Theoryofficgate Clarification and Follow-Up

It's been over a month since fanfic writers, specifically user waldorph, discovered that a UC Berkeley class had required students to write reviews as part of a course on fanfiction. I initially wrote a bit to explore some of the issues being raised as tensions still ran high. Since then, tempers have simmered down and most of the problems have been resolved.

Now that most of the details have come out, I wanted to clarify some points from my previous post as well as add on to some of the discussion regarding fan aggression.

The class, "The Theory of Fanfiction", is not taught by professors. In case it was unclear, the course is student designed and run. By undergraduates for undergraduates. So, it's basically a glorified reading group with the added benefit of college credit. And as later uncovered profiles revealed, these undergrads had a personal interest in fandom and even participated in it. One of the teachers was found to go by the pseudonym of FiveMinutesTilBedtime on many sites, including ao3 and tumblr.

Unfortunately, fandoms tend to get rather prickly when disturbed. There were reports of targeted harassment and malicious posting on top of the general drama the course caused. It got so bad that the fan-turned-instructor has since deleted or deactivated these accounts, but traces can still be found on the wayback machine or through tumblr correspondences. Sure, they made a mistake, what young adult doesn't, but the responses were excessive and cruel.

Such behavior truly highlights the ugly and destructive sides of both fandom and internet culture in general. BNF copperbadge, for example, allegedly posted a spiteful response (that has since been deleted) to theoryofficgate:

If you’d like to share your thoughts with the “teachers” of the “Let’s go be dicks to fan authors” class, their emails are listed in this cached document.
You know, if you wanted to. Unsolicited criticism seems to be the order of the day, after all. 

And since the original poster has a large presence in online communities, the post gained a lot of views and traction. It revealed personal information about the instructors and called for further harassment. Such behavior cultivates a very negative space in fandom and encourages cruelty. At least one fan was run off as a result and felt pressured enough to destroy their fandom identity completely. After all, it can be easy to forget, but FiveMinutesTilBedtime was first and foremost a fan and content creator.

A few anonymous commenters weighed in on this incident while criticizing the phenomenon of BNFdom:

Original thread here.

The class has since edited the syllabus and stopped the reviews in favor of revising the assignments. Now aware of the close scrutiny, the teachers and students have been much more closed off about the course. But discussions like the above still continue.

The attempt to bridge fandom and academia was overly eager and ill-conceived, but it was still genuine. They are all fans. Both teachers and students are trying to respectfully study, analyze, and document a culture they love. This particular experiment may have failed horribly, but perhaps the lessons from their follies may create space for future success.

Pseudonym Sunday: The Rise and Fall of MsScribe

Fewer pseudonyms live on in infamy than that of the notorious MsScribe. The story is a saga that literally spans years. It has become a bizarre piece of internet lore, a drama-filled story that entertains as much as it repulses. An absurd comedy that has become the stuff of legends. It is probably the definitive piece of fandom wank, the likes of which we might never see again. Users can and have written thousands of word about the events and their fallout. The most famous and comprehensive of these write-ups is so long that it’s even segmented into chapters. Charolette Lenox’s work is admittedly a super long but very entertaining read if you have the time. It is perhaps the most referenced work, almost a required reading, when people discuss MsScribe.

I’m not going to try and summarize everything. Others already have done a much better job than I could hope to replicate. One blogger, Scott Alexander, succinctly summarizes:

In the early 2000s, Harry Potter fanfiction authors and readers get embroiled in an apocalyptic feud between people who think that Harry should be in a relationship with Ginny vs. people who think Harry should be in a relationship with Hermione. This devolves from debate to personal attacks to real world stalking and harassment to legal cases to them splitting the community into different sites that pretty much refuse to talk to each other and ban stories with their nonpreferred relationship.

These sites then sort themselves out into a status hierarchy with a few people called Big Name Fans at the top and everyone else competing to get their attention and affection, whether by praising them slavishly or by striking out in particularly cruel ways at people in the “enemy” relationship community.

A young woman named MsScribe joins the Harry/Hermione community. She proceeds to make herself popular and famous by use of sock-puppet accounts (a sockpuppet is when someone uses multiple internet nicknames to pretend to be multiple different people) that all praise her and talk about how great she is. Then she moves on to racist and sexist sockpuppet accounts who launch lots of slurs at her, so that everyone feels very sorry for her.

At the height of her power, she controls a small army of religious trolls who go around talking about the sinfulness of Harry Potter fanfiction authors and especially MsScribe and how much they hate gay people. All of these trolls drop hints about how they are supported by the Harry/Ginny community, and MsScribe leads the campaign to paint everyone who wants Harry and Ginny to be in a relationship as vile bigots and/or Christians. She classily cements her position by convincing everyone to call them “cockroaches” and post pictures of cockroaches whenever they make comments.

Throughout all this, a bunch of people are coming up with ironclad evidence that she is the one behind all of this (this is the Internet! They can just trace IPs!) Throughout all of it, MsScribe makes increasingly implausible denials. And throughout all of it, everyone supports MsScribe and ridicules her accusers. Because really, do you want to be on the side of a confirmed popular person, or a bunch of confirmed suspected racists whom we know are racist because they deny racism which is exactly what we would expect racists to do?

MsScribe writes negatively about a fan with cancer asking for money, and her comments get interpreted as being needlessly cruel to a cancer patient. Her popularity drops and everyone takes a second look at the evidence and realizes hey, she was obviously manipulating everyone all along. There is slight sheepishness but few apologies, because hey, we honestly thought the people we were bullying were unpopular.

