[ SECRET POST #3874 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3874 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 57 secrets from Secret Submission Post #554.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

as someone who is a bnf... being a bnf fuckin sucks and you dont realize it until you are one and everyone is constantly looking at you and scrutinizing your every move. when you're young it's less bothersome because you can be equally as sociopathic as the people around you. when you're older and just trying to have fun making the fun stuff you make and people are constantly trying to start fights with you or spread rumours about you... it blows.

[(Anonymous)]

I think in general, having an enjoyable social media experience is really dependent on being really aggressive about controlling that experience. You have to strictly limit who you engage with and who you follow or it's going to be just absolutely garbage.

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh, I ended up getting a reputation in a small fandom--it was honestly more a matter of timing than any particular talent, but fuck it is more trouble than it is worth. I try to be friendly to everybody, encourage new people to engage with the fandom, etc. because that's who I am. I am also 99.9% sure there are a subset of fans who will talk behind my back about how I'm trying to take over (fuck no) and how I bully people who disagree with me.

This bullying, by the way? A fan (who was never a BNF but was close with the BNFs who had been BNFs since before I'd joined the fandom) mentioned that they were feeling a little disconnected from the fandom, because the current fic writers took writing more seriously than they did. I wasn't wild about the way they sort of went "Anybody who does fandom differently to me is doing it WRONG", but whatever; I got the impression they were young, and god I was a needy little shit when I was younger. So they posted a joke on Tumblr and I *continued the joke*, both because it was silly and because I wanted her to feel included. They post the SHITTIEST "Well, unless I misunderstood, Iguess YOU ALL WANT ME TO SHUT UP" and these tags that accused me bullying.

Now, this requires some background. This poster *had a history of this*--she'd say that people were trying to drive her out of the fandom, calling people out in tags and posts with just enough plausible deniability, etc. and wait for people to plead for her to come back and not let the bullies win, then delete the evidence. She directed this at people who were new to the fandom or weren't close to the BNFs; classic bullying, but I didn't want to drag other people into fandom drama. But direct it at me? I HAVE NO SUCH QUALMS. So I firmly explain the joke (in case it really was a misunderstanding) and address the tags, and she starts yelling that it was a JOKE and people should stop taking fandom so seriously and GOD EVERYONE HATES HER AND *screeching*.

SO yeah, she deleted her tumblr shortly after that, but given who she was friends with, I am 99.9% sure The Time [My Name] Bullied A Girl Out Of Fandom is a narrative that floats around. It's not a coincidence that that was around the time I stopped trying to make new friends in the fandom...

[(Anonymous)]

I remember sitting on the sidelines for something similar in one of my fandoms, where this girl had vaguebloged about how someone who everyone thought was so great, had bullied her friend out of the fandom, but since they were popular and didn't post any info about the person they'd bullied everyone would take their side and they were so evil...

Their friend who'd been "bullied" had plagiarized a bunch of stories from the BNF and several other writers, and the BNF had privately messaged her asking that she take the plagiarized stories down, and notified some other authors whose work she thought she recognized.

The girl doing the vagueblogging just seemed young and resentful that fandom fame wasn't an equally apportioned resource, but I guess she only vagueblogged publically; privately she flipped out at all her followers and friends about the BNF until the BNF finally said, basically, "okay "username," I'm gonna take a break from fandom until you calm down, it's not exactly fun for me right now," on their blog, with a brief explanation of what had happened and that the plagiarizer had asked that the BNF not say anything so long as they took down the stolen stories.

So the vagueblogging friend had actually done more damage to the plagiarizer's reputation than the BNF; she'd been mentioning her by username all over the place. Before all this went down, I used to swing by the vagueblogger's blog occasionally because sometimes she had interesting info, but she also posted about being "friends" with one of the actors the fandom was about, because they knew her name and would greet her by it at fan events. And she would freak out about crazy fans having no boundaries, and eventually I stopped visiting her blog because it was clear she didn't have many, either.

[(Anonymous)]

Seems to be like being active in fandom in general is a shit show. Ive been doing this for nearly 20 years now and I can't remember a single fandom that didn't at one point eat itself... this through different fandoms: literature, movies, tv shows, anime... tumblr, livejournal, fanfiction.net... even small groups curated to avoid this stuff end up like this eventually!

These days I lurk and wonder why I bother at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep. I haven't been doing it for quite as long (about 10 years?) and it seems like every time I settle comfortably into a fandom and think "what a nice bunch of mostly drama-free people, just enjoying their thing" all hell suddenly breaks loose.