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Tumblr Supernatural Fandom Pseuicides: A Grumpy Summary
rachelmanija asked me for an explanation of the pseuicide situation. I've seen a lot of people on Tumblr who are also confused, so I'm posting an edited version of my response to her.
(Note that I wrote this around midnight on New Years - a good way to celebrate! - and some of the credulity has died down since then.)
So. A bunch of Tumblr users recently pretended to attempt suicide due to "anonymous hate." They then either "miraculously recovered" or revealed that their "account was hacked."
People affected by this plague of undeath:
These are all members of the Supernatural fandom. What we're seeing here is basically a case of mass hysteria caused by a cascade of people
1) faking anonymous hate mail against themselves, generally mentioning personal vulnerabilities and urging them to commit suicide in very specific ways,
2) after responding to their enemies for a while to build up the tension, faking suicide due to their intense distress over the anonymous hate,
3) successfully acquiring the attention and followers they wanted during this period and the necessary hospital drama narrated by a nonexistent person,
4) miraculously being resuscitated and/or claiming to have been "hacked" by bad guys, and
5) thus inspiring others to imitate the project.
Because people actually are buying the hacker story. It's a Christmas miracle.
Most of the "anonymous hate" is very, very obviously from the people to whom it was addressed. Or, it should be obvious! But a lot of the SPN fandom on Tumblr doesn't recognize these tactics! They're too young and are disengaged with the fandom lore, or else they're getting it from Andy fucking Blake of all people. (He's trying to "reach out" to the kids who committed pseuecide right now.)
And kingfrerin/bvnner and rainbowcas are beloved BNFs, the former especially - see what happens when you go back a week or two in kingfrerin/bvnner's tag. It's full of kids absolutely thrilled to get attention from her: "OH GOD BVNNER FOLLOWS YOU THAT'S AMAZING" "OH GOD THANK YOU FOR REBLOGGING MY GIFSET."
I think that one of these two people was Patient 0 here, but I don't know exactly when kingfrerin got started. rainbowcas was already at work on the 25th, which was the day someone first used the "#affectedbyhate" hashtag to refer to the evils of anonymous hate in the SPN fandom. There may be other vectors of contagion I don't know about, though.
There's a special complication here in that Tumblr SPN fandom has this weird incestuous dynamic where disagreement and negativity - or, rather, acknowledging that they are what they are - is unacceptable. They call each other "family" and do this "No True SPN Fan" thing where trufans never hurt one another's feelings. (rainbowcas's passive, gentle responses to her nonexistent abusers are an example of this shit.)
So anyone who's got some resentment simmering under that uses the made-up raid as a cover for the nasty shit they've been wanting to send everyone who didn't give their fic kudos or who quietly unfollowed them in October. And then there are also the people just who go "SEND ME ANON HATE BAD GUYS I'M READY FOR YOU LOL," so their friends do it to oblige them.
Variations upon the "pay attention to me I'm going to hurt myself" behavior also got very widespread, very quickly - you cannot go through that damn tag without finding kids talking about how the anon hate is triggering them into panic attacks, shaking, insomnia, and in the extra-manipulative cases, self-harm.
One girl who looks about fourteen spent a while building up to cutting herself, posting pictures of herself holding the razor against her face. Then she posted her sliced-up arms. Another one about the same age's family appear to have checked her into a psychiatric hospital due to similar behavior. I hope the progenitors of this horseshit had a lot of fun.
So we have beloved BNFs doing gross manipulative shit, masses of kids with problems imitating the gross manipulative shit, and a culture that doesn't allow anyone to call anyone on it without getting shunned. The in-fandom people who are complaining mostly created new blogs specifically to do so. The Tumblr SPN fandom absolutely could not acknowledge that people had been sending themselves or their "family" anonymous abuse.
They needed to find another culprit, and after some flailing, 4chan and 8chan were settled upon. The narrative is: 4chan and 8chan are out to destroy all fandoms! By forcing depressed fans to commit suicide by being mean to them on anon!
Seriously. That right there is a serious post. People actually believe it.
