Truth be known, I rarely even watch iCarly anymore; except for the new episodes, and even those I sometimes skip (there's one or two that I haven't even caught in reruns yet.) It's not that I've lost my love for this spectacular, genre-defining series, it's just that I've been watching iCarly for two-and-a-half years now. I am a person who enjoys variety, and I've long since moved on to newer curios, ones with secrets left to grant me.
But as iCarly winds down, and prepares to bookend five years spent dominating children's television (the series finale airs in a couple of weeks), it's hard for me not to look back on the preposterously unlikely role iCarly played in my life. Though its timespan was brief compared to many of my other fandoms, it managed to have quite a bit more impact than I'd expect from any one show, introducing me to a plethora of things I had simply never given a chance before. And for that I will always be grateful. It's amazing the kinds of things that exist just below the surface, things you might never have considered. Crazy as it may sound, iCarly didn't just change my life, it changed my life in several ways, I can't deny it. Insane, right? Well, it's a thing that happened, I might as well just love it.
1. iCarly broadened my television horizons.
I've been watching Nickelodeon and Disney Channel since I was a baby. But it was always strictly background noise to me, even as a kid I never fully appreciated it. Then iCarly's high craft and effortlessly light-hearted demeanor made me take a second look at how good these type of shows can be. It turns out they're just sitcoms like you might see on ABC or Fox. And as a lover of sitcoms, I've found much and more to love in this subgenre. Thanks to iCarly, I've had tens of hours of new quality entertainment ranging from the brilliant Victorious, to The Secret World of Alex Mack, to Disney's five star current roster of Austin & Ally, Jessie, ANT Farm, Good Luck Charlie, and Shake It Up.
2. iCarly helped introduce me to modern music.
Miranda Cosgrove wasn't the first modern pop artist I became a fan of (that honor goes to Taylor Swift). Even so, she played a massive role in my discovery of pop music. She was the first modern pop artist for whom I bought an entire album (as opposed to singles), and even more importantly, her brilliant dance-pop EP High Maintenance diffused my wariness towards EDM and helped to usher in a whole era of great discoveries for me including Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Dev, and a half-dozen other cool artists I might not be listening to without Miri. In the long run I'm not sure my musical landscape would really look any different without iCarly, but at the very least it and Miranda made some major contributions to the best year for music I ever had, 2011. Her music career may be short and over, but the music she released is highly excellent.
3. iCarly introduced me to Twitter.
I'm a millennial I've been talking to people on the internet since I was probably 8 or 9. I've been going on message boards since I was 10 or 11 at the latest. But Twitter never really captured my fancy. That is, until I started meeting iCarly fans on there and they taught me how to properly utilize it. Twitter is the most advanced and convenient form of internet small-talk yet devised, making conventional chatrooms categorically obsolete. It's like a chatroom with millions of people in it, except there's zero clutter because you hand-pick every person you want to hear from, and the added bonus is you get to talk to flesh-and-blood celebrities, too! It's a very convenient tool, and I'm still friends with some of the first iCarly fans I met on Twitter over two years ago. For that, I can't thank iCarly enough.
4. iCarly introduced me to fandom.
I've been a crazy rabid fanboy since I was.... well, since before I can remember. I obsessed over DBZ in the 90s, obsessed over Led Zeppelin at the turn of the century, and obsessed over this, that, or the other ever since. But fandom was never really something I knew or understood. It was something I just passed through like a ghost, I never knew there was this wide world of memes, fanfiction, shipping. Heck even when my favorite things in the world were Gilmore Girls and Dawson's Creek (roughly 2005 to 2010), I had no idea that shipping was a thing. To me it was more about, I don't know, the story, the journey. I didn't care who they were with, but how and why.
Part of this has to do with iCarly being a girly show. Guy fandom is mostly deplorable, full of pissing matches, over-analysis and little else. Girl fandom has a sense of humor to it, so it was something I could really get into. It's fun and kooky and it's just a wonderful thing for any superfan to converge with like minds and have a communal laugh at ourselves. Fandom and shipping were one of the primary driving forces that made me fall in love with iCarly. Without iCarly introducing me to Twitter, I never would have found out about fandom in the first place!
5. iCarly kept me focused (on sobriety).
Wroth though I am to admit it, once upon a time I strugglwd with depression, and there was a time when I struggled with alcohol and other (legal) recreational drugs. iCarly had nothing to do with my initial decision to become sober, but what it eventually did was give me an avenue through which to leave that period of my life behind. Due to the four reasons listed above this one, iCarly gave me a network of interest and activity that had absolutely nothing to do with drug use, and in doing so I was able to glide past it, and never think about it again. It got to the point where the thought of doing drugs again repulsed me, because my newfound interests required me to be sharp-minded and energetic, rather than complacent and lethargic. Might I have failed, without iCarly and the new things it lead to? Luckily, I'll never need to find out.
So yes, I'm one of those crazy fans who has a fictional work change their life. But I've always been one of those people. The difference is, now, I'm all the better for it. It was never something I intended, it happened sans any input from me. But thank you, iCarly, for being a catalyst, and thank you for over one-hundred episodes. And the amazing cast. And the hilarious hijinks. You'll go down in history as one of the best. There could never be a TV show to which I owe a greater debt of gratitude. And you will be missed.
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