fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5082 ]

[ SECRET POST #5082 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5082 ⌋

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

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

__________________________________________________

12.

__________________________________________________

13. [SPOILERS for Supernatural]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #727.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What are your favorite videos or websites (like the archived site provided in the secrets thread re: MsScribe) detailing the crazy happenings in your corner of fandom/upsets in the history of your fandoms/fandoms you know?

Or, if you were there in person at the time, would you kindly regale us with a tale?

I'm just trying to find a decent video on the SnapeWives/explaining the history (what happened, why? when did it escalate?).

It can be anything from fan incited incidents to the creators of the media itself.

OK so...
I'll tell you a few crazy fandom drama stories at my extremely tiny fandom. I'm too embarrassed to name it even though I'm anon. I was a BNF and I know some of my fandom friends used to come here. Too paranoid to know if any of them still visit here. The important thing to know is that this fandom was mostly teen girls and women in the early 20s.

So, story 1. Shortly before I joined the fandom forum in the mid aughts, there was a BNF who pretended that she got into a car crash that left her paralyzed from the waist down. A new account claiming to be the BNF's IRL friend notified everyone on the forum that the BNF got into a car collision and was currently in the ICU with her life on the line. A few days go by and said IRL friend updates everyone that she's paralyzed and can no longer walk. A bit of time goes by and a couple mods come forward that they found out that the BNF's story was fake. All accounts claiming to be IRL friends of the BNF were from 1 IP address. I can't recall the details but the mods said BNF's story wasn't adding up and the BNF made a final statement about how her story was real and she didn't know why she would make any of it up but she left and never returned.

Story 2. I was a BNF and my friend group was mostly BNFs. We were prone to trolling threads, and the mods put up with it most times because we drove up engagement. They weren't very good at enforcing the "No offtopic comments" rule in most threads and my friends and I took advantage of it.
My friends and I created a catfish account to try to find out who was talking shit about us (I know, we were insecure and I realize now that it was a shitty thing for me to do). One of the girls who suspected foul play with this new forum member asked the admin to see if our fake account was a catfish account.
Since I created the account I took the fall. The mod who confronted me told me she knew I created the account and some of my other friends posted in that account. I felt really bad for hurting people's feelings so I told the mod that I would publicly own up to creating the account and take full blame for it.
A crazy element to this is that when the mods were given access to see forum members' IP addresses they discovered that my catfish account wasn't the only one. One of my closest friends had like 9 catfish accounts because she was a bored rich kid. She was always nosing in on people's lives and wanting to find out what they looked like, so she would create fake accounts pretending to be boys or like minded girls and ask to exchange pictures. I had no idea she did it so much, she even catfished me and I didn't find out until the forum was dead and I was no longer in contact with her.

Really pissed me off and creeped me out. She pretended to be a girl who seemed like an obsessed fangirl of her's, and she pretended to be a guy. I think that account was to try to get girls to share pictures with "him". "He" would share some of these girls' and women's pictures with me and I was always guarded.
I never believed her claims that she had nothing to do with the account so I think I just played along to get her to shut up with "no really I'm not your friend! I'm a real guy! Here are my pictures!"
"His" pictures were photos of obscure fashion models she found online, and I knew she had an obsession for models and fashion.*Stay tuned for a funny story at the end about her model obsession*

ANYWAY, there were other members I didn't interact with who had catfish accounts. I think the mods were like, "Look, if we ban [ANON] we'll have to ban a lot of you. A lot of members had a lot of reasons for creating more than one account, including just wanting to go into ghost mode. So there was a new rule where if you wanted to create an extra account you had to work it out with mods first. For example, I helped run the annual Forum/Fanfic Awards so I shared an account where we used it to make posts specifically for the Awards.
I chose to take a hiatus from the forum since I felt if I hung around I'd just be letting the drama continue. Some members I wasn't familiar with came out of the woodwork to drag me, and I was like, "Fair. I shouldn't have created the catfish account.

Continued...
So people moved on, whatever. A couple months pass and the whole time I was emailing friends and stuck strictly to the Book Discussion thread (which none of the people who disliked me visited so we never crossed paths on the forum). I decide I want to return and I didn't try to make a big deal out of it.

But then one of the people who had come out to say they didn't like me and always thought I was a bad fanfic writer (we'll call her Nik) was like "Why do you guys kiss up to [ANON]?" My catfish friend (we'll call her Miss J) told Nik that if she didn't like me or her or anyone else she can simply scroll past. She can create her own threads and invite her friends to join there and we wouldn't go there since we don't have any reason to interact with them.

One of her friends (who we'll call Alasia) defended Nik, saying I shouldn't be returning because I lied and created a fake account. So whatever, we move on.