And a big chunk of Tumblr is still convinced that people have actually killed themselves. No one wants to call the pseuicides on their shit publicly - they just started awkwardly pretending it wasn't happening when stuff started smelling funny. So there are people who only saw the initial news of suicides, not the later "the hackers did it"/"she miraculously survived" stuff.
Anyway, the problem with framing 4chan and 8chan for SPN fandom's crimes was initially that there was no information about the non-existent raids on either board - the only posts about it were people asking confused questions about why Tumblr was so mad. (They've started humoring the mob now, so there are now some fake Evil Plans up. Very thoughtful of them.)
But the fandom already established that these raids had to exist. So the bad guys had to be hiding somewhere, plotting in secret. Inevitably, they manufactured an enemy.
There's a chat site called Omegle where you type an "interest" into a box and are sent to a chatroom with a random individual who shares that interest. It's popular for fandom roleplay stuff. People started making posts offering to support those who were having panic attacks or feeling suicidal on Omegle, under the "affectedbyhate" interest. At some point, someone got the idea to go on there and pretend that they were a Bad Guy From 4chan/8chan.
Within less than a day, everyone's convinced that the bad guys are plotting on Omegle (specifically in that fandom-created "affectedbyhate" tag, of course!), exchanging the names of "targets" and lists of things that will particularly upset them, so as to drive them to suicide most effectively.
I spent a while on there Monday night - I didn't meet a single person who was not obviously giving me either a fake name or their own to "divert" me, the bad guy, from hurting "truly vulnerable people." Shit like:
Several of them immediately admitted to what they were doing when I asked them; others would not. It's amazing. The entire chat is just kids playing spy games. A lot of them definitely know on some level that it's just a role-playing game, but some aren't in the loop and are taking it totally seriously.
Once they've extracted the names of some "targets," they go back onto Tumblr and excitedly warn people that the bad guys are after them, and the other kid goes, "oh no!" Some of the ones who were putting their own names up there deny responsibility, obviously. And some of them actually weren't responsible, as this is another good avenue for hassling your enemies/delivering the exciting gift of anon hate to your friends.
It's clearly very enjoyable to those who are playing the game. However, these deeply caring spies, who just want to help!, are posting full chat transcripts which contain lists of things that upset the users - eating disorders, child abuse, deceased relatives - without considering whether the users in question would want that. The ones who did not actually go into the chat often don't, and I'm sure that some of the ones who did go in there start regretting it. There's peer pressure to do it to "fight against the bad guys."
The funny part of this is that they've created this chaotic little mythology about the leader of the raids being someone named "Vince" - a kid cleverly identified Vince as a GamerGate guy on Twitter, which was very confusing for him and everyone else. I actually tried to step in and save a Twitter GamerGater from Tumblr SPN fans, so this has been pretty much the worst year of my life.
While I was on Omegle I spent a while trying to convince people that Vince had "betrayed us" and Dril was now in charge, and that the bad guys were communicating using "Sbemail." This sadly did not catch on, though my behavior did cause several people to try to warn webcomic artist KC Green that he was being targeted for being an "otherkin furry." Sorry, Mr. Green. (He doesn't have messaging enabled, so they weren't able to get through to him.)
And now 4chan and 8chan have found out that their names have been slandered. They started posting pictures of poop and stuff in the #supernatural tag while I was writing this.
Happy New Year!
(Here is a blog where I'm saving my "favorite" posts from the tags, and here is the first post I made about the situation.)
(Note that I wrote this around midnight on New Years - a good way to celebrate! - and some of the credulity has died down since then.)
So. A bunch of Tumblr users recently pretended to attempt suicide due to "anonymous hate." They then either "miraculously recovered" or revealed that their "account was hacked."
People affected by this plague of undeath:
* cwinchster2000
* kingfrerin/Anthea/brvnner
* d—e—s—t—i—e—l
* randomawkwardawesome
* queen-of-the-rising-demons
* paintedcastiel/insecurecharlie
* simormonroe + wearejustalike
* whiskeyjensen
* chesnutmisha
* spnpie1967/anonxdlol (1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Other sources: 6, 7)
* mopeters1954
* rainbowcas (didn't go through with the “death,” but has the funniest implausible narrative and was clearly the inspiration for some of the others)
* someone who plagiarized Leelah Alcorn's suicide note in an apparent attempt to equate the "harassment of fandom" to transmisogyny, which I'm not linking because it crosses a line for me.
