Tuesday Top Five: Fooled
Apr. 1st, 2025 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nevannaI don’t like April Fool’s Day, but I do like stories about scams and hoaxes. Here are five of my… well, “favorite” is a loaded word when talking about some of this subject matter. People were definitely or very likely hurt in all of these cases. People died in connection with some of them. I am not trying to make light of those tragedies when I say that I am fascinated by these accounts… but then again, maybe that’s how all the True Crime Girlies excuse their obsessions.
Anyway. Here are five scams or hoaxes that I find myself thinking and talking about a lot.
1. Beatrice Sparks’s Teen Diary Empire
I already alluded, in a previous entry, to the intersection of books like Go Ask Alice and Jay’s Journal with the War on Drugs and the Satanic Panic. I would still recommend Rick Emerson’s Unmask Alice to anyone who’s interested in those topics, or remembers picking up the supposed “diaries” of “real anonymous teenagers” from their local bookstore or school library.
2. MsScribe’s Fandom Social Climbing
MsScribe was a fanfic writer and LiveJournal blogger in the Harry Potter fandom of the early 2000s, who employed sockpuppets, weaponized existing ship wars, and almost certainly embellished the truth about her personal life, to gain sympathy and favor from the “Inner Circle” of popular fangirls. Part of why her actions remain a compelling and enduring part of fandom history was the deftness with which she understood and manipulated the expectations, grudges, rivalries, and allegiances of her community. In addition to the Fanlore article and the archived version of Charlotte Lennox’s “Unauthorized Fandom Biography,” you can watch Strange Aeons’ video on the topic if the audiovisual format is your preferred one.
3. Thanfiction’s Hobbit and Wizard Cults… And Beyond
I think that there are two reasons why I closely followed the fandom exploits of Andy “Thanfiction” Blake (as recounted primarily by his former partner, Abbey, and by The Tea Blogger, who has spent years building a massive timeline of Blake’s online activity), and they’re only tangentially related to his phony celebrity connections or attempts to scam people out of their money (and it’s been speculated that financial benefit was never even his primary objective anyway). The first reason is that I understand, on a very personal level, how the narrative that he offered his closest followers – including his supposed ability to “channel” characters from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, as well as his own OCs – might have been appealing. I’ve talked about fictional characters and worlds in some of the same ways that he did, and so have a few of my friends, but none of us have ever started a cult about it.
Secondly, Blake’s years on Tumblr, in which he often posted about Supernatural and current events (and appeared to over-identify with fictional characters but didn’t necessarily “channel” any), offer another example of how a bad actor can manipulate the norms of a subculture – in his case, the trappings of social justice and the revisionist version of his own mental illness and trauma history – to gain attention and power over others. The use of Tumblr (and other online platforms) for activism or for bonding over shared experiences is not an inherently bad thing, but I’ve long been skeptical of the social expectations that can develop in those environments and their vulnerability to exploitation.
4. TIED: Amanda Riley’s and Belle Gibson’s Fake Cancer Diagnoses
As far as I know, these two cases are unconnected, but they’re similarly horrifying when one considers how brazenly each woman took advantage of a religious community (in Riley’s case) and the already problematic world of complementary medicine and “wellness” trends (in Gibson’s), benefiting both financially and emotionally from their lies, at least for a time. Riley’s crimes are covered in a podcast called Scamanda; my primary understanding of Gibson’s story comes from a recent Netflix dramatization, Apple Cider Vinegar, but it’s based on a nonfiction book that I’ve requested from the library and am looking forward to reading.
5. Lani Sarem’s Attempted Bestseller List Coup
Handbook for Mortals – an awkwardly written “urban fantasy, paranormal romance” complete with a love triangle – appeared at the top of the Young Adult New York Times bestseller list in August 2017 despite nobody in the YA writing and publishing community ever having heard of it or its author before. It remained there for less than a day while booksellers and journalists pieced together writer Lani Sarem’s plan to buy her way into fame (and hopefully the production of a movie franchise). Although this scheme didn’t arise in transformative fandom, it’s come up in fandom history conversations because of a brief rumor that Sarem was secretly the author of infamous badfic My Immortal. There’s no evidence that this was the case, and part of me hopes that that particular mystery is never solved.
Are there any scams or hoaxes – within or outside of fandom – that have captured your attention?
