rough draft - RP sockpuppeteer account

[amedia]

Inspired by the recent account of the activities of "msscribe" in HP fandom, those of us in Rat Patrol who survived a very similar experience have decided to try to post a public account as well.

Here is a most-names-removed version of the account I sent to a number of people a few years ago. Anyone who has info to add (shawan_7, this is your cue), please comment!

ETA: Additional material can be found at:
http://amedia.livejournal.com/58790.html (miscellaneous tidbits and an account of the C&D that occurred before the sock puppet fiasco)
http://amedia.livejournal.com/58962.html (Kathy Agel's account of the sock puppet fiasco as posted to FCA-L)
http://amedia.livejournal.com/59214.html (maquisbabe's posts to the Yahoo Rat Patrol club)
http://amedia.livejournal.com/59449.html (links to responses with additional info from alternate perspectives)
http://community.livejournal.com/fanthropology/241541.html (my post linking to this post on fanthropology - garnered some good comments)
http://community.livejournal.com/fanthropology/241829.html (mecurtin's fanthropology post "Diagnosing Malicious Puppetry" - a thoughtful post plus more good comments)
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/402274.html?thread=29989986#t29989986 (discussion of the RP sock puppet fiasco on fandom_wank in 2004 - includes concise accounts by one of the Jedi and by Nancy's friend)




I originally wrote this account in 2002; I've been trying to edit it to make things clearer. Suggestions welcome!

A couple of years ago (i.e. in 2000), there was a small but active group of Rat Patrol fans, most of whom knew each other by postal mail or email and had chatted on the phone or met in person. (For now I'll refer to these people as "oldtime fans," but there must be a better appellation.) In addition to an email listserv run by Kathy Agel, a new group called the Rat Patrol Yahoo Club had sprung up, attracting additional fans from the Internet. It seemed to be doing pretty well. There were some new Canadian fans (RP was being rerun in Canada at the time) and other new fans who were fitting in quite well, as well as some guys named Max, Keith, and Gene, who wandered in from somewhere and tended to "top" whatever everyone else said, but otherwise behaved themselves. Two of the new fans were writing hilarious episode synopses for a popular Rat Patrol fan website, and they also came up with an idea for a new fanzine, that would be an all hetero-romance anthology called "Romancing the Rats." We all made positive noises about it. Another one of the newer fans had an idea for a zine to be called "Rats on the Edge," which would feature stories that put the Rats (or Dietrich) into unusually challenging situations where they might be forced to act in a way that would normally be out of character. We made puzzled but positive noises about that as well.

Then a rather odd thing happened. The aforementioned guys, along with a woman going by the screenname CatO, who had previously been active in Garrison's Gorillas fandom, a woman named Sofi a guy who claimed to be Rat Patrol actor Justin Tarr, and the three new fans formed a kind of syndicate and announced that they would all work together on both new zines. The group was called "Rainbow Butterfly Press," but was quickly nicknamed "Gang of Eight" for their high-handed attitude and heavy-handed tactics. They accepted very few submissions and sent back brutal, nasty, and inaccurate edits to anyone whose work they didn't like (=who wasn't in the inner circle).

Also around this time, one of the club members began complaining of getting unpleasant private emails from other members off-list. She mentioned this on-list, but I don't know of anyone she talked to about it privately. She was a girl who had actually once dated Justin Tarr for a few months corresponded with Justin Tarr for a couple of years and was hoping to find him again. She tended to get into scraps with CatO, Max, Keith, Gene, and Sofi during chats. They told the rest of us in chats that this girl was actually dangerous and a potential stalker; when we saw her in chat, she did seem to come across as obsessed or irrational (of course, that's how the socks were manipulating people's perceptions).

More strange things happened. One of the oldtime RP fans who had recently decided to edit a genzine received a submission from one of the guys; it was an explicit hetero-adult story and not even a good one. She turned it down, of course, but got savaged both in chat and in private emails for doing so. Most of us would have blown this off, but this particular fan was suffering from insecurity and fled to another fandom--a loss to Rat Patrol.

