Episode 167: Our Secret Identities
In episode 167, “Our Secret Identities,” Elizabeth and Flourish use a listener voicemail on pseudonyms as a springboard to talk about the many facets of fannish personas online. Topics discussed include the way pseudonymous norms vary in different fandom spaces, the effects of platform features like Tumblr’s sideblogs or AO3’s orphaned works, catfishing and other forms of digital abuse, and what “the right to be forgotten” means in a fandom context.
Show notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:37]
[00:01:30] Flourish committed this grave error in episode 165, “Fests.” If you’d like to see the very nice comment their Yuletide recipient left, it’s here.
[00:10:16] (If you didn’t know, Elizabeth has been a pari-mutuel clerk—taking bets at racetracks—lo these past 18 years.)
[00:10:34] WNYC’s Brian Lehrer—truly the greatest man in media—did not actually have a “Steve from Montclair” call in that day, but he did have, amongst others, Seth from Jersey City, who delightfully said, “I don’t want to be known as the guy who just calls in about sports betting. Next time I call in on a more wholesome subject, please take my call.”
[00:12:10] The Gawker comments section was historically a mix of anonymity and pseudonymity—here’s an academic paper analyzing the resulting community dynamics.
[00:14:12] Nom de plume check:
Nora Roberts: shortened from her birth name, Eleanor Marie Robertson
Tom Clancy: not just his real name, but also his dad’s name
Dan Brown: as we suspected, also his real name
James Patterson: once again, his real name, which is a small sample size but suggests something about who has to assume a pen name and who doesn’t!
[00:18:54] Elizabeth was SO CLOSE.
[00:22:48] We first talked about DNIs in episode 148, “Do Not Interact.”
[00:24:20] If you would like more details about the Msscribe saga…godspeed.
[00:28:54] “The right to be forgotten” was originally part of a court decision in 2014, and is now part of the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation.
[00:30:30] The Radiolab episode is from 2019, and it is, in fact, called “Right to be Forgotten”—highly recommended! (They also have a full transcript.)
[00:33:44] More info on the AO3’s orphaning feature (and what “orphaning a work” means in broader copyright law).
[00:35:45] When Elizabeth went to get the URL for the orphaned “i guess i should say thanks or some shit,” one of her favorite X-Men fics of all time (SO GOOD!!!) Google ironically led her to a tumblr post featuring the author’s name. The AO3 lets you forget, but TUMBLR IS SADLY FOREVER.
[00:36:20] Once again, Fanlore has a good overview of the Thanfiction/Victoria Bitter…situation.
[00:45:45] That Hamilton fic (sorry). And that recent My Immortal thing (sorry!!).
[01:00:48]
But: THRILLING NEWS! Our intrepid transcriber, Maria, has let us know that the brontosaurus is BACK IN.
[01:08:11] The outro music this week is “Don’t trust the cloud” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining! [ELM laughs] The podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: [laughing] You were just like, the Peanuts in the Christmas special. You looked at the sky as you like, split open your mouth to be like, “Wah-wah-wah!” [FK laughs] Anyway. This is Episode #167, “Our Secret Identities.”
FK: Meaning, among other things, pseudonyms.
ELM: Mostly pseudonyms. We got a wonderful voicemail a little while back about pseuds. It was very thought-provoking, and there’s a lot to discuss. So I’m excited to dig into that.
FK: I’m excited too. But before we do that, [laughing] I have an ombudsperson note to make.
ELM: Ombud—I don’t think you get to just like, nominate yourself to that role.
FK: [laughs] Uh, maybe—Well, maybe—I don’t know, maybe there’s like, the ghost of an ombudsperson who’s like, haunting me, because I—[takes deep breath] I have an apology to make to somebody.
ELM: I’m just stuck on ombudsperson. [laughing] Is this the term we’re using?
FK: All right, so—[laughs] I don’t know. So, OK, like, two episodes ago, we were talking about fests, and I talked about how I had written for Yuletide, and I’d written this long 30,000-word story, and the person had like, not even responded to it. Just like, with a tiny comment—
ELM: No, yeah.
FK: —that was like, very dismissive.
ELM: You said that they had written like, “yeah, thanks,” or something like that. Or like, “this is nice,” or whatever.
FK: Yeah, and—I. [laughs] Elizabeth, of course, in doing the show notes for this, looked back at the thing and was like, “Flourish, that person responded, apologized to you for, like, being 24 hours late, and wrote like, paragraphs and paragraphs.” [laughs]
ELM: You’re like, misrepresenting my tone. I wrote it in all capital letters on Slack. [FK laughs] It was like, “FLOURISH. FLOURISH, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? FLOURISH. LOOK AT THIS. ARE YOU SERIOUS?”
FK: [laughing] And the thing I realized is, I had very confidently—very confidently—like, conflated two different Yuletide years, and I just confidently—anyway, my point is, [ELM laughs] I’m so sorry to the person who [laughs] not only did they like, receive gracefully my Yuletide fic, but they wrote something lovely. I’m really sorry to you. Um, it was another person who did me wrong. It was not you, and—
ELM: Did you even go fact-check this to see who—that someone did in fact leave you the like—
FK: Yes, I did. I did fact-check that. [laughs]
ELM: [laughing] Oh, OK. I was like, did you just like, make this person up?
FK: Trust me, I would not be saying something—[ELM laughs] but by the way, I don’t want to bring anything more into this. I don’t want—we’re not putting in the show notes the person who did me wrong, because that’s an asshole move. I’m not saying what fic it’s for. Someone can find it if they want to, but I’m done with this. I’m so sorry to the person. I will never like, complain about this again. This is the end.
ELM: OK, I love that you said that would be an asshole move, but you in fact did very explicitly say what fic this was. You learned a lesson, is what you’re saying.
FK: I know! I was a jerk. [ELM laughs] I learned—that is what I’m saying! I’m saying I learned a lesson, and the lesson was [laughing] I’m a jerk.
ELM: No, no, no.
FK: So anyway, yes, I am—
ELM: Just stridently wrong.
FK: [laughs] I mean, maybe both.
ELM: Yeah, no, look—
FK: Could be both.
ELM: 2022. It’s a great time to be stridently wrong. When I say great, I mean just a popular time.
FK: [laughs] Anyway, OK. I have now made my apology, and I’m ready to talk about pseudonyms, aka, the thing I might have to take on to erase the shame of…[both laugh]
ELM: You’re right. The Witness Protection Program, that is like, you get a pseud, right?
FK: That is the solution to a minor—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —to a minor, if annoying, asshole moment. [laughs]
ELM: Look, you entered fandom with an interest in the FBI. I think this is your big chance to come full circle.