Anyway. Here are five scams or hoaxes that I find myself thinking and talking about a lot.
1. Beatrice Sparks’s Teen Diary Empire
I already alluded, in a previous entry, to the intersection of books like Go Ask Alice and Jay’s Journal with the War on Drugs and the Satanic Panic. I would still recommend Rick Emerson’s Unmask Alice to anyone who’s interested in those topics, or remembers picking up the supposed “diaries” of “real anonymous teenagers” from their local bookstore or school library.
2. MsScribe’s Fandom Social Climbing
MsScribe was a fanfic writer and LiveJournal blogger in the Harry Potter fandom of the early 2000s, who employed sockpuppets, weaponized existing ship wars, and almost certainly embellished the truth about her personal life, to gain sympathy and favor from the “Inner Circle” of popular fangirls. Part of why her actions remain a compelling and enduring part of fandom history was the deftness with which she understood and manipulated the expectations, grudges, rivalries, and allegiances of her community. In addition to the Fanlore article and the archived version of Charlotte Lennox’s “Unauthorized Fandom Biography,” you can watch Strange Aeons’ video on the topic if the audiovisual format is your preferred one.
3. Thanfiction’s Hobbit and Wizard Cults… And Beyond
I think that there are two reasons why I closely followed the fandom exploits of Andy “Thanfiction” Blake (as recounted primarily by his former partner, Abbey, and by The Tea Blogger, who has spent years building a massive timeline of Blake’s online activity), and they’re only tangentially related to his phony celebrity connections or attempts to scam people out of their money (and it’s been speculated that financial benefit was never even his primary objective anyway). The first reason is that I understand, on a very personal level, how the narrative that he offered his closest followers – including his supposed ability to “channel” characters from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, as well as his own OCs – might have been appealing. I’ve talked about fictional characters and worlds in some of the same ways that he did, and so have a few of my friends, but none of us have ever started a cult about it.
Secondly, Blake’s years on Tumblr, in which he often posted about Supernatural and current events (and appeared to over-identify with fictional characters but didn’t necessarily “channel” any), offer another example of how a bad actor can manipulate the norms of a subculture – in his case, the trappings of social justice and the revisionist version of his own mental illness and trauma history – to gain attention and power over others. The use of Tumblr (and other online platforms) for activism or for bonding over shared experiences is not an inherently bad thing, but I’ve long been skeptical of the social expectations that can develop in those environments and their vulnerability to exploitation.
4. TIED: Amanda Riley’s and Belle Gibson’s Fake Cancer Diagnoses
As far as I know, these two cases are unconnected, but they’re similarly horrifying when one considers how brazenly each woman took advantage of a religious community (in Riley’s case) and the already problematic world of complementary medicine and “wellness” trends (in Gibson’s), benefiting both financially and emotionally from their lies, at least for a time. Riley’s crimes are covered in a podcast called Scamanda; my primary understanding of Gibson’s story comes from a recent Netflix dramatization, Apple Cider Vinegar, but it’s based on a nonfiction book that I’ve requested from the library and am looking forward to reading.
5. Lani Sarem’s Attempted Bestseller List Coup
Handbook for Mortals – an awkwardly written “urban fantasy, paranormal romance” complete with a love triangle – appeared at the top of the Young Adult New York Times bestseller list in August 2017 despite nobody in the YA writing and publishing community ever having heard of it or its author before. It remained there for less than a day while booksellers and journalists pieced together writer Lani Sarem’s plan to buy her way into fame (and hopefully the production of a movie franchise). Although this scheme didn’t arise in transformative fandom, it’s come up in fandom history conversations because of a brief rumor that Sarem was secretly the author of infamous badfic My Immortal. There’s no evidence that this was the case, and part of me hopes that that particular mystery is never solved.
Are there any scams or hoaxes – within or outside of fandom – that have captured your attention?
no subject
Date: 2025-04-02 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-05 11:20 am (UTC)I'm familiar with all but #4
I think that familiarity with those stories requires one's media interests to intersect in some very specific ways - and before the miniseries, I don't think that Belle Gibson was super well known outside of Australia anyway.
I definitely had you and some of my other plural/soulbonding friends in mind when I was writing the section about Andy Blake. And I haven't communicated directly with Abbey, but I admire her a lot; she really does seem like a strong and gracious person, and I'm glad that your interactions with her have been positive.