Another oldtime Rat Patrol fan announced on the list that she had managed to get hold of Gary Raymond (the actor who played Moffitt) and he was willing to come to the U.S. for the Long Range Desert Convention. A little later, one of the guys, Max, said that he had gotten hold of Justin Tarr (the actor who played Tully), and forwarded some vague friendly noises from him. Max explained that although Justin (unlike Gary) had Internet access, he was not willing to come to chats or participate directly on the club because he was afraid of the aforementioned former girlfriend. However, Max occasionally forwarded messages from Justin to the club members.

While most of the active listmembers were away at MediaWest (2000, I think) the club's founder stepped down, citing vague reasons for distress, apparently something to do with the nastygrams that the girl who dated Justin had been getting. We later learned that she had been receiving private nastygrams herself, but didn't think any of us would take her side, so didn't share them. One of the two fans who had originally proposed the Romancing the Rats zine took over running the club. She had once been a sweet, bubbly person with a terrific sense of humor, but she gradually became more and more hostile and defensive.

Over a period of time, there developed an obvious rift on the club. The Rainbow Butterfly Press folks tried to spin it as Americans vs. Canadians or printfen vs. netfen or the email listserv vs. the Yahoo club, but it didn't fall clearly along those lines. There was an underlying current among the Rainbow Butterfly folks that men and married women were superior to typical unmarried female fans, and that the people from Rainbow Butterfly were the best writers and editors in the world. Anyone who said anything favorable about anyone else's fanzines tended to get trashed both on and off the club, and the new clubmom wouldn't stop it. Indeed, she was likely to delete posts she disagreed with.

Chats became more and more touchy. One of the guys - Gene, I think - "Justin Tarr" claimed to be a professional editor. The fan who was working on the Long Range Desert Convention, who used to be an editor at a publishing house in New York (Random House, maybe, I forget) tried to talk shop with him once, but he was rude and dismissive.

Then we were informed that CatO, Sofi, and the guys were actually members of a much larger RP club that had been going on for thirty years, with hundreds of members, quite a few fanzines, and several international conventions. Of course, everyone wanted to see the fanzines - I was fascinated by the idea of another world of fanzines co-existing with the one I'm familiar with, like dark matter in the normal universe. It didn't seem totally unbelievable since most of the people I knew came into RP through media science fiction fandom, and I knew there was a whole world of WWII enthusiasts who were for the most part unconnected to us. But they refused to produce the zines - they were lost, or packed away, or too fragile to share. And their claims of 2000-member cons in places like Tokyo certainly didn't sound realistic.

The members of this supposed earlier club then began joining the Yahoo RP Club. Every new member who joined caused an automatic welcome message to be posted to the club. By strange coincidence, large numbers of people tended to subscribe every time an interesting conversation got going; the welcome message and the new members' responses would make it very difficult to follow any other threads. We took to referring to that group as "the 700 Club."

In the meantime, the owner of the email listserv was getting a lot of private nastygrams, mostly from Sofi, and got into the habit of forwarding them around to some of us. The email listserv owner tends to get into scraps with people on a regular basis, though, so at first I didn't pay a lot of attention to them.

A very earnest fan named Nancy (not one of the oldtimers, but apparently a real person), in an attempt to heal the rift, started a new activity that everyone could join in on. This was a storyboard, to which anyone was welcome to post a chapter of an ongoing story, following a few simple rules. Several of the Gang of Eight joined, broke rules repeatedly, tried to prevent anyone else from posting, and finally left in a huff, demanding that all their chapters be removed (thereby leaving gaping holes in the storyline). Nancy had a very good friend and defender who was also clearly a real person (and a different person than Nancy), [ETA: Ruth], and the two of them were obviously on the side of the angels; those of us from the old guard nicknamed them "LightSiders" (as in belonging to the Light Side, not the Dark Side).

The Gang of Eight brought out three issues of each of the two new zines (Rats on the Edge and Romancing the Rats) at the LRDC in May 2001. They were agented by Cinda Gillilan's Neon Rainbow Press, a reputable dealer who is not implicated in any of this. CatO brought along an armload and sold them next to the orphan zine table, then took prepaid orders for Cinda to fill. One of the other new editors was also there, as were some other Canadian fans; the rift seemed at least partly healed.