FK: Great. All right, let’s talk about pseuds, Elizabeth.
ELM: Well, let’s listen to the voicemail!
FK: OK, that’s—that’s the right place to start talking about pseuds.
ELM: [laughing] OK, let’s play it.
Anonymous: Hi Fansplaining! Really excited to be able to call in, and I love your podcast.
I’ve got a topic I’ve been thinking about lately, and I thought AO3CommentoftheDay opened the floor to thoughts on a similar question about the same topic the other day, so I guess something’s in the air, maybe? Pseudonyms! Or specifically when fans change pseudonyms or have many pseudonyms for different purposes, and the way fandom writ large responds to that.
It seems like the default in fandom is to disambiguate, or link pseudonyms together, either linking them through time by saying, “Hey, here’s my old username, and my username now,” or linking them together across platforms and sites when they differ, to say, “Yeah, this is all me.” I’d love your thoughts on instances when that tendency is resisted, or about the ethical framework fandom could work from when it comes to privacy and boundaries between pseudonyms used, when a given fan wants those boundaries to exist.
Like, for example, I’ve seen an expectation that for fandom events or zines, the moderators and editors should reveal themselves, and sometimes there’s distrust or nervousness when the moderators choose not to identify themselves. Or on Tumblr, there’s this culture of, “Yeah, this is my main, I follow from X, but this is my sideblog for this fandom, and now you know who I am on all my blogs.” And sometimes it’s like there’s a scramble to uncover what an anonymous sideblog’s main is, and I can’t help but feel like there are times when anonymity has been weaponized, like with sockpuppets or to cause harm, but that doesn’t mean that anonymity is something inherently harmful or suspect.
Or I’ve seen times where someone wants to quietly change pseuds, without fanfare, only to have someone else within fandom disambiguate them later on. And that could be due to excitement, like, “Oh my gosh, I love your stuff, I’m so glad I found you again, and it’d be cool for others to know this cool stuff you made years ago.” Or it could be, like, less wholesome reasons, like, “This person created something five years ago that I’m now bringing up as an example of me thinking they were or are a horrible person.” And so there’s an element, too, for me, of the right to be forgotten, when someone wants to move on from an earlier part of their fannish life, or from a particular fandom, and I don’t think fandom really allows for that.
More broadly speaking, though, I feel like there’s pressure or encouragement in fandom to “get known,” and develop a reputation and public image by having linked or consistent pseudonyms. But I think that doing so can come at the expense of privacy, or increase the risk of being targeted, like, by bullies. And I can think of plenty of non-pernicious, non-malicious reasons why someone may hold or maintain accounts under different pseuds, like having some for social purposes, and some kept secret to allow anonymity, or greater freedom of engagement, or freedom from anxiety or hyper-vigilance.
It feels like I’ve seen the word “sockpuppet” used when someone might more accurately mean “alternate account,” and that there’s a tendency to forcibly disambiguate pseuds, even if the person who controls the account may not want them linked, or may have put distance between themselves, such as through like orphaning works or trying to move on.
So, very interested in any thoughts you have on these kinds of issues, like from your perspective, have linked pseudonyms always been a thing? Or is a trend towards disambiguation influenced by the internet in general, like with the decline of closed fandom communities, or the rise of social media sites, like Tumblr or Twitter, where linking everything is kind of assumed the default thing that everyone wants to do all the time.
Thanks for your thoughts! Love, from an anonymous listener. Bye.
ELM: OK, this was such a good voicemail. Thank you so much, Anonymous, for sending this in.
FK: It is meaty. Wait, no! You don’t like me to say that! Shoot. It is—egg—eggplant? It’s tofu-y! [laughs]
ELM: Egg…eggplant—I’m allergic to eggplant. Why would you pick that?
FK: [laughing] Specifically to annoy you!
ELM: Eggplant is just like—it’s squishy. Like, it’s not even like…
FK: No, eggplant is gross.
ELM: It’s Halloumi-y.
FK: [laughing] There we go. It’s Halloumi-y.
ELM: Just rolls right off the tongue.
FK: Anyway! [both laugh] That’s—like, as though eggplant-y did. [ELM laughs] Um, anyway.
ELM: It’s substantive! So. Where should we start?
FK: Let’s start by talking about pseudonyms, because I feel like this is like—
ELM: [laughing] Yes.
FK: —an arena that all internet users can like—right? Like, sometimes we talk about stuff and it’s like, “This is a fanfic thing, and here’s the thing.” Or, “This is from this particular fandom,” or whatever. But in this case, like, internet users collectively, we know about pseudonyms. Everybody has some feeling about pseudonyms, unless they haven’t thought about it before, in which case, they’ll think about it for like, 30 seconds, and develop a feeling or an opinion about it.
ELM: Yeah, when you start to think about the full broad spectrum of the internet, like, I mean, I think there are a lot of places where people would never think of it as a pseudonym, even if that’s like—you know, if you’re on a gaming site, or a…
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Somewhere where you’re asked to create a username.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And your username is not your name, John Smith or something, but it’s like, JDawg724, or whatever. I don’t know, like. You know—[both laughing]
FK: JDawg724!
ELM: I don’t know this guy in my head. He just came up, he’s like—OK, can I just say, sidenote, ah, they just legalized sports gambling. It just went into effect in New York State. And, yeah, I mean, we’re all aware—
FK: Oh, trust me, I know, because everybody at my barbershop this morning [ELM laughs] was like—dude, you cannot imagine the level of discussion of sports gambling happening, because they were all illegally gambling before.
ELM: I’m sorry, Flourish, are you speaking to a person who’s worked at a racetrack for, uh, [FK laughs] lo these past 18 years? Yes, I can imagine—
FK: Oh my God, it was so much. And they were like, trying to figure out how the interface of like, the Caesars Sportsbook thing worked—it was so much.
ELM: [sighs] Goodness. OK—
FK: Anyway. Back on this topic.
ELM: The reason I brought this up is because my beloved, the greatest man in all of media, Brian Lehrer, who is a WYNC stalwart who does the call-in show everyday, and he did a call-in segment a couple days ago about sports gambling. And he was like, “If you’re a sports bettor, but particularly in New Jersey, where it’s been legal for a long time, do you want to call in and give tips to people in New York?” And it was the funniest—so first of all, he was like—[FK laughs] I’ve never heard him say this before but like, a couple minutes passed and he was like, “We have no calls.” And I—that never happens. Like, people are always eager to give their opinions [FK laughs] on literally anything on this show.
FK: Uh-huh.
