Oh, because everyone else is commenting on it ...

[snorkackcatcher]

Just a thought on the msscribe wank resulting from a look at the latest episodes of the saga. Everyone seems convinced that the lady in question, however sociopathic/unethical/batshit she may have been, did actually pull off a stroke of sheer brilliance -- that she's an 'evil genius' as one person put it in a comment (no, I can't be bothered to look up the link).

So is it just me -- or was she, in actual fact, pretty crap really?

After all, she didn't manage to set up a bunch of real identities with real-life documentation and convincing collateral, in the way that many a con-artist has done before (and when she tried to do so, she fell flat on her face as soon as anybody checked). She just made use of the largely anonymous nature of online identities and interactions, and the fact that few of us really know that much about the people on our flists, to set up a series of tentacles ("One can never have enough socks" -- A.Dumbledore) in order to bootstrap herself into notoriety. And she got sloppy -- if she'd taken enough care to keep her multiple net personalities separate from each other, and to research plausible backstories, no-one would have been able to bust her.

It's been a fascinating and entertaining study (if not that surprising -- there are plenty of people like that, after all), and one that was certainly worth presenting to clear the air. But she really was lucky to get away with it for so long.

Comments

[the-jackalope.livejournal.com]

Yea, I'm with you on this one. Not and evil genius just lucky.

[the-jackalope.livejournal.com]

an, an evil genius. Stupid fingers.

[snorkackcatcher]

I should take notes in case I ever need to set up my own sockpuppet! (On what to avoid.)

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

Word, to all you say. If she was any good, she'd not have been caught.

[snorkackcatcher]

Heh. I see someone else was reminded of that quote. :D *bashes head of Manipulative!Dumbledore plotbunny in which many HP characters turn out to be AD in disguise*

[dreamer-marie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wasn't impressed with the Clarabelle backstory and "cover up". She was really sloppy from the beginning, and only learnt while going along, which is why we can't prove she was fandom_scruples...

[snorkackcatcher]

Yes -- it's the sort of story that practically comes with a neon sign saying COMPULSIVE LIAR. Basically, it should have set off far more bullshit detectors than it did.

[mrs-wolf.livejournal.com]

I always get accused of being a liar on the internet because my life is so damned weird. If she had just stayed "normal" she could have pulled it off in my opinion.

[snorkackcatcher]

Your posts do actually 'feel' genuine enough though -- they come across as someone just discussing their experiences, even if (I guess) severely edited for the web, rather than someone consciously trying to Construct a Persona.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

In many ways, this is less about Msscribe's ability to delude other people than it is about people's ability to delude themselves.

[snorkackcatcher]

Unfortunately so. It's easier to do that online, I think, because you generally only have the aspect people present via what they write, which may be very different from what they are like in person (definitely applies with me!).

[mrs-wolf.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too! I've had varying reactions from people I actually meet. I think it's the people that expect net friends to be carbon copies of their imagination that end up disappointed.

The joys of projection.

[snorkackcatcher]

Fair point. Even just hearing someone's real voice can be a jolt, as in my haad they talk like me. :)

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

"One can never have enough socks" -- A.Dumbledore

My hat's off to you. That's the best darn parallel anyone has drawn between this mess and the goings on in the Potterverse. Hee!

[snorkackcatcher]

Actually, to judge by her icon junediamanti seems to have had the same idea. I shall claim that is an example of 'great minds think alike'. :D

[magnetic-pole.livejournal.com]

("One can never have enough socks" -- A.Dumbledore)

*laughs*

Clever, clever. *worships cleverness*

I haven't read too much about this, but the message that I'm getting out of it is that people have an enormous capacity to be disappointed in others, which actually might not be a bad life lesson to rediscover.

Maggie

[snorkackcatcher]

Heh. When I saw junediamanti's post above I realised she'd not only had the same idea, but actually put it in an icon (which I was planning to do when I could track down a suitable Gambon still).

It seesm to have lanced a number of longstanding boils, as it were, so yes, it's probably a good thing.

[maple-clef.livejournal.com]

No, it's not just you - I agree. I suppose if anything, this whole thing highlights how much easier it is to be swept up in things online than in real life (which is by nature more solid and so we expect Solid Facts). People want to suspend disbelief, in a way. It's all a little escapist and fictional but it's real. Or something.

I think Dumbledore said it best, as you've pointed out :D

[snorkackcatcher]

Yes, whole books have been written about this online identity thing, haven't they? I remember having to read them at uni. :D I suppose you don't get the little verbal/visual cues which make you suspect something's wrong.

[cassieverte.livejournal.com]

Ok, I just read this. You know what I find most disturbing. She met with people in REAL LIFE. She's a total crazy and people shared HOTEL ROOMS with her. That so incredibly scary. That's like FBI-agent-posing-as-13-year-old-girl scary.

Although, this whole reading taught me quite a lot of fandom I was oblivious too. I had no idea how rather dramatic shipping wars were. I guess I operate in my own little pocket of fandom and never realized how terribly serious some people take it. There a lot of legal action going on in that story. I feel like the popular girl at school just published her diary. Actually, I feel a little dirty -- like I read a tabloid. I might go shower.

[snorkackcatcher]

That is indeed a scary thing -- I'd imagine people would be feeling like they were in one of those movies where a pleasant-seeming lodger moves in and then things get weird. But by the sound of it, she behaved perfectly normally at RL meetings, has a husband and kids -- a certain cognitive dissonance there?