These are all members of the Supernatural fandom. What we're seeing here is basically a case of mass hysteria caused by a cascade of people
1) faking anonymous hate mail against themselves, generally mentioning personal vulnerabilities and urging them to commit suicide in very specific ways,
2) after responding to their enemies for a while to build up the tension, faking suicide due to their intense distress over the anonymous hate,
3) successfully acquiring the attention and followers they wanted during this period and the necessary hospital drama narrated by a nonexistent person,
4) miraculously being resuscitated and/or claiming to have been "hacked" by bad guys, and
5) thus inspiring others to imitate the project.
Because people actually are buying the hacker story. It's a Christmas miracle.
Most of the "anonymous hate" is very, very obviously from the people to whom it was addressed. Or, it should be obvious! But a lot of the SPN fandom on Tumblr doesn't recognize these tactics! They're too young and are disengaged with the fandom lore, or else they're getting it from Andy fucking Blake of all people. (He's trying to "reach out" to the kids who committed pseuecide right now.)
And kingfrerin/bvnner and rainbowcas are beloved BNFs, the former especially - see what happens when you go back a week or two in kingfrerin/bvnner's tag. It's full of kids absolutely thrilled to get attention from her: "OH GOD BVNNER FOLLOWS YOU THAT'S AMAZING" "OH GOD THANK YOU FOR REBLOGGING MY GIFSET."
I think that one of these two people was Patient 0 here, but I don't know exactly when kingfrerin got started. rainbowcas was already at work on the 25th, which was the day someone first used the "#affectedbyhate" hashtag to refer to the evils of anonymous hate in the SPN fandom. There may be other vectors of contagion I don't know about, though.
There's a special complication here in that Tumblr SPN fandom has this weird incestuous dynamic where disagreement and negativity - or, rather, acknowledging that they are what they are - is unacceptable. They call each other "family" and do this "No True SPN Fan" thing where trufans never hurt one another's feelings. (rainbowcas's passive, gentle responses to her nonexistent abusers are an example of this shit.)
So anyone who's got some resentment simmering under that uses the made-up raid as a cover for the nasty shit they've been wanting to send everyone who didn't give their fic kudos or who quietly unfollowed them in October. And then there are also the people just who go "SEND ME ANON HATE BAD GUYS I'M READY FOR YOU LOL," so their friends do it to oblige them.
Variations upon the "pay attention to me I'm going to hurt myself" behavior also got very widespread, very quickly - you cannot go through that damn tag without finding kids talking about how the anon hate is triggering them into panic attacks, shaking, insomnia, and in the extra-manipulative cases, self-harm.
One girl who looks about fourteen spent a while building up to cutting herself, posting pictures of herself holding the razor against her face. Then she posted her sliced-up arms. Another one about the same age's family appear to have checked her into a psychiatric hospital due to similar behavior. I hope the progenitors of this horseshit had a lot of fun.
So we have beloved BNFs doing gross manipulative shit, masses of kids with problems imitating the gross manipulative shit, and a culture that doesn't allow anyone to call anyone on it without getting shunned. The in-fandom people who are complaining mostly created new blogs specifically to do so. The Tumblr SPN fandom absolutely could not acknowledge that people had been sending themselves or their "family" anonymous abuse.
They needed to find another culprit, and after some flailing, 4chan and 8chan were settled upon. The narrative is: 4chan and 8chan are out to destroy all fandoms! By forcing depressed fans to commit suicide by being mean to them on anon!
Seriously. That right there is a serious post. People actually believe it.
And a big chunk of Tumblr is still convinced that people have actually killed themselves. No one wants to call the pseuicides on their shit publicly - they just started awkwardly pretending it wasn't happening when stuff started smelling funny. So there are people who only saw the initial news of suicides, not the later "the hackers did it"/"she miraculously survived" stuff.