ELM: And then, the calls start coming in, and every single person was exactly who you’d think it would be. It was like, some guy named Steve from like, Montclair, New Jersey, and he’d be like—[FK laughs] and the first guy was like, “I didn’t want to be the first jerk to call in and talk about sports gambling, [laughing] but I do have some tips.” And I was like, “I love that these guys were shy, and they didn’t want to be like—
FK: Aw!
ELM: —they didn’t want to rush and be the first guy on the air, but then they were all so cute. They all gave really earnest tips.
FK: Can I just say, my barber would have been the first guy on the air if he listened to this. [ELM laughs] He would have been the first guy on the air. [laughs]
ELM: No, they were—it was very sweet. They were all trying to help each other. So, it was a nice little segment. Ah, hope everyone—
FK: That’s good.
ELM: —is doing OK with their sports betting. Anyway. So, folks have to make usernames for that kind of thing, or like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —posting on, you know, all sorts of forums that have nothing to do with fanfiction, right? And people on—
FK: And people posting on Reddit! Right? Like—
ELM: On Reddit, right. Reddit, which is huge, right?
FK: Redditors have pseuds. But also like, creating a username for your like, Xbox persona. [laughs] You know what I mean?
ELM: Sure, or—
FK: Like, I’ve got a PS4 username. Or, PS5.
ELM: I’m sure we could like—yeah. We could list pseudonymous spaces where people really like, not just create a name just to post one thing, but like, you know, create a persona. Like, I immediately thought of Gawker comments, right? Or, you know, the comments that are on sites like that, right?
FK: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
ELM: Where people come to expect that like, specific commenters with specific pseudonyms—
FK: The New York Times cooking website, you know?
ELM: Yeah, right, right. So this is all really familiar, and actually the things we’re describing actually are small bits of content creation, right? In a way that—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —maybe even a little more than some of your average social media users, right? Like, these are people who are posting things, in some cases. So, those are all pseudonyms. And I feel like…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s funny to me a little bit, when I talk to friends who aren’t in fandom about how I have a pseud, and you know, I have this like—persona is overstating it, but I do have this secret identity, right? Where it’s like, I have an AO3 and a Tumblr, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And I post under that name, and that’s something that feels foreign to them, when in fact they’ve probably created username personas in their lives. So, maybe I’ll bring that up next time, [laughing] now that we’ve actually articulated it.
FK: Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a good idea. But it’s also what having a pseud means can be very different, right? It ranges from people who are pretty much just using it to, for instance, post fanfic or a fanvid, or something like that. “Here’s something I made, I have a pseudonym, I’m posting under this, and like, you aren’t gonna know anything about my life.” Right? Like, “Here I am. Maybe I’ll have a conversation with you in the comments, but it’s gonna be about the writing or the fanvid or whatever it is.” Right?
ELM: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
FK: It’s not gonna be something where it’s like—and then there’s people for whom their pseudonym is an entire like, life, right? There’s a lot—I mean, actually this is something that’s the case for a lot of writers who use pseudonyms, like romance novelists, or whatever. Where they actually talk about their life.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, they’ll have a blog and they’ll talk about their lives, and it’s a thing. Like, this is not unique to fandom.
ELM: Well, for professional writers, we rarely use the term pseudonym. We often say “pen name.”
FK: Right, but it’s still a pseudonym.
ELM: Or [laughing] nom de plume.
FK: Nom de plume! But like, it’s still a pseudonym, right? You know?
ELM: Yeah, absolutely. Right, right. Yeah, like, is Nora Roberts her real name?
FK: It is not—and! And, furthermore, she has a pseudonym for the pseudonym! Because she writes as J. D. Robb and also Jill March.
ELM: Mmm, J. D. Robb. Flourish, I didn’t know you knew so much about Nora Roberts.
FK: I mean, I don’t know! I have been in plenty of vacation spots and read many a Nora Roberts novel. [laughs]
ELM: Is Tom Clancy his real name?
FK: That I don’t know.
ELM: All those names sound fake to me, but they’re just very generic, also, so I could like—Dan Brown, I think that’s his real name.
FK: It could be!
ELM: Yeah, like these aren’t spectacularly weird names, like.
FK: No.
ELM: You know? James Patterson? I know some Jameses.
FK: I know some Pattersons.
ELM: [laughs] Do you?
FK: Together they make one James Patterson. [both laugh]
ELM: OK. Anyway, um, right. So, there’s definitely people in fandom who just use their pseuds to kind of post stuff, right? Like, it would be very weird to post on the AO3, for example, under your real name. People would be like, “Why are you doing this?” Right? Like…
FK: Yeah. Yeah, kind of—
ELM: … “Are you a cop?” [both laugh]
FK: Yeah! It would be kind of like, “Are you a cop?”
ELM: [laughing] Yeah, right? So, there is that. But yeah, I’ve obviously encountered so many people over the years. Some people I follow, they have their whole lives. They’ll post like, you know, maybe somewhat edited photos of things in their lives, right, or their cats, or whatever.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And all I know about them is maybe a general location, and what their cats look like, and their pseud. Right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And like, what fandoms they’ve been in. And so that’s interesting to me, because there’s always been a huge range of like, how much people are willing to attach to their pseudonym—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Right? Whether it’s just the creative works they make, or even less than that, whether it’s just, you know, the likes that they—the kudos they give on a fic or whatever, right?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah, the lurker-y likes.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I had a pseud—um, I have two AO3 accounts, and the one that I had from whatever year, 2010 or 2011 or whatever, up until I made the pseud that I’ve been posting with, you know. It’s got some Sherlock bookmarks, it’s got a whole bunch of kudos, you know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And like, that’s it.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I didn’t do anything else with it.
FK: Yeah, but I think one thing that’s interesting here, right, is like—so, when we hear about pseudonyms sort of in the general like, whenever somebody talks about pseudonyms in the mainstream media, it’s always like, it’s rarely about pseudonyms. It’s usually about anonymity, and like, “Anonymity should be banned!” Right? Like, “Anonymity is bad!” Like, “Make everything like Facebook, because Facebook doesn’t ever have pseudonyms or anonymity, but anyway!” However, that’s not really like, what most of this voicemail was about. Like, a lot of this voicemail was about people having a pseudonym, and then having other pseudonyms.
ELM: Right.
FK: Like Nora Roberts! [both laugh] You know? And how much are people required to connect their pseudonyms to each other, right? So the question is less like, “Should you be required to connect your pseudonym to your real life identity?” And more like, “Should you be allowed to have multiple pseudonyms unconnected to each other?”