After the con, though, things got bad again. A bunch of us oldtimers compared notes and decided that obviously the several hundred fans from the earlier club weren't real. After some more note-comparing, we decided that some of the Gang of Eight weren't real either. We'd met CatO and one of the three original editors at the LRDC, and enough people had met the other two original editors that we were pretty sure they existed. That left Sofi, Max, Gene, and Keith. No one had ever met any of them in person or knew anyone who had, and they all seemed to act pretty much in unison on every issue. We began trying to guess who was a person and who was a puppet, and who was running which puppet. We pretty much settled on the woman who had taken over as clubmom as one of the possible suspects (the other two original editors, including the one we had met at the LRDC, had pretty much dropped out of sight), and CatO as another possible suspect.

In the middle of all this, a new character arrived, a guy named who signed himself "iamtheonlyweasel" (quickly nicknamed "The Weasel"). He backed up everything the sock puppets said and did, but he didn't write in the same style or make the same grammatical errors. Indeed, he had an talent for creative invective. He nearly got kicked off the email list for suggesting that someone (either Nancy or Agel) had her head so far up her ass that there were spincter marks around her neck. (Agel was SO not amused.)

Then we got a break in the case. Remember that CatO was selling Rainbow Butterfly Press zines by the orphan zine table at the LRDC? It turns out that she refused to pay the orphan zine commission to the con (which went to charity), and sent the con-mom some surprisingly abusive, hate-filled email about it. A fan who was helping with post-con paperwork forwarded the email to the rest of us oldtimers, and one thing was really obvious from both style and content: the same person who wrote this email also wrote the nastygrams to the email listserv owner from Sofi.

A number of the oldtimers met at Eclecticon in November 2001. We pooled what limited knowledge we had and attempted to formulate a plan. It was obvious that the sock puppeteers had some very specific strategies. For instance, almost all their victims fit a certain pattern: (a) they were recognized for an accomplishment and (b) they were vulnerable. The first girl attacked had actually corresponded with Justin Tarr (which the sock puppeteers clearly saw an accomplishment to be jealous of). The puppeteers deliberately provoked her to make her *seem* crazy to the rest of us. There was method to this madness - as long as she seemed to be a threat, they didn't have to produce the real Justin. The genzine editor, another victim, was well-known as a gifted writer, but recently mentioned in chat that she was being treated for depression and was nervous about editing her own zine for the first time. The original club founder had not only founded a successful club, but had edited a zine (APO North Africa) and written a Rat Patrol novel; as far as vulnerability goes, not only was did she suffer from insecurity, but her mother was dying at the time. Also, driving her away enabled them to put one of their own in charge of the club. The LRDC con-mom had put on a wonderful convention and edited a successful zine; when attacked, she was going through a typical case of post-con blues.

Another pattern we had noticed was that every time someone mentioned something good that didn't have to do with the Gang of Eight, we were immediately drowned out or even contradicted. One of the oldtimers suggested we take advantage of that - everybody talk up Eclecticon to make the sock puppeteers mad, and maybe they'd make a mistake.

That's exactly what happened. A new sock puppet, "Marcia," appeared who claimed to have been at Eclecticon. In order to top our fun-filled account, she even claimed to have met Justin Tarr's grandson there at Cinda's table! On a different list for Justin Tarr groupies, the person posting as Justin Tarr acknowledged that this was true. But there were so many errors in this person's account that it was easy to prove false - which meant, by extension, that the person claiming to be Justin Tarr had to be fake as well.

In early December, someone posted three posts at 6 a.m. to the Rat Patrol club. One of them laid out the evidence that "Marcia" could not possibly have attended Eclecticon. The second one explained that the person posting as "Justin Tarr" couldn't possibly be the real Justin Tarr since he had confirmed Marcia's false account. The third, entitled, "Jealousy, Cruelty, and Cowardice" outlined the attacks made upon individuals. They were deleted by the clubmom a few hours later, but the damage had been done. A few people posted protesting the three posts, but those posts were deleted as well. All of the hundreds of puppets from the 30-year-old club unsubscribed, one after another, over the course of a few hours. So did the more prominent/individual puppets like Max, Keith, Gene, and Sofi, as did CatO and finally, the new clubmom. The original club founder came back.