Anyway, the problem with framing 4chan and 8chan for SPN fandom's crimes was initially that there was no information about the non-existent raids on either board - the only posts about it were people asking confused questions about why Tumblr was so mad. (They've started humoring the mob now, so there are now some fake Evil Plans up. Very thoughtful of them.)
But the fandom already established that these raids had to exist. So the bad guys had to be hiding somewhere, plotting in secret. Inevitably, they manufactured an enemy.
There's a chat site called Omegle where you type an "interest" into a box and are sent to a chatroom with a random individual who shares that interest. It's popular for fandom roleplay stuff. People started making posts offering to support those who were having panic attacks or feeling suicidal on Omegle, under the "affectedbyhate" interest. At some point, someone got the idea to go on there and pretend that they were a Bad Guy From 4chan/8chan.
Within less than a day, everyone's convinced that the bad guys are plotting on Omegle (specifically in that fandom-created "affectedbyhate" tag, of course!), exchanging the names of "targets" and lists of things that will particularly upset them, so as to drive them to suicide most effectively.
I spent a while on there Monday night - I didn't meet a single person who was not obviously giving me either a fake name or their own to "divert" me, the bad guy, from hurting "truly vulnerable people." Shit like:
[name] is strong and will be hard to crack! But they have a secret weakness - they tragically self-harm, leaving an intricate and beautiful pattern of scars on their arms. But she must be taken down, because she is spying on us, and has helped far, far too many people!
Several of them immediately admitted to what they were doing when I asked them; others would not. It's amazing. The entire chat is just kids playing spy games. A lot of them definitely know on some level that it's just a role-playing game, but some aren't in the loop and are taking it totally seriously.
Once they've extracted the names of some "targets," they go back onto Tumblr and excitedly warn people that the bad guys are after them, and the other kid goes, "oh no!" Some of the ones who were putting their own names up there deny responsibility, obviously. And some of them actually weren't responsible, as this is another good avenue for hassling your enemies/delivering the exciting gift of anon hate to your friends.
It's clearly very enjoyable to those who are playing the game. However, these deeply caring spies, who just want to help!, are posting full chat transcripts which contain lists of things that upset the users - eating disorders, child abuse, deceased relatives - without considering whether the users in question would want that. The ones who did not actually go into the chat often don't, and I'm sure that some of the ones who did go in there start regretting it. There's peer pressure to do it to "fight against the bad guys."
The funny part of this is that they've created this chaotic little mythology about the leader of the raids being someone named "Vince" - a kid cleverly identified Vince as a GamerGate guy on Twitter, which was very confusing for him and everyone else. I actually tried to step in and save a Twitter GamerGater from Tumblr SPN fans, so this has been pretty much the worst year of my life.
While I was on Omegle I spent a while trying to convince people that Vince had "betrayed us" and Dril was now in charge, and that the bad guys were communicating using "Sbemail." This sadly did not catch on, though my behavior did cause several people to try to warn webcomic artist KC Green that he was being targeted for being an "otherkin furry." Sorry, Mr. Green. (He doesn't have messaging enabled, so they weren't able to get through to him.)
And now 4chan and 8chan have found out that their names have been slandered. They started posting pictures of poop and stuff in the #supernatural tag while I was writing this.
Happy New Year!
(Here is a blog where I'm saving my "favorite" posts from the tags, and here is the first post I made about the situation.)
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despite your fairly clear/succent recaps etc., i'm still not actually totally clear on what's going on, but I don't think i would be happier if I beat my head against this until it made sense so i think i will just walk away with that gem of absurd horror as sufficient to sum things up.
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Keep in mind that the ones who engaged in this in the most calculated fashion have already started deleting their posts to hide the evidence of their villainy, so things were actually more fucked up than they look. What's left are mostly just the ones who were genuinely hysterical, who haven't yet started hurrying to hide their gullibility.
(For the sake of the historical record, I saved a couple hundred pages of the tag as this was going on. In a while I'm going to re-visit the same time range and see how much has been hastily deleted.)