ELM: Well, I understand why you’re framing those as different things, but I also think that they’re connected. Right? Because like—
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: You know, the idea of having a whole bunch of your different—very different fannish interests linkable—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —is kind of creating a more rich picture of who you are than…you know, and the same way that like, being more open about your personal life under a pseud, posting your cats, posting your cross-stitch, posting, you know, your walk along the river you live near or whatever, right? That’s painting a fuller picture of all the things that you’re interested in, and—
FK: And it’s making yourself more identifiable.
ELM: I mean, there’s certainly that.
FK: Like, I’ve—this has crossed my mind multiple times that like, I have—I mean, so I have a fannish pseud that I pretty much just post fic under, and then I have another pseud that I use sometimes on like Reddit or MetaFilter or whatever. And every once and a while it has occurred to me like, “Yeah, if somebody really wanted to find this, like, it would probably be pretty hard for them to stumble across it, but once they had it would be obvious it was me.” Because, you know, there’s like, a bunch of interests and things that are shared, and so, because I’ve talked about different things.
ELM: You’re saying—oh, connecting your Reddit ID with your AO3?
FK: Yeah, like—with me as a person. Right? Just because, like—
ELM: Or just link either of them to you. Yeah, I mean, you’re—
FK: If you have an unusual collection of interests, and you’re like, “Oh, this person posts about these things,” like.
ELM: You’ve explicitly described the exact type of AU you wrote of Reylo, like, I think that people would have to do very little detective work to figure out your AO3 pseud.
FK: Oh, no no, I didn’t mean me and my AO3, I meant like my Reddit pseud.
ELM: Ah. Right.
FK: Or my MetaFilter pseud, where I’ve never—I like, don’t talk about fanfic on those places, but if someone knew me—
ELM: You’re not on r/BenSolo? Is that a subreddit?
FK: I am not on r/BenSolo.
ELM: Is that a subreddit?
FK: I don’t know. [ELM laughs] I would assume [laughs]—I don’t know. But anyway, I’ve never talked about fanfic on those places, but if you looked through my history and you were like, “Yup, they’re interested in all the same things.”
ELM: Right.
FK: “Like, that’s a weird constellation, it’s probably Flourish.” [laughs]
ELM: Right, right. But like, what do you post—like, I don’t know. Are you worried? No.
FK: No, I mean, no one would care. And I wouldn’t care, to be clear. If somebody did connect them, I’d be like, “Good job?”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: You know? [laughs]
ELM: Right.
FK: But my point being that this is part of the point, is that you might not want to connect those sideblogs because every time you do, it adds another point in that constellation. And maybe there is a real reason that you want to stay anonymous, right? Or pseudonymous, I should say.
ELM: Right, right. OK, very quickly, let’s describe sideblogs, because I think some folks maybe—even if you’re a Tumblr user, you may not use that functionality, but.
FK: Oh, good thought, good thought.
ELM: On Tumblr, you have a main blog. Like, a parent blog.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And then if you, uh—you can create sideblogs, which are like children to those parents.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And the functionality is different for a sideblog. So, you can reblog stuff, which means you’re reposting it to that account, right? But you cannot message anyone from that account, you can’t follow anyone from that account. So, if you wanted to reach out to someone, it would come via your main name, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And so, you know, there’s a lot of commentary on Tumblr and there always has been about like, what the right etiquette is. No one agrees. People will post things and they’ll be like, you know, “I followed you for you. Post your 47…you know, like, uh—what’s the word? hyperfixations [both laugh]—all on your main account. Don’t create sideblogs. Like, just be embarrassing in all your glory. Post your 1,000 things you’re interested in on this one account.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Whereas like, a lot of people I know will spin off sideblogs for every niche interest they have, not just new fandoms, but like, “This is my like, I don’t know. Jewels of goblincore sideblog.” I don’t know. I have no idea what my friends’ sideblogs are, but like. [FK laughs] Just thinking of the things you could have a sideblog for.
So, when I started my Tumblr for my—the pseud that I post fic under, I originally was gonna make just a sideblog—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —from my main account, and then I realized, well then I could never, you know, naturally communicate with anyone without affiliating it with my literal real journalism name. You know, like, my actual name.
FK: Mm-hmm. Right.
ELM: And that felt like it was gonna bring down the vibe, and also I want a bit of separation between the two, right? You know?
FK: Mm-hmm. Totally.
ELM: Um, so I have a totally different Tumblr attached to a totally different email, and I keep it open in a different browser, so.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Though, my Tumblrs do suggest things from the other one, which I find quite interesting. Is that an IP address thing, maybe?
FK: Creepy. I don’t know, but I always find it creepy when things like that happen. I’m like, [uncomfortable noise] “Stop it!”
ELM: I do follow myself on each one, so maybe that’s it.
FK: Mmm, maybe that’s it.
ELM: Like, if I follow a person on one, they’re like, “Have you considered—have you considered this person?” Anyway.
FK: But this gets us to a question, right? Because like, I mean, the voicemail asker is talking about the tendency to link these things.
ELM: Right.
FK: And I think that both of us actively resist that tendency. Not like, massively, because obviously both of us talk about our pseuds and like—to a greater, in my case, or lesser extent, people could easily connect them. But there’s like—I do agree with what the voicemail person is saying, that there’s sometimes this culture of expectation that people will have one single unitary pseud, and that it’s dangerous or shady to not.
ELM: Yeah, so, this brings me—I have a couple of different, somewhat divergent thoughts about this. Maybe we can try to hit both of them.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But the first thing that I think of is, it brings me back to our conversation about DNIs, and the kind of culture around like, exposing a lot of information about yourself online.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: And the kind of generational differences, and saying, like, “I won’t trust anyone unless they give me a whole bunch of details about themselves and everything.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Which runs counter to like, a history of fandom that I’ve known, or spaces in fandom that I’ve known, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, the idea of listing every single facet of your identity and the town where you live, and, you know.
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ELM: Your social security number, or whatever, like. [laughs] You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That feels antithetical to fandom to me, right?
FK: Mm-hmm, yeah.
ELM: And that feels claustrophobic to me, right? Because I wouldn’t—I mean, people have connected my pseud to my real name, like, I’m not embarrassed by any of the stories I’ve written. I’m not like, “Oh no! They found me!” Right? I’m like, “Oh, I’m glad you liked it.” You know what I mean?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I still feel like that would be totally stifling, if I had to really give a lot of personal details in that fannish space.
FK: Mm-hmm, yeah.
ELM: But I’m sure there’s people who will look at my account and won’t trust me, because I don’t list an age.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: I don’t list any labels of any kind, right? It literally just says almost nothing. It’s just like, “Hey, I like the X-Men.” [laughs]
FK: Yeah. [laughs] I mean, I think I have a very particular experience on this, having been at the heart of one of the most famous sockpuppet—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —horrible, like—
ELM: Do you want to summarize it in like, 30 seconds or less?