It was spooky. There were a few days of stunned silence, and then people who had been lurking for months, afraid to post because of the all the nastiness, began poking their noses out. Explanations were made and repeated. There were some people who still didn't believe it, and thought that the sock puppets left because the three posts were nasty lies that hurt their feelings. The Weasel was among them - at first.

Unbeknownst to those of us who had been at Eclecticon, the storyboard girl Nancy and her friend Ruth ("the LightSiders") had been quietly working on one of the original editors (the one who proposed "Rats on the Edge") and on The Weasel. The three posts hadn't quite convinced them, but it had planted a seed of doubt in their minds, and the Weasel was usefully geeky. Among the four of them, they got what they needed to check the Internet Protocol addresses of the messages posted to the main Rat Patrol club as well as the private Justin Tarr groupie club.

The IP addresses for every sock puppet, from the 700+ old-club members to the individuals like Sofi and Max, indicated that every single post came from one person. Some of them traced back to CatO's home computer; many more of them traced back to her work computer. We were dumbfounded. We had assumed there was a ring of puppeteers: there was only one. The Weasel had once hated us just because his "friends" did; now he hated "them" much more because he realized he'd been deceived and betrayed, and became a staunch ally to the LightSiders. He posted the IP information in detail to several RP lists, including the Yahoo club, the email listserv, and the Justin Tarr groupie list.

At this point, all that was left was mopping up. We posted discreetly, not naming names, to several multifandom lists describing the pattern and what to watch out for. (She had done the same thing in Garrison's Gorillas fandom, and no one had warned RP most RP fans hadn't known about it.) Nancy told CatO's supervisors what she had been doing with her computer on company time, and she got fired. ETA: At the time I thought that was foolish and possibly dangerous, but I have since learned that there were very good reasons. As near as we can tell, there have been no repercussions; we were afraid she would retaliate. We did learn something very funny, which was that, while we were calling Nancy & her friend "Lightsiders," they were referring to the oldtimers as the "Jedi Knights." Same metaphor!

It turned out that many of the stories in the six zines published by Rainbow Butterfly Press were written by CatO under various pen names; a number of the others had been plagiarized. The RBP webpages vanished overnight, and the zines were pulled from Cinda's press. I suppose they're collectors' items now!

The woman who originally proposed Rats on the Edge broke away from the group of CatO's insiders to join with the LightSiders and successfully remained active in fandom. Storyboard girl's friend (this is awkward because I don't have permission to use names yet) has successfully salvaged the poor girl who had proposed Rats on the Edge; the two of them She and Nancy's friend Ruth had put out at least one zine together when I wrote this account in 2002 and were working on another. The other two girls, the ones who had proposed Romancing the Rats, are apparently gone for good. [Note: I think one of them has finally resurfaced.] [ETA: I think both?]

Nancy's friend Ruth came to Eclecticon in 2002, so the Jedi Knights finally met one of the LightSiders, and she told us what the girl from Rats on the Edge had shared with her about what it was like to be part of the inner circle. None of them knew that Max and Keith and Gene and Sofi and Justin Tarr weren't real; it was like a cult, complete with brainwashing and mind games. Really creepy stuff. Some serious personal damage was done to the insiders; all were shell-shocked, and one of them (the one who was put in the place of the club mom) ended up divorced.

There was an almost soldier-like camaraderie among those of us who had been there on St. Crispin's Day, if that makes sense. But there was also a lot of regret for the people who had been hurt, both inside and outside the circle.

I know this leaves out a lot - the pseudo-foreign posters who couldn't fool the ESL teacher among the oldtimers; CatO's claims to be the mother of a cadet in one of the service academies who was following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather; the whole 9/11 mess with sock puppets trapped in the World Trade Tower. Hope this will at least provide the bare bones on which to hang a more complete story.

Comments

[nonniemous.livejournal.com]

O.0

I've been in two small fandoms that have been torn apart by the sort of shenanigans you mention, though sock puppets were not much of a part of what went on. But the level of hatred and vitriol for the "successful" fen? Yeah. Not to mention I had a ringside seat to the Orangeblossom/Victoria Bitter debacle in LOTR fandom--and very nearly got sucked in myself, since they started out here in Portland.

But I've never, ever understood what kind of person can work *this* hard to be so much nasty to so many people. I Just. Don't. Get. It.

