[ SECRET POST #5800 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5800 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #830.
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

[fscom]

06. https://i.imgur.com/Z3ZInuu.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

See, this is the kind of secret I don't believe without proof. "OP was this incredible mastermind who will never be discovered ..." Sure.

And really, do you think sockpuppeting is good? Is that something you want in your fandoms? I put that behavior on about the same social level as the people who pretended to kill themselves to their online contacts.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a bit extreme, without knowing what the OP actually used their sockpuppets for.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I'm basing my opinion on the sorts of things I've seen sockpuppeting used for.

[(Anonymous)]

Pretending to have killed yourself (or people who fake having cancer etc) is a pretty severe thing, imo. I guess I'm curious what terrible sockpuppet use you've encountered that was on that kind of level!

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Not sockpuppet, singular. Sockpuppets in complex groups, like what the OP is describing. Very small number of people behind what looks like a large crowd, amplifying whatever opinions they happen to hold at will. Playing out dynamics amongst themselves, in public, with a predetermined outcome to who wins this or that argument and who winds up looking bad to observers. And then there's the overlap between sockpuppeting and social mobbing.

[(Anonymous)]

+10000

I don't think sockpuppets are a good thing.

[rosehiptea]

It’s been a while but the way I remember it there were a lot of sockpuppets back in the day and people kind of took it for granted that a lot of people were going around agreeing with their own posts and stuff like that. Not saying it was always harmless but I can believe the OP never did anything too bad. Whether I believe an anonymous Internet person was a sock puppet mastermind… don’t know.

[(Anonymous)]

I put that behavior on about the same social level as the people who pretended to kill themselves to their online contacts.

Well this is a terrible take. IDK if you think all people with sock puppet accounts used them to organize harassment campaigns or something, but uh, most sock-puppet shenanigans were a hell of a lot more innocuous than that.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

+1

I think people on here enjoy making the worst possible assumptions about other people.

DA

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

If you're writing positive reviews for your own fanfics, I probably don't have a problem with that. But the bigger and more complex the trying to deceive other people part gets, the more unethical I find sockpuppets.

[(Anonymous)]

They said they had a complex and extensive *army*. I'm having a hard time imagining what kind of innocent fun requires that level of organization. Can you give an example?

[(Anonymous)]

Cute choice of image/design!

But idk what you'd need a whole army of sockpuppets for. I admit I've had several over the years, but one at a time (for specific purposes), not a troop of them. What were you doing with them?

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I’m that one outlier because I can easily believe this. During LJ’s heyday sockpuppets we’re pretty common in a lot of fandoms and because not everyone used their journal for personal stuff, it wasn’t always easy to tell who was real and who was a sock. In one of my fandoms there were 2 or 3 people (I can’t remember exactly) who were unmasked as the puppeteers of a huge chunk of the early fandom. They did it iirc to amuse themselves at first but later to help draw people into the fandom and it worked. They didn’t get found out for a few years though and I think it was actually cause one confided in someone and they had a huge falling out and that person told.

[(Anonymous)]

+1, this is not hard to believe at all. One group of sockpuppets in my fandom were unmasked when they voted in one of those stupid best fic competitions and they didn't realise the mod could access the IP address of the votes. There were 27 votes from 2 IP addresses.

[(Anonymous)]

I was a mod when a fairly small fandom message board began to die out. Out of boredom and curiosity I began checking old IP addresses and went down a rabbit hole of finding out a lot of accounts (some BNF, some barely used) shared IP addresses. I'm not a techy person so I didn't want to assume that this was indication that all shared IPs meant 1 user. But I'm not niave enough to think all of this was coincidence. The fandom had fans around the world but most were based in North America or Western European countries.
All of the people I made friends with at that forum had at least 2 accounts attached to the same IPs.

Now that I'm much older I can say...people are bored and people are lonely. Sometimes people will do whatever weird/questionable things in fandom to boost themselves up. In the most nonbiased way I think people should be allowed to enjoy themselves so long as they aren't causing harm and damage.
But you know, that goes into my personal opinions on sockpuppets and TBRH if you're over a certain age (I'll be generous and say older than 22-23) it's especially distasteful, I think it's immature and stupid. Do you want to enjoy your fandom or do you want to fuck around as if you're in high school all over again and you're fighting over who is going to be prom queen/king? That's what it comes off to me at least. These flame wars or creating sock puppets to get a thing popular or using it to rig polls or whatever??? Like...IDK
I guess I've been burned by petty fandom drama too much that I hate the whole "lol we're just having fun fucking around with the fandom lol it's not that serious lol" all the while those very same people are creating armies of sock puppet accounts
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
And FTR, I never told anyone cuz I ain't no snitch ass bitch, just a judgmental one