FK: Yeah, so, uh, this lady that I knew and many other people knew in Harry Potter fandom in the early 2000s had a bunch of sockpuppets and basically played all of Harry Potter fandom off of each other in like, a really, really vile way. And I was good friend—I mean I wouldn’t say I was—let me rephrase. I’m not sure “good friends” is the right word, but I was friends with this person. Like, I literally, I had— the first drink of alcohol I ever imbibed was at a room party at a con in her room. Like. [laughs]
ELM: You’re such a nerd. That was your first alcohol, Flourish?
FK: It was my first alcohol. I was like, 14!
ELM: Nerd.
FK: I was 16. I was a nerd. Anyway!
ELM: That was the first time you ever had alcohol? No one ever gave you like, a sip of something?
FK: Nope.
ELM: [gasps] Wild.
FK: Well, I mean, it’s possible, but I don’t remember it. Somebody might have given me a sip of something, but that was like, the first time I was like, “I’m at a party, and I’m gonna drink!” [laughs] You know what I mean?
ELM: All right, all right.
FK: [laughs] So anyway, point being, though, that was like, a pretty big betrayal, right? Like, I truly believed that this person—at the time, I didn’t know that she was all these sockpuppets, I just knew her—like, I had met her in person, and she was the person she said she was, right?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: Like, she had created—the persona I knew her as, Msscribe, was consistent. And then later, it turned out she had all these other sockpuppets, these pseudonyms, that she was using to sort of—
ELM: OK, had you—and were you familiar with any of those sockpuppets?
FK: Oh, yeah! Absolutely.
ELM: OK. Yeah. They were like, prominent.
FK: Absolutely.
ELM: It wasn’t like, just—
FK: They were prominent! It was not like—I mean, these were other people who I just happened to have like, never physically met in person, as far as I was concerned, right?
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah. Right, right.
FK: So anyway, point being that like, this was a perfect example of like—it doesn’t matter how many facts you know about a person, [laughs] right? Like, turns out you can physically meet a person, and they can look exactly like they said they looked, they can be exactly the person they said they were, and they can still have an army of sockpuppets! [laughs]
ELM: You know, it’s a very—it’s a bleak thought, but it would be very easy to create a fake, like—it would be very easy to create the kind of, the aesthetic of the post with the DNI, and the long list of labels and all that, right? You know, like—
FK: Oh, exactly. And, in this case, a lot of her sockpuppets were people that she then was basically vouching for. So like, she had a sockpuppet who was supposedly like, her babysitter. And like, why would I not believe it? I knew that she existed and had a child. If there’s somebody who shows up and claims to be her babysitter—
ELM: Strange.
FK: —who’s like, a teenager, you know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah.
FK: Like, I believe that person could be in fandom—
ELM: Right.
FK: —and they could know each other that way. Like, why wouldn’t I?
ELM: OK, so you—
FK: Like, there were people I knew in person, right?
ELM: You experienced a thing that people are afraid of.
FK: Exactly.
ELM: That people think is happening all the time.
FK: Exactly.
ELM: But I think that these incidents, these individuals who feel compelled to do this, there aren’t that many of them.
FK: [laughing] I don’t think so! This is the only one I’ve ever run into, personally, you know?
ELM: What I—yeah. And what I would say about this, as a total outside observer is, I see people referencing this all the time.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And it’s like, there’s no way that the number of people I’ve seen referencing this had anything to do with this. And it’s similar to the Cassie Clare stuff, too, where people are like, “I have the gossip!” It’s like, everyone has the gossip. It’s on fucking Fanlore. You know, like.
FK: Thank you. [both laugh] You can only imagine the depths of my feelings about this topic.
ELM: Right, and—
FK: And I know you can imagine them better than most! [laughs]
ELM: No, it’s just like there’s this kind of weird like—these things that are so well-known, and people act like…I don’t know. And there’s certain YouTubers who’ve like—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Made like, “I’m going to tell you this secret history—”
FK: Aw, the truth—
ELM: Yeah. [laughs]
FK: —of this thing! Yeah, let me tell you. It’s fucking annoying. Like, I’ve said this before, but imagine—I mean, I’m sure that some other people listening to this have had similar experiences, right? Like, imagine having your worst high-school drama be internet lore forever! [laughs] Congrats!
ELM: Yeah. Right. OK, wait, so you brought this up to say, the voicemail leaver mentioned sockpuppets, and I think is on a similar page to us, saying that like, “While this does exist, this isn’t this massive threat that like, every other account you’re engaging with is like, some sort of malicious fake account.” Right?
FK: Yeah. It’s both real and also not that frequent, right?
ELM: Right, right.
FK: You know, I don’t know—and they also bring up like, the right to be forgotten.
ELM: Right.
FK: Which is—
ELM: So this is like, an actual term that is in EU law, that is—
FK: Right! In the E.U., right?
ELM: Right. So, the right to be forgotten, you can appeal to Google in particular, in the E.U., to scrub certain search results from your—when you Google your name. And, you know, I find it very interesting from a—there’s a lot of contradictory factors involved in this, right? Like, say you’re, you know a rapist, right? Or a…
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Say you—maybe not—that’s so grim. Like, I don’t know. Say you committed [laughs] fraud, or something, which is still not good—
FK: Say you’re Florida Man! Say you got drunk and wrestled an alligator in the middle of a mall and caused property damage.
ELM: Flourish, no Florida Man cares about being forgotten. [FK laughs] They’ve already forgotten about it. They’re gonna do it again next week.
FK: But you know the reason why we have Florida Man as a joke is because in the U.S. we don’t have a right to be forgotten, and Florida has like, the laxest rules on publishing mugshots.
ELM: Well, OK, but that’s getting into something slightly different, right? This is like, it’s not just about when you do something wrong and it’s in the news. It’s about your search results, right?
FK: Mmm. Right right right.
ELM: So, you could have a failed business, and that could then be like, stuck at the top of your results, right?
FK: Mmm.
ELM: And I don’t know the terms for appeal, but basically, they were saying you have the right to have somewhat of a clean slate. You have a right to more privacy than this. They—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: These companies don’t get to just keep this—they don’t get to be the arbiters of how the world sees you.
FK: Right.
ELM: And this is interesting—I don’t know if we ever talked about it on the podcast, but there was an episode of Radiolab that really sticks with me, where they went to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, because they were experimenting—did we talk about this before?
FK: Yeah, we did. I think we did.
ELM: OK.
FK: But say it anyway, because I feel like people have probably forgotten, if I’m only vaguely remembering it.