AND THEN. A few months pass and Miss J tells me that she found out that Nik was a catfish fake person. Nik told everyone that she was a "small time model" and shared some test shots. For awhile Miss J thought that it was true, again Miss J loves fashion. So Miss J had a friend meet the Nik in the test shots in real life, and was like "Oh, hey Nik, my BFF Miss J says hi." and Nik was like "Who's Miss J?"

Miss J showed some mercy to fake Nik and privately told her she knew the truth. Fake Nik said she was just insecure and didn't mean to lead people on and apologized to the real Nik, Miss J and her friend. My friend forced her to say sorry to me pubicly too.

Story 3. OMG So there's a very crazy story that is loosely connected to the "Guy Model" catfish account Miss J had (we'll call him Mister Jay). Miss J created Mister Jay (or so she claimed to me this was her reason) because she wanted to create a fandom award so she could honor an actual GUY forum member (we'll call him Nigel) who was like the town troll who we just let be a jerk. Most of my friend group liked Nigel, I didn't really care much for him so I didn't interact with him much at all.

Why did Miss J want to honor Nigel? Because he was in the army and had died in battle in the Middle East. Miss J was friends with him and had been contacted by Nigel's best friend (we'll call him Bryanboy) and Nigel's girlfriend (we'll call her April).

Or so we thought...
A couple weeks later, Miss J came to me with piping hot tea. Nigel wasn't dead. He's in the army. Much older than he originally claimed. There was no "battle". April found out that Nigel developed feelings for a friend of Miss J (we'll call her Jade; I never really got along with Jade but I knew she and Miss J were friends so I never spoke ill of Jade to Miss J).

Jade and Nigel claimed to April and Miss J that they were just friends. What's really creepy is that Jade was probably 16 at the time. Miss J told me she knew that Nigel liked Jade a lot even thought he wouldn't admit it. Jade did admit to Miss J that she had feelings for Nigel, but knew they could only be as friends.

I think Miss J forced everyone to believe that Nigel died. She had gotten an email from Bryanboy saying Nigel died, so she made the announcement. She and one of our BNF friend (we'll call her Anchal) had even made plans to fly out to Nigel's hometown to go to the funeral.

Jade was pretty cut up over the whole ordeal so she kept in contact with Bryanboy but then Bryanboy couldn't handle it anymore and confessed to Jade that Nigel wasn't dead and that April found Nigel and Jade's relationship weird and wanted it cut off. But then Bryanboy and April had to do damage control when Miss J and Anchal were saying they were flying out and some of the mods (we'll call them Tyra and Janice) who didn't live too far from Nigel's hometown said they wanted to attend too.

April and Bryanboy contact Miss J and Tyra to tell them, "Look, he's just hurt from the battle but he can't come back on because it's not good for his mental health." Tyra and Janice announce that Bryanboy had misspoken and was just concerned for his friend and that Nigel was just in the hospital and not dead. Don't buy plane tickets to go to the funeral.

Jade told Miss J the whole truth though. When Miss J found out she told Jade to never meet Nigel IRL and never spoke to Nigel again. She said Jade and Nigel continued to email each other.

Last stupid story: Miss Jay once was IMing with me and Anchal and claimed to have had a meet cute with a working model whose test shots she found cute. Anchal and I, being the immature teens we were, were like "Sure Jan". It was probably the fist time I saw Miss J upset at us in such a way.

I'm so sorry it was so long. The Bush years were crazy

Damn it I messed up the names. It was Alaisha who lied about being a model. Nik defended Alaisha but her hate boner for me and my friends were left in her DMs and no longer made public afterwards. We all all ignored each other after Alaisha's fake modeling career was revealed. Alaisha also had a catfish account pretending to be her sister who was also a model (IRL Alaisha did have a sister who was also a model, but forum Alaisha did not have a sister).

You and your compatriots from back then all sound like pieces of work.

Especially your first story. As someone who has spent many years living with housemates and sometimes sharing a computer and therefore an IP address... what a shitty thing to do.

DA - This was over twelve years ago. Anon was young. Remove thy stick from whence it has been shoveth.

AYRT People learn to temper their personalities better, but rarely change in essentials as they get older.

AYRT

I'm not going to deny there were awful things that went on and I participated in it. We were mostly high school and college age girls/young women. It really was just basically Mean Girls set loose with no teachers or parents to reign us all in. TBQH The thing that horrifies me the most is that Nigel could have been a really dangerous guy trying to groom Jade. I do hope she never met him IRL.

SA
I wasn't sure if I should address the first story and I think I should. I only read the thread one night I was bored and looking at some old threads. My memory is fuzzy on the details, but it was more than just the IP addresses. I didn't want to ask Tyra or Janice about the drama because it looked like when the whole ordeal went down it was intense. I felt it was best to keep it in the past, but it was a random rabbit hole I fell into.
Incidents like that are really common in fandoms. There are so many fandom stories I read where someone made up a story about someone dying or being in the ER from a car collision or some crazy unbelievable story, but then the truth is usually, this person was bored/going through something and made up a crazy story for whatever reasons they had.