*lifts glass* Here's to the Jedi Knights and the Lightsiders! Long may you rule your fandom.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Not to mention I had a ringside seat to the Orangeblossom/Victoria Bitter debacle in LOTR fandom--and very nearly got sucked in myself, since they started out here in Portland.

Holy cow! Glad you didn't get sucked in... was that ever a disaster!

I met VB at ConneXions a year or so after the RP thing ended. She was affecting a peculiar, very thick British rural accent and impressed everyone by "faking" an American accent. I remember wondering if the faking was the other way around and then thought to myself that I was just being cynical because of what happened in RP. Fortunately our paths (mine and VB's, I mean) didn't cross again - we were involved in different areas of LOTR fandom, and I only heard about the train wrecks she caused much later on, after the fact.

BTW, speaking of VB & Orangeblossom, one of CatO's male socks basically seduced one of the zine editors away from her husband - they had a sort of virtual affair over the Internet. Her marriage was already troubled and the affair ended it. Squicky - and strangely familiar, eh?

[kyleen66.livejournal.com]

I do happen to remember hearing snippet's about this. How someone can even have TIME for that sort of crap is beyond MY powers of comphrehension.

Poor dear. Now go have that stiff drink with Klio.

Kissies.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Poor dear. Now go have that stiff drink with Klio.

That's a wonderful idea!

Kissies.

Thank you! Same back atcha, and a hug for Al-chan.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

mecurtin sent me here.

d'you have a copy of Kathy Agel's account? She sent (at least) two emails to fca-l about the RP mess, in Dec 01 and Oct 02. I don't have a current email address for her, though, I don't think.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

I managed to get a copy - I want to see if I have Agel's permission before I post it.

Thank you for mentioning it! I wouldn't have known about it to ask, if you hadn't. I know I was on FCA myself for a while, but a lot of this is a blur in my memory.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. Gawd.

And here I thought Harry Potter fandom was the only one that brought out the crazies.

Wow. Suddenly so grateful for my (relatively) sane fellow fen.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

And here I thought Harry Potter fandom was the only one that brought out the crazies.

Alas, no.

BTW, your icon is AMAZING. I could stare at it all day!

[southerngaelic.livejournal.com]

Hi, just wandered over here from bad_penny.

I'm a relative n00b to the aspects of fandom, and I found myself a bit dumbfounded at this. It's easier for someone to do this in a smaller fandom I see.

Sorry for the crap this person put you guys through. It's good this behaviour is brought up again so we can spot the signs when it happens again (Yes, when. I have no faith in humanity).

[amedia.livejournal.com]

It's good this behaviour is brought up again so we can spot the signs when it happens again (Yes, when. I have no faith in humanity).

My reasoning exactly. Sigh.

[keikokin.livejournal.com]

Wowzers. I know you had briefly told me a bit about this before. To see how it finally ended up is very shocking to say the least. The sad part is what it does to fandom at its very core. RP, being one of the "foundation fandoms" IMHO, targeted in such a manner is beyond comprehension. Once in a blue moon I will run across a "hate blog" for one fandom or another and I find it very upsetting. I reminds me of the one woman at RevelCon who when I mentioned Smallville, made a gagging gesture. Fandom, as you introduced the concept to me too many years ago to contemplate, was one of a friendly community networked through their love of the written word, of shows and the desire to bring more to their chosen genre. May Karma be there bringer of justice and may fandom be taught by the example of your group to go above and beyond to find your way back to each other. Kudos!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

May Karma be there bringer of justice and may fandom be taught by the example of your group to go above and beyond to find your way back to each other.

Beautifully said - many thanks!

[alexandramuses.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'm so sorry to hear that. I'd been half-thinking of leaving the Potter fandom because of all the wank, but it sounds like smaller fandoms get hit in an even nastier way. Glad it's been sorted out, at least for the most part!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

it sounds like smaller fandoms get hit in an even nastier way

I guess the problem with the smaller fandoms is that there's nowhere to hide. Everyone involved with the online fandom was affected by the puppetry.

OTOH, I was active in LOTR for a while and basically never ran into any of the massive incredible VB wankery except to hear about it third- or fourth-hand. It was such a big fandom that the sub-areas were relatively protected from one another, I guess.