ELM: Yeah. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the big newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, they were experimenting with a program where—essentially a right to be forgotten, because—it was really interesting, talking about how, historically, the local newspaper was a record of all these Florida Man–like crimes, because every town has a Florida Man, and also there’s all sorts of other crimes that people do.
FK: Oh yes.
ELM: And um, you know, it would go in the newspaper, people would read about it, and they’d go “mmm,” and then, I don’t know. You’d do your misdemeanor community service, and then it would be in the archives at the library, and you could look at it on the microfiche, you know, but like—
FK: But who’s gonna do that?
ELM: Right, but like, but now because of the internet, it’s an easily Googleable—maybe one of the few things associated with your name—there forever.
FK: Mm-hmm. Right.
ELM: And so many of these things are stupid misdemeanor-y crimes, right?
FK: Right, like public urination or something.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, I’m sorry, you know, like. Who cares? [laughs]
ELM: And so they are experimenting with a program where people got to appeal and ask for the article to be taken down.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And it was so interesting, because it was so ethically complicated, because—and they had like, a group of people coming from within different disciplines within the newspaper, talking through each case at length, right, and saying—you know, there was one that, it was a police officer, and I think he had been fired or disciplined for doctoring his hours. Like, collecting more overtime than he was supposed to or something, right?
FK: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
ELM: And so they were like, “Well this is like a—this is not—he didn’t—”
FK: Right.
ELM: “—that’s like, a very minor crime, but he’s a police officer, right?”
FK: Right.
ELM: And so then they were going back and forth to say like, “All right, well, does the fact that he’s a police officer mean that this should stay in the public record?”
FK: Right.
ELM: “...But it’s such a nothing kind of thing.” You know, that kind of thing. Or, there was one about public exposure, and for the guy who had done it, and he had atoned for it—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: To get that out of his life would like, literally change his life. But for the people he harassed?
FK: Right.
ELM: Then they feel like their violation is being erased, right? And so, this episode was so interesting, and we’ll definitely put it in the show notes. And now I’ve summarized the entire thing and you probably don’t need to listen to it, basically.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Jad Abumrad over here.
FK: But it’s kind of like, you know—I mean, like, on the one hand I totally see how that has to do with this, because I definitely can imagine—I’ve experienced people who like, kind of burn their bridges in a fandom and are like, “New pseudonym!”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: You know. And eventually, someone—the only reason I know about those people is that eventually somebody connected the two and everyone was like, “Ugh, you were that dude.” Right? Like—
ELM: Right, right.
FK: [disgusted noise] You know, but there’s also like, people—I can imagine a lot of people who are just like, maybe, I don’t know, wrote something they’re just not proud of. Not because it was evil or wrong or anything, but just because they—whatever. Like, I wrote some fanfic when I was 13 and I don’t want to be associated with that anymore, or whatever, right? And like, sometimes that can feel like a big deal, even though it’s not, and like, you should still be allowed to like, make your choice and not have to be associated with that, right?
ELM: Yeah. It makes me think about—so, the orphaning feature on the AO3 is very, very interesting to me. So…
FK: Mmm.
ELM: That’s where you can leave a story on the website, but disassociate it from your name.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And there are—I don’t know how much fic you’ve been reading recently, but I—obviously, I encounter a wide variety because of the Rec Center, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Like, in a wide variety of fandoms. Much wider than I ever would otherwise. And there’s a pretty increasing number of orphaned fics, which is very interesting to me, as time progresses.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: And I often wonder, I always w—I’m so nosy. I’m like, [whispering] “Why did they orphan this?” [FK laughs] You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I remember, I recced a fic in the newsletter once, and the author tweeted at me and said, “I was actually thinking of orphaning this, and I’m glad you liked it.” And I was just like, “Wh—this fic is so goo—I would not rec a bad fic! I recced it because it was great.” [FK laughs] And, it was fascinating to me—
FK: But that’s interesting. People like orphaning things because they didn’t know that they thought it was good, which, I mean, that was exactly what I was proposing.
ELM: I have no idea why this person—I mean, this was a fic that in—by their own admission in the notes, they said that they had been like, going through something when they wrote it.
FK: Right.
ELM: Like, every character is going through it also, so maybe they felt like it was too…I don’t know, emotionally vulnerable or whatever? I have no idea, I shouldn’t psychoanalyze them, I don’t know. But like—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —it wasn’t like a little fluffy story. It was a story about people who are struggling with mental health, basically, and, I don’t know. I have no idea why this person was thinking of letting it go.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But they hadn’t, and it was really interesting to see that like, on the precipice, you know? And most of the time—
FK: Right.
ELM: Literally one of my favorite X-Men stories, probably top two, has been orphaned for years.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And it’s like, “Why? Why did you do this?” And maybe they’re—maybe they hate that they ever liked that fandom, right? Or that, like—I have no idea. Like, I know some people who—I’ve seen people talk about how they orphan things constantly.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, “New fandom. Orphan all my old stuff, fuck it.” You know? And that’s very interesting to me.
FK: Yeah. And yeah, at the same time, I mean, we’re talking about this in the context of fanfic so much, and orphaning and all that, but there’s also like—I don’t know, I guess the thing that kept coming to mind as you were talking about this is like, do you remember Thanfiction or Victoria Bitter?
ELM: No.
FK: So, Thanfiction, also known as Victoria Bitter, also known as a bunch of other things, was—I mean, I almost hesitate to call him a scammer, because he was an active part of—I mean, he was a scammer, but he was like, actively participating in multiple fandoms, and doing similar stuff in every fandom, um, where he sort of created like, kind of cults?
ELM: Oh, yes. I remember this.
FK: And like also tried to a Lord of the Rings—like, he was gonna have a Lord of the Rings convention.
ELM: Why are you only bringing up the like, few like, famous scammers? It’s like—
FK: Because I think that these are the things that come to people’s minds, and like, you know. Every time somebody says like—obviously the vast majority of people are not like this, but I do think that there is something—there’s a reason why people—the reason why people freak out about not knowing who someone is, is because they’ve heard about somebody like Msscribe or like Victoria Bitter, right?
ELM: Sure, right, but like—I don’t know. I mean, this is why the right to be forgotten stuff, taking it out of the fandom context is complicated, right?
FK: Exactly! Exactly, yeah.
ELM: If someone had this history of cults or whatever. But like, if they also continually—like, grifters always change their name, or whatever, and you can’t link them together. I’ve seen TV, I know how this works.
FK: [laughs] “I’ve seen TV.”
ELM: You know, and they’re like, “Oh, she’s got a string of identities across—now the feds are involved, because she’s done this in 15 states,” right?
FK: Mm-hmm. Right.
