follow ups, and lots of YAY
Now that so many of you have voted in Friday's poll, I'll explain what I was thinking about when I posted it. And I must ask _lore, erinfinnegan, piperki, and conob: what makes me look like a sockpuppet?
Some of you may not know that msscribe, of the accompanying wank, has been a personal friend of mine. During that whole bad penny saga, some folks got hold of her real name and googled her to try to verify various things about her offline life. When they found nothing, they concluded that it must not be her real name, or she must be lying, because of course everyone is googleable.
I freaked out over this to an extent that I can still feel now. That sentiment completely terrifies me. I can't verify anything about myself online. I used to work in advertising, but while agencies have websites, they don't put their workers online; rather, they put the work, or a client roster, or the like. My college doesn't put their alumni online, either. And you know, I'm rather old, so when I was in high school and college things didn't get put online. I'm sure my small-town high school has a website now, but I doubt they'd ever bother to put up lists of alumni. Anyway, I wasn't sure how widespread that idea was, so I thought I'd test it with a poll.
As for the sockpuppet thing: A sockpuppet, according to wiki, "is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community." Msscribe was accused of creating several of them, and admitted to some of it. During the bad penny posting, I was accused of being one of her sockpuppets, which surprised me because I don't think my LJ looks like a sockpuppet LJ. But that wasn't the first time--I'd been accused of being Cassie's sockpuppet off and on during my active period in the HP fandom, even though I didn't often mention her in my entries. I find it a distressing sort of accusation, because it implies that one hasn't done enough to make one look like an actual person independently posting.
Apparently we all think that visibility of the target is a key to why someone ends up in a hate meme or similar slam book sort of thing. I'm not saying it's jealousy; rather, because those things are social, there's more social currency to be gained in slamming someone that everyone knows. Yammering about your hate of someone no one knows won't get you anyplace. I think it's that, rather than that I'm so well behaved, that has kept me out of fandom wank and hate memes and the like. There's nothing to be gained from hating me. Which, of course, leads to a good deal of guilt on my part. I know those sort of things cause a lot of grief to people I know, and I feel a little squirmy that the reason it doesn't happen to me is entirely down to my being too unimportant to hate on, rather than that I'm particularly nice.
The RPS thing was rather specific, so I'll lay it out here: About eighteen months ago, a few people who were posting slash about Blake Lewis and Chris Richardson on idolslash were trolled by readers of an idol website called Vote for the Worst. One of them changed their LJ user name, and all of them locked their fics down, as well as the Blake/Chris community. I had a Ryan Seacrest/Simon Cowell story posted at the same time, and I wasn't bothered at all. I've always felt sort of guilty about that, that I can post my fics unlocked in my journal, but when jm_cats did so a few weeks back he was warned about it. Various people have had various theories about why I've never been bothered in four seasons of posting unlocked fic, but I think it's much closer to the hate meme thing than anything else. In other words, no one particularly cares about Ryan and Simon, so haters from VftW wouldn't bother with a story about them. I was wondering what you all thought, but I know that many of you aren't particularly familiar with RPS.
In nicer news, I'm very excited to say that my new computer will arrive early this week! I will be able to once again do many things, like post itunes memes and make icons and watch videos and comment on the fics I'm currently reading on my iphone, and chat with you all in the evenings! In the meantime, I will post a meme from dreamerren and jm_cats that I actually can do without my itunes! jm_cats said "The beauty of music is that we don't all have the same interests" which is a wise, wise thing. And like that wise man, I have a thing for album cuts.
1. Post the names of 10 of your favorite musicians.
2. See who can guess which is your favorite song by each.
3. Once someone guesses right, bold that row and include the song.
1. Neil Finn (includes Crowded House)
2. Fiona Apple
3. Tori Amos
4. Snow Patrol
5. Kenna
6. Sam Phillips
7. Aimee Mann
8. Suzanne Vega
9. Prince
10. Heart
Happy Sunday!
Some of you may not know that msscribe, of the accompanying wank, has been a personal friend of mine. During that whole bad penny saga, some folks got hold of her real name and googled her to try to verify various things about her offline life. When they found nothing, they concluded that it must not be her real name, or she must be lying, because of course everyone is googleable.
I freaked out over this to an extent that I can still feel now. That sentiment completely terrifies me. I can't verify anything about myself online. I used to work in advertising, but while agencies have websites, they don't put their workers online; rather, they put the work, or a client roster, or the like. My college doesn't put their alumni online, either. And you know, I'm rather old, so when I was in high school and college things didn't get put online. I'm sure my small-town high school has a website now, but I doubt they'd ever bother to put up lists of alumni. Anyway, I wasn't sure how widespread that idea was, so I thought I'd test it with a poll.
As for the sockpuppet thing: A sockpuppet, according to wiki, "is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community." Msscribe was accused of creating several of them, and admitted to some of it. During the bad penny posting, I was accused of being one of her sockpuppets, which surprised me because I don't think my LJ looks like a sockpuppet LJ. But that wasn't the first time--I'd been accused of being Cassie's sockpuppet off and on during my active period in the HP fandom, even though I didn't often mention her in my entries. I find it a distressing sort of accusation, because it implies that one hasn't done enough to make one look like an actual person independently posting.
Apparently we all think that visibility of the target is a key to why someone ends up in a hate meme or similar slam book sort of thing. I'm not saying it's jealousy; rather, because those things are social, there's more social currency to be gained in slamming someone that everyone knows. Yammering about your hate of someone no one knows won't get you anyplace. I think it's that, rather than that I'm so well behaved, that has kept me out of fandom wank and hate memes and the like. There's nothing to be gained from hating me. Which, of course, leads to a good deal of guilt on my part. I know those sort of things cause a lot of grief to people I know, and I feel a little squirmy that the reason it doesn't happen to me is entirely down to my being too unimportant to hate on, rather than that I'm particularly nice.
The RPS thing was rather specific, so I'll lay it out here: About eighteen months ago, a few people who were posting slash about Blake Lewis and Chris Richardson on idolslash were trolled by readers of an idol website called Vote for the Worst. One of them changed their LJ user name, and all of them locked their fics down, as well as the Blake/Chris community. I had a Ryan Seacrest/Simon Cowell story posted at the same time, and I wasn't bothered at all. I've always felt sort of guilty about that, that I can post my fics unlocked in my journal, but when jm_cats did so a few weeks back he was warned about it. Various people have had various theories about why I've never been bothered in four seasons of posting unlocked fic, but I think it's much closer to the hate meme thing than anything else. In other words, no one particularly cares about Ryan and Simon, so haters from VftW wouldn't bother with a story about them. I was wondering what you all thought, but I know that many of you aren't particularly familiar with RPS.
In nicer news, I'm very excited to say that my new computer will arrive early this week! I will be able to once again do many things, like post itunes memes and make icons and watch videos and comment on the fics I'm currently reading on my iphone, and chat with you all in the evenings! In the meantime, I will post a meme from dreamerren and jm_cats that I actually can do without my itunes! jm_cats said "The beauty of music is that we don't all have the same interests" which is a wise, wise thing. And like that wise man, I have a thing for album cuts.
1. Post the names of 10 of your favorite musicians.
2. See who can guess which is your favorite song by each.
3. Once someone guesses right, bold that row and include the song.
1. Neil Finn (includes Crowded House)
2. Fiona Apple
3. Tori Amos
4. Snow Patrol
5. Kenna
6. Sam Phillips
7. Aimee Mann
8. Suzanne Vega
9. Prince
10. Heart
Happy Sunday!