[sailormac.livejournal.com]

Here via fanthropology. I'd heard some talk about this incident before, when fanthropology was a ML, but I had *no* idea how extensive it was (SEVEN HUNDRED socks??? Manipulated by someone holding down a job at the same time???) and how deeply people got hurt (the fact that people's *marriages* were destroyed by this is out-and-out heartbreaking). Kudos to all of you for ferreting out the culprit and keeping the fandom going despite everything she pulled.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

It was in some ways a genuine tragedy. It didn't make much of a blip on the General Fannish Radar because RP is such a small fandom (and a slightly odd one, not being based on a sci-fi or fantasy universe, although that's not as big a difference nowadays). But what it lacked in breadth, I guess it made up for in depth. Hm. Hadn't thought of it quite that way before.

Thanks for your kind comments; they really, really mean a lot.

[dimity-blue.livejournal.com]

(She had done the same thing in Garrison's Gorillas fandom, and no one had warned RP.)

Sorry, but this is actually not true. I'm in the Garrison's Gorillas fandom and one of my friends is in the Rat Patrol fandom and she helped the 'Lightsiders' with a lot of evidence. I'd given her everything I had (lists of member IDs, for example) about the 600 members that had flooded the GG fandom that I (and others) suspected were all Cat. At that point, there was no definite proof. Cat and her 600 socks (including one who'd supposedly died on 9/11) quit the GG fanclub when I posted an article about Munchausen by Internet on the Garrison's Gorillas WW2 club.

Soon after that, though I can't remember the dates, the whole Marcia thing happened. Various members of the RP fandom were aware that the socks were fake, and knew what had happened in the GG fandom - but there was no actual proof until Ruth (I can't remember her ID) found out exactly what IP numbers were and what they meant.

Someone calling themselves "Amy_Portell_Not" had joined WW2 and posted a whole pile of IP numbers beforehand but no one (that I know of) had any idea of the significance of them until Ruth explained.

Btw, if anyone's interested I still have Amy_Portell_Not's posts and can post them here, if amedia doesn't mind.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the GG info - I've emended above. This is definitely a work in progress and I appreciate all contributions!

I had the vague impression that she had finished her work in GG fandom and then came over and started working on RP fandom (early in 2000, I think). Does this tally with your recollection? Or was she running this scam on two fandoms at the same time?

Btw, if anyone's interested I still have Amy_Portell_Not's posts and can post them here, if amedia doesn't mind.

That would rock. Thank you!

[doctoraicha.livejournal.com]

Fandom? Is worse than High School. God, what a NUTCASE! Cat-O and MsScribe are probbably sisters!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Cat-O and MsScribe are probbably sisters!

They sound a lot alike, don't they?!!!

I don't think they could be the same person, but I bet they share the same diagnosis!

[dakpziv.livejournal.com]

...A few notes from an "insider"

"A couple of years ago ...there was a small but active group of Rat Patrol fans...Then a rather odd thing happened. The aforementioned guys, along with a woman going by the screenname CatO, "

...More commonly, she used "Wolfwalker."

"who had previously been active in Garrison's Gorillas fandom, a woman named Sofi, and the three new fans formed a kind of syndicate ...."

...Cat's sock, Sofi, was never an editor at Rainbow Butterfly Press.

" The group was called "Rainbow Butterfly Press," ... They accepted very few submissions and sent back brutal, nasty, and inaccurate edits ..."

....Um, We had MANY submissions--otherwise, how could we have put out so many volumes of the two zines? And the edits we sent back were neither brutal, nor nasty--at least not to my knowledge. What IS true is that Cat had her quirks when it came to editing. Since she could always call on Max, Keith and J to back her up, the rest of us got out-voted, and she got her way.

".Over a period of time, there developed an obvious rift on the club. The Rainbow Butterfly Press folks tried to spin it as Americans vs. Canadians......"

... For me, at least, the rift was a matter of "old guard" vs. "newbies." I can remember feeling like a new neighbour who had been invited to a tea party, only to be shunted off to one side, cup of tea in hand, and basically ignored during the group chats. Okay, so I was insecure. But, I was new, and wanted to participate in the fandom, and it hurt when I felt I was being repeatedly brushed off.