ELM: In the real world, if you don’t get written up in the newspaper, there are lots of ways to kind of, you know…
FK: Change your identity and, yeah.
ELM: Like, bury your—what’s the word I’m looking for? Cover your tracks. Cover your tracks.
FK: Cover your tracks. [ELM laughs] Yeah, there are.
ELM: You know what I mean? So like, but the way the internet works—it’s not necessarily harder, but yeah. I understand why people are—there’s an amount of suspicion involved, right? If you see a fresh, a totally fresh pseud, you’re like, “Where did this person come from?”
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Right? Like, “Why are they here? Did they do something horrible before?” I don’t think these things, but I could see why someone felt this way.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I would never think that, because I created my current pseud a few years ago, [FK laughs] right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: To the point where I’ve had to tell people, like, “No, I did not just start writing fiction, like two years ago.”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Because they’ve asked in the comments. It’s like, no, I existed on this Earth for a lot longer than this account, like, trust me. [both laugh] You know, but like.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: I don’t know. I feel like that level of distrust that you’re talking about, and I understand where it comes from, but I also think it is like, almost always unfounded. Like, the vast majority of the time, I think it’s unfounded.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I think a lot of it is actually people’s nosiness, right? You know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And I think some degree of entitlement. I think, too, the voicemail leaver, the one thing that really struck me as a bit of well-meaning entitlement, is the thing they were describing about people wanting to link identities because they’re enthusiastic. Right? You know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And that reminded me of people taking their work down—
FK: Mmm.
ELM: And like, trying to leave the fandom and then people being like, “Don’t worry, I’ve got the link still here.” And it’s like, OK. You know, I don’t know. I have pretty mixed feelings. I’m pretty ambivalent about that ethically, right? Someone really deliberately tried to remove their work—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And people are really insistent on making sure that it’s still distributed publicly. Um, I have a lot of trouble with that.
FK: Yeah. Well, and I think that is something that’s pretty unique to—I shouldn’t just say fanfiction, but fanworks, right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: If someone was a fan artist, who did this or whatever, because that’s not—all the other stuff we’re talking about, you know—I guess Thanfiction wrote some fanfic, but primarily their thing was about cons, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Similarly, Msscribe, although she was in the context of like, a fanfic space, mostly she was a moderator. These things are things that can happen on—I know they happen in fan spaces that have nothing to do with—
ELM: Right, or not—they happen on Reddit. They can happen on any kind of forum.
FK: Right, exactly. Exactly, exactly. But the like, desire to connect people because you, “I love your writing and I just need more of it! And I know there is more, and I’m gonna find it.” [laughs]
ELM: Right.
FK: You know? Or like, “I love it so much! And I insist [ELM laughs] on continuing to distribute it, even though you don’t want it distributed anymore.” Which, by the way, guilty as charged. I definitely have some—
ELM: Oh, Flourish.
FK: I mean, I don’t distribute them publicly, but I definitely have some stuff downloaded.
ELM: OK, I mean, that’s why I clarified that. I do think there’s a difference. I think if you want to pass a PDF around between friends—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: OK, sure. You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: But I think that like, saying like, “Here are the links to all the things that they didn’t really want anyone to read anymore…”
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. Right.
ELM: I don’t love it.
FK: Yeah, yeah, I feel like I’m on some shaky moral ground even just like, passing that around among friends, although I’m not gonna stop doing it. [ELM laughs] Jesus will forgive me. Uh, you know, anyway—
ELM: What, um—was that in Matthew, that they talked about this?
FK: [laughs] Yes! Yeah, yeah yeah. Matthew told us that Jesus will forgive you for passing around these like—
ELM: Yeah, because, uh, what was it? Which disciple wanted his fic taken down, but then Jesus was like, “Bro, I still wanna read it, and I wanna make sure [FK laughs] the other 11 guys get to read it? Bro.”
FK: Yeah, yeah, you’re remembering it so correctly.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Bro.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: [laughs] Anyway. Anyway! Yeah, I mean, I just—it’s interesting because that’s not—I do think that’s a difference for pseuds between things where you’re making a creative work and things where you’re like, doing something active, right?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: Like, if you’re playing a game, and you disappear, people might miss you and be like, “Whoa, he was so good at the game, or she was so good at the game, they were so good at the game.” [ELM laughs] You know?
ELM: Give me some more pronouns. [laughs]
FK: Well, yeah, it was just like, “I’m being gender—I’m being stereotypical here! It could be literally any gender.” You know, like, “Where’d they go?” But they’re not gonna be like, “I tracked them down, and I forced them to play—”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, that doesn’t work. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah. I mean, I think there is some element of this that is—and I said well-meaning entitlement, it’s a bit of a—I mean, obviously, especially with popular fic writers, or fanworks creators in general, it’s—I hate to use this term, because it just got bludgeoned to death within the last year, ah, but a parasocial relationship.
FK: Yeah! It is, it is.
ELM: Right?
FK: It really is, yeah.
ELM: And I think that we’ve certainly encountered this, and every other person who’s written fic who’s come on the podcast, I feel like we’ve talked about this to some degree, that there is some element of, often if you’re posting something longer, there often is some element of entitlement from some people.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Saying, “Where’s my update?” It’s like, “Oh, my God.” [laughs]
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You know? Like, I got stuff to do.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s in a few weeks, right, you know? And like, obviously most people aren’t like that, but there definitely a lot of people who are, right? Who believe that they want it, you know? They love it. They want it. Right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And I don’t know. I feel like, I know you’re trying to steer this away, not to only talk about fanworks, but I do feel like a lot of what the other voicemail leaver is describing is fanwork-specific. It’s about the works, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s less so about weird scammers, or whatever, and more about like, do people—I mean, maybe not.
FK: I do think that there is an element, right, the idea of anonymity being weaponized, or anonymity being harmful, right—that’s the part that—the works, that’s not the part where it’s about, like, nothing is harmful about the works, right? [laughs] You know what I mean?
ELM: No, I don’t know what you mean. Say more.
FK: Someone creates a blog, and they’ve created fanfic under a different name in a different fandom, and they don’t want to associate the two, and people come across like, go across the two—I mean, I guess maybe you could have written something like really racist or horrible in your previous fandom, and like, people want to know that, but I feel like that’s rarely what people are really worried about. You know what I mean? Whereas if you’re saying like, anonymity being weaponized, usually when people think about that, they’re thinking about more in like, commenting—
ELM: Hmm.
FK: —the sockpuppeting, the harming other people, you know what I mean? That’s more the area in which people’s actual anxieties come out, right?
ELM: Well—
FK: I feel like enthusiasm comes out with the fanworks.
