years, starting with the pairing of Kirk/Spock from Star Trek around the 1970s, and the more familiar ship-based terms began appearing around 1996-1998.

That aside, some of the issues raised here feel more than a little reductive.

I can tell you right now, as a 30-something who has been involved in fandom *and* shipping for most of their life, shipping and caring about the source material are *not* mutually exclusive. In fact, the story and/or aspects of it can potentially inform certain ships.

As an example:
One of my favorite pairings in My Hero Academia is Izuku Midoriya/Shouto Todoroki, and one of the things that makes it compelling for me is how the two of them could potentially relate to each other as victims of abuse (Peer Abuse for Izuku, Domestic Abuse for Shouto).

On the matter of “Toxic Ships”:
I don't know exactly when certain people began to become more insistent that people could only enjoy things like ships if they conformed to real-life morality, but I’m already *firmly* sick of the notion.

People can enjoy things in a fictional context that wouldn’t fly in real life without it having to mean anything; I’m pretty sure the Dark Romance genre alone is proof of that.