(I stress that this is a very abridged version that glosses over and skips A LOT.)

If it has not been made apparent yet, this tale starts over a decade ago in the early 2000s. It was the time when livejournal acted as the central hub for fandom activity. Everyone was recovering from the 90s, Myspace was still starting up, and many internet users still had to go through dial-up connection instead of broadband. (For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, be glad you were never subjected to this awful noise.) Even so, the MsScribe story may still provide some sections that echo more modern activity and may still have some relevance for people.

At its core, the MsScribe story is one of a user who was determined to reach fame (BNFdom) by any means possible. She constructed wild stories for her pseudonym, generally just caused a lot of drama, and used a variety of sockpuppets, both to prop her up and slash her down. Of course, the latter only further endeared her to her followers. In the process, she stepped on more than a few toes. It’s easy to forget that MsScribe’s dramatic show involved other real people, people who were personally invested, deceived, and hurt. She caused a lot of chaos and backlashing in the circles she frequented. And as she moved up in popularity, the ripples only grew.

In the fallout, many users began to look critically at the structure of online fandom and fame.

Original thread here.

MsScribe's heyday is over, but her legacy still lives on. It provides the perfect study for a lot of behaviors that are prevalent on the internet today - the drive for internet fame, sockpuppeting, stirring up drama. It speaks to the dangers of imagined hierarchies and internet communities who all too easily believe almost anything with minimal information. It exposes how easily some social structures on the web may be exploited and manipulated.  People still refer to her usernames and even claim them as their own at times. Some people have even role played as the users involved.

And above all, it makes a really entertaining read.

Pseudonym Sunday: Gaining Reputation and BNFs

People like having fans. And fans definitely like having fans.

While that may seem weird and counterintuitive at first, there is a perfectly good explanation. It mostly stems from the fact that many fans become content creators themselves, even if they end up borrowing someone else’s characters, worlds, and/or scenarios to do so. They produce fanworks like fanfiction, fanvids, and fanart without any intention of making a profit. It’s just for fun. And if the work is of a high enough quality and well received, it’s very likely that the person will gain their own following of other fans.

Even though this is a Pseudonym Sunday post, don’t let the category trip you up. Even anonymous users can gain a fan following if there is an easy way to attribute certain works or comments to one individual, anonymous or not. Art styles, for example, may be easy to identify and match up. Or, an anonymous user might claim a number of works as theirs without divulging their name. Pseudonyms just make this process easier and more accurate. After all, they give a distinct name and ownership to the work.

When a fan gets a big enough reputation, people might start considering them as a Big Name Fan, or BNF. This is where the terminology gets a bit tricky. It definition is simple enough. For whatever reason, BNFs are simply well-known fans. Just note that it’s not always the result of pure hard work and talent. There are a lot of other factors that can come into play before someone might be labeled a BNF. But the connotations can range from well to ill received. The positive side of the coin is easy enough to see, so I will be focusing mainly on the negatives.

 BNFs can have A LOT of influence.

To put mildly, BNFs become centers of their fandom and become very influential in their own niche of the subculture. They're trend setters. And as a result, they often gain a sort of cult-like following and may use their popularity immorally. It’s mainly a symptom of attaining fame and being put on the spotlight. For better or worse, people flock and look up to the BNF, even idolize them, and not everyone can handle such power. The position also leaves them open to drama. Generally speaking, the more popular someone is, the more likely people will want to tear that person down by stirring shit up, and fandom spaces are no exception. The fallout of such drama can be legendary.

Because of the reputation of the title, few like to use it, especially when referring to themselves. Nobody Ever Admits They’re a BNF:

Nobody ever admits they're a Big Name Fan. It's part incredulity, part modesty, and part self-preservation, usually in that order. The first time you hear somebody call you a BNF, it's ridiculous. I mean, come on- you're just some random schlub who writes stories/makes art/makes vids/talks about the show, BNF? Please! It's funny, too, because then you can have polls in your journal and ask for minions, because the notion of you being a BNF is so ridiculous it's mockable. Mockity, mock, mock!

Then, it's modesty. Because you're not stupid- you can look at your friends list and realize that 400 people is more than 50 people, and therefore, more people are reading what you say. (At least, in theory.) Still, 400 people reading what you say- that's hardly anything to get uppity about. Other people have bigger friends lists. Other people write more popular stories. You're still some random schlub writing stories, making art, making vids, talking about the show, you're just a random schlub that has more than your best friend listening.

Then, it's self-preservation, because there comes a point when denying your BNFness is, to choose the favoritest words of all fandom words used to describe a liar, disingenuous. Now, you're still a random schlub, because you always were a random schlub. But by this point, you are a random schlub whose name gets used as an example for various compare, contrast exercises and your behavior is part of the Neilsen Data for your particular fandom, along with the other BNFs'. Never mind that the statistical margin of error is like 90 percent, the rep of the fandom, that's on you. You know you're a BNF, but you know better than to admit it.

There are a lot more nuances and controversies about the term that I've glossed over for the sake of time and coherence. BNF, for example, is becoming more a slippery term and possibly outdated, even if the concept still stands. The shift of fandom culture from sites like livejournal and fanfiction.net to tumblr and AO3 have certainly complicated it. More information and opinions can be found here and here.

Before concluding this entry, I should really emphasize that the popularity of one fan does not necessarily guarantee quality. There are a ton of underappreciated or lesser known fans churning out wonderful works. They might just not have that star quality, whether it’s self-marketing or charisma or something else, that vaults certain individuals into BNFdom. And that’s ok. Sometimes the merit of a work just speaks for itself.