Pseudonym Sunday: How to Disappear Completely and Make Sure Everyone Knows About It

Let’s say you’re part of a fandom, maybe for a few months or even years, but you’re not content with your place in it. Maybe you’re getting bored with the material and the fans. Maybe your plans at becoming a well-known member have fallen through. Maybe no one is responding to your comments and your inbox is eerily silent. Maybe you just want more attention. Or maybe you just want to announce that you’re leaving the community for other fandoms. What do you do?

If you have any conscience at all, you would choose anything other than pseuicide.

But, of course, some people live for the drama.

Pseuicide, also known as pseudocide, is a rather self-explanatory portmanteau of “pseudo” and “suicide”. It refers to someone faking their own death, specifically on the web. It can take a number of different forms, but it’s commonly used as a rather underhanded method for attention-seeking. It’s about seeing people’s reactions to the news that you’re leaving or have already left forever. Sockpuppets are often utilized to either break the news about your abrupt death or to start threads to garner support and sympathy.

One account of pseuicide was even used to try and get gifts out of followers and sympathizers. Svmaria, a member of the Smallville fandom in 2006, used a sockpuppet account to announce that she had been in a bad carwreck, miscarried her baby, and is currently in a coma. The sockpuppet account then asked for fics and gifts to help svmaria during her recovery:

Her boyfriend has asked me to let you know that if you feel inclined to send her any gifts besides what's on her Christmas Wish list, she likes especially the following:

Lip balm, lip gloss, butterflies, dragonflies, kittens, angels, bunnies, snowmen, x-mas trees, lieetl presents like earrings, make up, stuff like that.

When the charade fell apart, mostly due to a suspicious lack of info and the home and hospital IPs matching up, people were understandably very angry for being used in such a manner. Another write-up can be found here.

Those who get caught may try to backtrack, often with absurdly hilarious and offensive remarks. One member of the Harry Potter fandom, limeybean, claimed to have died from tuberculosis, of all diseases. When limeybean was quickly caught and called out, she made a few posts hastily trying to explain herself and recover her reputation. So, she promptly tried to assert the nobility of her actions and push the blame onto someone else:

So we're clear, I had never intended for things to go this way. I had not meant to "die" from the beginning, but I wanted an escape and it gave me one should I ever want to leave. I've always had a problem when it comes to telling the truth on the internet, to be honest. My parents wouldn't let me at a young age and since then I've never been able to do it, even if I wanted to. After realising the effect my bravery in my illness had on people, I then used it as a vehicle to try and get some of the idiot emo kids on LJ to buck up and realise they don't really have it all that bad. How much hope can you see reflected on the comments left on my entries, or in ones about me? So the lie was worth something, wasn't it? How bad is a lie if it helps?

Unsurprisingly, limeybean was left with almost no supporters and found her reputation tarnished beyond recovery after such emotional manipulation.

The phenomenon has since become popular enough to have its own term coined by psychologists: Münchausen by Internet. The frequency of the behavior has also spawned a satirical guide to pseuicide.