OP

1. I appreciate all the ANTM names here omg lol April & Nigel wooooo lol

2. This is wild. That's so much drama. And the visits IRL & picture sharing -- it's just hard for me to imagine; I grew up with stranger danger (but online & in chat rooms) so sharing ASL or even pics was out of the question, and I never got THAT close to people in my fandoms where I'd fly out to see them (though I wish I could have! Australia, the UK, Singapore, why not?), So it always surprises me when I see this happen. But wow what a story!

AYRT
Remembering all Miss J's love for fashion I just naturally leaned into my ANTM knowledge. Yesssss we know how much Nigel had a crush on April. I couldn't help myself.

Ah yeah, I was probably one of the more paranoid girls at the forum. I was super, super, super guarded about sharing any photos or social media (which was usually just MySpace, FaceBook, LiveJournal, or AIM). Some of my friends did meet IRL, and TBQH I didn't know why my friends wanted to fly out to Nigel's funeral? They really didn't know him that well. I'm actually still good friends with Anchal and she said she and Miss J talked on the phone and her mom even spoke to Miss J on the phone because her mom said she'd go with the both of them to chaperone. Oh right Anchal wanted to go to make sure Miss J wasn't going alone (they lived a few hours away from each other), and for selfish reasons she wanted to go sightseeing at a city she'd never been to before.

American Girl has had a few dramatic moments, but the biggest one was definitely the permapanties scandal.

For unknown reasons (probably to save a couple of pennies) AG decided that their dolls would come with the underwear sewn onto the cloth bodies instead of being removable. This was weird since AG sells underpants for the dolls and kids like to change their doll's clothing. Plus, AG sells a bathroom with a toilet, so how was the doll supposed to poop with her underpants on? The permapanties, as they came to be known, were sewn onto inferior cloth bodies (the previous doll bodies had been made of a sturdy, canvas-like material, but these new bodies were thin and nearly see-through) and early versions didn't have the darts sewn on the butt, so when the stuffing inside moved around, it looked like the doll had taken a massive dump in her pants.

These dolls retail for over a hundred dollars and both collectors and parents went ape-shit. Most people thought this was AG's way of cheapening their product and hoping we wouldn't notice. Some people thought AG was trying to appeal to the Middle Eastern market for "modesty" reasons since Fulla (their answer to Barbie) comes with modest underwear painted onto her body. Still others thought Mattel was trying to run AG into the ground.

After hearing the complaints, AG made a post where they said that they had made the decision based on focus groups involving parents and their frustrated kids who frequently lost the underpants their dolls came with. They then posted a picture meant to show that there was no difference between a regular doll body and a permapanty one and even said, "Look! Your doll can still wear a swimsuit!".

People got their permapanty dolls and reported that the stitching on the doll bodies was poor, the new fabric was prone to holes, and that dolls could not wear swimsuits or pants without showing off their permapanties. Everyone took to social media to voice their complaints and whoever was running their social media decided it would be a good idea to get passive aggressive with the people posting. That didn't last too long and they just started deleting negative comments instead, which AG had never done before.

Eventually, the backlash got so bad that AG released a statement saying they would stop making dolls with permapanties and even offered to replace the permapanties on any doll purchased from AG for free. This likely cost them a shit ton of money, but people were happy that AG listened to them and all was well.

Until AG fucked up again and messed with the doll eyes. That was basically a rehash of the permpanties, just slightly less dramatic and again, AG replaced the eyes of any doll that had the inferior ones with the better quality ones for free.

AG replaced the eyes of any doll that had the inferior ones with the better quality ones for free.

Collectors and parents were probably thrilled and small children were probably horrified when dolly had to go away for awhile to get her inferior eyes replaced.

AG does have a page on their website for what to do when your doll has to visit the doll hospital, so hopefully the kids weren't too horrified. Honestly, I don't think most kids noticed or cared. My niece has one of the dolls with the bad eyes and she honestly can't tell the difference between the eyes on that doll and one with the better quality eyes. I think AG was expecting a permapanties-level backlash on the eyes too and just decided to replace them for free before it happened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #5082 ]

OH THE DRAMA!!!! Fandom History

Re: OH THE DRAMA!!!! Fandom History

SORRY I HIT THE WRONG BUTTON

SA

Re: SORRY I HIT THE WRONG BUTTON

Re: SORRY I HIT THE WRONG BUTTON

Re: SORRY I HIT THE WRONG BUTTON

Re: SORRY I HIT THE WRONG BUTTON

PS

Re: SORRY I HIT THE WRONG BUTTON

Re: SORRY I HIT THE WRONG BUTTON

Re: OH THE DRAMA!!!! Fandom History

Re: OH THE DRAMA!!!! Fandom History

Re: OH THE DRAMA!!!! Fandom History