" Anyone who said anything favorable about anyone else's fanzines tended to get trashed both on and off the club...."

.......Um......this worked both ways. Believe me, it did.

"Chats became more and more touchy. One of the guys - Gene, I think - claimed to be a professional editor."

..............Actually, "Gene" claimed to be a "JAG" lawyer. The fellow who was supposedly the freelance editor was none other than "J" himself (Cat's version of Justin Tarr) Quite clever of Cat, in a very mean, and diabolical way, to make him an editor--I mean, he (and therefore, Cat) became the ultimate authority, both on RP itself, and on writing/editing. Who could argue with him? :-P :-P

"...a new character arrived, a guy named who signed himself "iamtheonlyweasel" (quickly nicknamed "The Weasel"). ...He nearly got kicked off the email list for suggesting that someone (the storyboard girl, I think) had her head so far up her ass that there were spincter marks around her neck. (The listserv owner was SO not amused.)"

LOL....I'm sorry, but God bless The Weasel :-) Nope, it wasn't the storyboard girl--I think it was the listserv owner herself he was addressing.

"In early December, someone posted three posts at 6 a.m. to the Rat Patrol club. "....

............What you probably don't know is that after the posts came out, Cat and her socks (and the few of us who were real) held a council of war. It was decided the best option would be to resign from the Yahoo club, and to abandon the established RP fandom for the (seeming) safety of "The Weasel's" club, Tarrnation. Obviously, by then Cat was feeling very threatened, and isolating us at Tarrnation was her way of keeping us all under her control.

"The Weasel........ became a staunch ally to the LightSiders. He posted the IP information in detail to several RP list."

Like I said--God bless his Weaselly heart. :-)

"Storyboard girl's friend (this is awkward because I don't have permission to use names yet) has successfully salvaged the poor girl who had proposed Rats on the Edge"

...Um....poor girl? Salvaged??? Ah well, you calls 'em as you sees 'em. :-)Actually, it was a good,if painful lesson--like living through a sort of mini-Third Reich, as it were. I see Cat as sort of Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich combined. What that made the rest of us---well, I don't know.

brief quick response

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Thank you for all of this extremely valuable information!

Salvaged?

I *definitely* need to find a more diplomatic way to rephrase that entire section. This was written in 2002, when we were still getting reports of what had been going on in the inner circle and were switching from "how dare they?" to "OMG those poor people!" Most of us didn't realize that wolfwalker was the *only* puppeteer. (Agel will swear up and down that she knew it from the beginning.)

The description of the edits is unfortunately firsthand. I'm sure they were sent without being run past you, because I can't imagine you would have approved them.

"J" was one of the EDITORS?! Holy cow!

And yes - God bless the Weasel!

[thotmonster.livejournal.com]

Wow. Here from fanthropology. The RP saga and the recent HP exposure have some frightening but intriguing similarities in M.O., effects and aftereffects ("people who had been lurking for months, afraid to post because of the all the nastiness"), and the process of exposure.

I think you captured a lot of valuable information for RP and metafandom in general, despite not having the volumes (!) of detail that charlottelennox brought to the msscribe dissection on bad_penny.

I'm learning a lot from the comments in various places, and yours are very astute, IMHO. Most interesting is the clear pattern of specific common behaviors: Munchhausen by internet, sockpuppets, hostile undermining of anyone showing signs of success (possible borderline personality disorder), mass email or multiple-posting attacks, isolating the few real (non-sockpuppet) supporters / disrupting others's efforts to maintain group-wide communications or restore them.

It's like a version of the "get rich quick" scheme, only in this case a "get big quick" goal of self-aggrandizement. The immediate objective any given point can change, or grow to include more goals: take over clubs or become the biggest club, become a BNF or zine editor, get the biggest friends-list, etc. I think this is because these fandom goals are secondary to the personal goal, simply means to an end. The real end is attention-seeking. This explains all the horrible personal attacks, and disruption of normal fandom activities and order as also, unfortunately, simply means to that same end, stripping others of esteem and friends to divert it all to the attention-seeker.

fanthropology discussed whether this might be borderline personality disorder. Regardless of clinical description, it's sure the kind of thing we all recognize, at the very least in hindsight, as "bad" behavior.