I'd seen shipping war battles being joined (the old 'Love Threads' at CoS were scary places the few times I ventured into them, and FA and LJ had plenty too) but most of this took place before I got into the fandom (apart from reading HP news on Mugglenet from time to time). It does have a tabloid feel, though it seems far more fact-based than a lot of tabloid stories. :)

[cassieverte.livejournal.com]

CoS. Oh that brings back memories. I largely stayed out of the debate, because what difference does it really make? Even the most strictly-cannon, in charactor fanfic are still fanfic. And, really, cannon or fanfic... it's all fiction.

I don't think our fandom rigner is a genius, but I do give her credit for ballsiness and manipulation. She did get exactly what she wanted for quite sometime considering she was an amatuer.

Also, we should note that all those feathers she ruffled... well, aren't they the type of people who secretly like getting their feathers ruffled? If this is indeed all fiction, I've yet to read a compelling story that doesn't have a bad guy. So Kudos for Msscribe on keeping everyone so very fascinated. From her feather ruffling to her unofficial biography, it seems she's kept quite a few people entertained.

Still, no way in hell I'd share a hotel room with her. OMG, so creepy!

PS: what's a troll?

[snorkackcatcher]

Wikipedia entry here -- basically, someone who turns up on a net forum of some kind and posts deliberately outrageous comments for the purpose of shit-stirring. So if you were to post pro-H/G stuff on a H/Hr forum, or anti-Bush stuff on a Republican forum, you'd be trolling.

A lot of the people involved probably did like the drama, but then a lot didn't, and it appears there were some rather sick aspects of it as well (the so-called CharityWank being the most obvious).

[green-kiwigirl.livejournal.com]

It was indeed fascinating, that story. I couldn't put it down... or, err, whatever the online equivalent is.

I agree, I really didn't find her to be that smart. She was pretty good at manipulation, but how hard is it to create more than one journal or select "Anonymous"?

What was really laughable was when she pretended to be the woman from India or Palestine or somewhere in the Middle East (I can't remember where) talking about how her HP smut fanfic made her feel "liberated" from her abusive husband. Not only was this puppet's life horribly stereotypical beyond where it could be believed, the way she tried to make it look like it was this woman's second language was just... crap. Utter, utter crap. I laughed so much at that part.

[snorkackcatcher]

Someone whose English was really bad should express things a lot worse than that, really. It's not that plausible when you look back at it, but I suppose it would have been harder to decide on that at the time.

[themolesmother.livejournal.com]

Heartily agree with everything you say.

What is interesting to me is that many people commenting on the story seem to think Walter Mitty type liars like this one are purely an internet phenomenon. I've known several such types in RL (amateur theatre groups tend to attract them) and, like msscribe, they all ended up being exposed. You can only keep that sort of thing up for so long before the cracks begin to show.

MM

[snorkackcatcher]

Yes, they are a not uncommon type, aren't they? You'd think more people would have recognised the symptoms. (Although as I saw a Thurber fan comment once, poor old Walter wasn't nearly as bad as that -- just a henpecked husband with a rich fantasy life. :) )

[jesspallas.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* Dear Gods, I had no idea any of this had happened! I've been so happily in my ignorant little margin of fandom....

The thing that I find most scary about this whole business is something that continues to alarm me slightly regarding fandom as a whole; how seriously people take it. Msscribe went to massive, disturbing amounts of time and effort to make herself popular with an online community, people were accused of stalking and deep nastiness and even went to the police over it, wars and bitterness raged between completely strangers and what started it all way back before all the chaos insued?

Fictional couples in a work of fiction.

For goodness sake, it's supposed to be escapism. It's supposed to be fun. If someone disagrees with your ship, shrug. Who cares? It's just a little difference of opinion over something that doesn't really matter. Your ship's been sunk by JKR? Ah well, it was just a bit of fun. Swallow your disappointment and move on. Your ship's been launched by JKR? Cheer and be happy but don't run around rubbing other ships noses in it because what's the point of being vindictive?

This is the great trouble with the internet. It's like road rage. You can't see the people's faces, you can't see the laughter or the harm and its too easy to take things that happen too seriously or too personally or too easy for some to make things too serious and too personal. Things can be misinterpreted so easily or people can get carried away and forget that real people with real feelings lie on the other end of those keyboards. I know I often get drawn into things rather more than I should because it's so damned easy but I like to think that at the end of the day, if things got as absurd and battlegroundish as they did in the Msscribe business, I'd be able to step back before things got so out of hand and personal and say that when all's said and done, most of us around here are mature adults. And this started with just a book.

I'll stop lecturing on your journal now, SnorkackCatcher. Sorry!

[snorkackcatcher]

Hey, feel free. I think the shipping was just the original casus belli, and like real wars, it got badly out of hand after that ... Everybody was getting overemotional and just wanting to say I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG NYAH NYAH. Like you say, it probably is a lot easier online to focus on the argument being made and forget about the person making it (which can be either a good or a bad thhin depending on circumstances, I suppose).

[tree_and_leaf]

Agreed. She couldn't even remember what she'd said about the identity of one of her socks, which is a fairly basic point to keep a grasp of...

[snorkackcatcher]

A lesson to all of us. When creating a sockpuppet, always draw up a character chart first. :D

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Or refrain from specifying any details that you won't be able to remember later. (This is why I refuse ever to say whether my!Remus was bitten on the right or the left ankle.) Honestly, if she'd just had the sense to leave her sockpuppets' birthdays blank, she could have wiped out a fair bit of the evidence right off the bat.

[snorkackcatcher]

Very true. Or at least have a general recollection of whether they were supposed to be high school students or soccer moms. :)

[finmagik.livejournal.com]

Well, Bad guys are always caught in the end. Mostly...insane the way someone will do anything for attention. I just write fics and start Wodehouse RPGs.

[snorkackcatcher]

I guess if she'd stopped at creating 'fangirls' to promote herself, it would merely have been quite amusing. It's the rest of it that gets creepy.