Kudos for your work in providing this additional "case study." I'm trying to help mop up an episode like this in another 'verse, and the comparison is helping *a lot*.

Too bad this kind of thing is so destructive -- I'm glad you and other RP fen have made the effort to recover!

BTW, given you're also a Barney Miller and even MfU fan -- OMG, I love the MfU "Seagull" story - and Dietrich/Harris (yes, *luff*!) -- I hope you don't mind if I friend you to KIT with your postings!

Cheers again on your work on the Lightside!
Claudia

[amedia.livejournal.com]

It's like a version of the "get rich quick" scheme, only in this case a "get big quick" goal of self-aggrandizement.

Very well put!

BTW, given you're also a Barney Miller and even MfU fan -- OMG, I love the MfU "Seagull" story - and Dietrich/Harris (yes, *luff*!) -- I hope you don't mind if I friend you to KIT with your postings!


Flattery will get you everywhere. :-) Thank you.

Another partial reply

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, we probably acted much the same way towards the new RP writers list. Often going on about warnings, horror stories, trying to dampen enthusiam and "you can't write that!" or "that was written before."

But I still remember fondly the early days and chats before this descended into Sock Hell. I still am sorry for one of the inner circle because in the begining we were friends. I wished that RTR had been what she wanted in the beginning.

The world has changed a lot now since then, esp with the plethora of online fanfic becoming a norm, but I still twitch at the idea of having stuff out there.

That's the end result of all this for me.

[dubh-ceol.livejournal.com]

*waves* Hi, I remember this bit of fandom drama! (Yes, I was only...14 at the time it happened, but hey.) Wasn't it 'Wolfwalker' who organized a 'Send Justin Tarr birthday cards' thing one year? I remember getting a cute little hand-written card back from "Justin" as well.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it 'Wolfwalker' who organized a 'Send Justin Tarr birthday cards' thing one year?

Yes, that's right!!!

[7-league-boots.livejournal.com]

Hello all,

Though not a part of fandom or a 'zine writer, I have friends who are, and so I was directed to this thread. Oh my, how familiar it sounds.

The thing to remember about this sort of attack is that it is *common*, not unusual at all, not limited to the 'net. I saw it happen in an obedience training dog club, twenty years ago. I have seen it happen in the workplace, in the pagan community, in political parties, in churches, and (of course) all over the place from grades 7 to 12, where these tactics seem to be first tried out and perfected.

It destroys the groups it effects, splashing the fragments all over the scenery, like a Terry Pratchett swamp-dragon.

May I direct you to another resource which deals with this sort of behaviour? Look here: <http://www.wargoddess.net/essay/problem.php>

This site is the first chapter of a long essay called Trollspotting by Eran (the whole essay is there, on subsequent pages.) It describes in detail what these attacks look like and how to deal with them.

In particular, it deals with the fact that the people *most vulnerable* to this sort of attack are the nicest people, the most thoughtful and polite and reasonable.

Personally, I should like to see trollspotting taught in school from the earliest grades. These people are too damn destructive.

Boots
a real person

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Boots! I'll check out the link!

Personally, I should like to see trollspotting taught in school from the earliest grades. These people are too damn destructive.

What a great idea!

Hi from RK -- a quick wave!

[(Anonymous)]

RK here, waving hello from Denver. Still teaching ESL, still wishing in a sense that I hadn't bolted off so I could have been part of the Jedi defense instead of just one of the victims (I'm the genzine editor that amedia mentioned, and the ESL teacher too...). But I was newly married and there was no way I was going to let that get messed up by all the nastiness. The genzine in question (Under The Sun) did carry on, for two issues before I hit fanfic burnout in ~2003 (?) and stopped writing altogether.

Or so I thought.... a week or ten days ago, I got ambushed by a story again (not RP, sad to say)! But it's the first fanfic I've written since Under The Sun #2. I'd forgotten how fun it could be.

Email me if you like, amedia. I miss you.

Re: Hi from RK -- a quick wave!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

RK! What a delight to see you here! *waves back*

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Randomly found this through link-jumping. Wow. Just... WOW.

Kudos on you recording it for posterity!