ELM: I don’t know, I do think that if you were, you know, driven out of fandom for creating a horribly racist fanwork…
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I think there are a lot of folks would not like to see you just—I love how it’s about you now [FK laughs]—you know, just totally changing your name and moving on, right? You know.
FK: Oh, I agree with that, I just don’t know when it’s—like, I’m not sure how frequent that occurrence is, right?
ELM: Sure, yeah, I mean—
FK: Whereas I feel like every day we encounter people who are pseudonymous, or anonymous, like, being dicks to other people, [laughs] you know what I mean? That’s the cultural anxiety around pseudonymity and anonymity, is the idea that like, somebody might be pretending—OK, no, I guess there’s two anxieties, right? One of the cultural anxieties is that somebody might be a harasser or an asshole, and you can never track them down or hold them accountable, right? Like, this author could have a sockpuppet who’s harassing other people—
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: Right? Because—who don’t like their work, or something like that, you know what I mean?
ELM: Sure.
FK: And then the other thing is, this person could be—and the other thing is less about your pseudonym being continuous and more about your real identity. Right? The other thing is, you’re claiming to be this marginalized person, and you’re not.
ELM: Like that uh, that Hamilton fanfic.
FK: Right! Exactly. Right, but those are sort of your two…[both laugh]
ELM: Sorry to bring that one up.
FK: Thanks.
ELM: But like, fricking, uh—what’s her name?
FK: But I mean like, those are like, the two cultural anxieties.
ELM: Ebony Dark'ness Dementia—whatever her name is.
FK: Was she pretending to be a marginalized person?
ELM: Yeah! Remember when they were like—
FK: Oh, right! She was. I do remember, I remember.
ELM: —here’s her identity, she’s gonna publish a book, she was like, from this Native American tribe, or whatever, and then people were like, “Actually it was all a lie.”
FK: I remember.
ELM: And then no one said anything about it ever again, so I don’t actually know what her deal is. I just remember that was a lie.
FK: I do remember this. Yeah. Wow.
ELM: It was a really weird moment.
FK: I remember this moment. It was weird. It was weird.
ELM: No, it was—everything about it was strange, and then it just went away again.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Yeah, I—
FK: Maybe we’ll do some research and put in the show notes anything that we find about this incident, because I truly don’t know either.
ELM: Oh, god. Yeah, I—I’ve blocked it out. OK, so you’re saying that the two cultural anxieties about like, a fresh pseud are that the person may have been a harasser—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —or that they may be like, lying about who they are.
FK: Yeah, I think that’s—yeah.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think you should—obviously, I think that’s correct and that ties to the voicemail saying, like assuming that any new identity is like, bad crimes, or whatever. Right? You know, like, probably has done bad things. But I do think there is some element too, about the work itself, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And I think that you’re understating it, when you say that people—people get mad about what people have created, right? Like, I think there is some element of fandom that wants that person to be punished forever. And I’m not saying this—you know, my hypothetical earlier was like, a racist story, and I’m not defending anything like that, but—
FK: There’s lots—there’s a world of things that are like, not—that are debatably bad. [laughs]
ELM: Right. Or I’ve seen people like, get destroyed for, I don’t know, just drawing a cartoon character. Not in a sexual way, but like, just drawing one, right, you know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I think that the culture of receipts —
FK: Mmm.
ELM: Oh my God, I’m gonna start talking about cancel culture now. I’m like, Tucker Carlson. [FK laughs] But like, the original—you know, like, this is coming from Tumblr culture, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “This person, these are all the things they’ve done wrong, and here’s a record of them.” And a lot of that was about celebrities, for whom there is always going to be a public record, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And I think there’s an instinct by some fans to want to have that kind of public record with other fans, right? And…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I don’t know. There’s a question of like, if you’re a celebrity, do you—you don’t have the right to be forgotten, but if you’re a normie…?
FK: Well, and what does it mean to be a normie, right? Because that’s part of the problem.
ELM: Right.
FK: You know? I mean, like, 40 years ago, if you were a normie, writing something, like writing your stories and hanging out, it’s not like—there would not be thousands of people reading something that you wrote, right?
ELM: [laughing] Writing your stories and hanging out.
FK: Genuinely! I mean, like, what? This is 100% a description of what fanfic writers do. [ELM laughs] But there would not be a situation where you—
ELM: That’s what I do. Two things I love.
FK: There just wouldn’t be in this context.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Similarly like, I mean, you know, even if you were in—take it out of a fanfic context, which I know I keep doing, but like, under any circumstances, right, you would still be able to potentially leave something behind, and/or, you would be offending like, a limited community of people who actually knew you.
ELM: Sure.
FK: Most likely. Right? Like, the vast majority of people. There would be like, a very small number of people who had the opportunity to offend thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people.
ELM: Right.
FK: Whereas now, with the internet—like, dude! Anyone can offend hundreds of thousands of people. Like, get a bad enough take out there and there it goes!
ELM: Right.
FK: A take that’s not even very bad! [laughs]
ELM: Right, and you also have like a—a whole subset of people who are really hypervigilant looking for those offenses. I’m thinking about—there’s a very [laughs]—there’s a thing people like doing on Tumblr these days, where they will leave a message in someone’s inbox saying, “Did you know the person you reblogged that post from—”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “—is like, X-problematic?” And I’ve seen so many of these now, and it’s always like, “You think that I like, study the Tumblrs [FK laughs] of a random person I reblogged the picture of a cat from?”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, I don’t know what to tell you, right? But there’s obviously people sending those messages, who are taking the time to click and study and say, “Ah, I don’t like the way this person’s talking about this thing—”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “—I think they’re like a…” You know. Like a whatever, right?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Or like, “I don’t like the tone of the way they’re talking about this, so I assume they’re like this.”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Right, you know? And it’s just like, this is an instinct that so many people seem to have.
FK: Right.
ELM: And it’s such, like, it’s taking, I think, an already fraught situation and making it a whole lot worse.
FK: Well, I mean, I think it also makes it harder because there’s no way to meaningfully—I mean, I guess atone is the word I’m looking for, right? But like, when you offend people—when you offend a manageable number of people, you are able to rebuild relationships with all those people. Maybe not all of them, because some of them are probably like, “fuck that” and walk away, right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: But like, whatever. Imagine, even if I like—if I imagine, “What if I did something that offended everybody in my church?” I would still be able to talk to—that would be really bad. That would be like, really—
ELM: Yeah, what would you do? I just started to think about scenarios, like.
FK: I don’t know what I would do.
ELM: OK.
FK: Uh, I don’t know. Vote for a Republican. [ELM laughs] Um, [laughing] that’s a joke. Mostly. But like, whatever. If I did something that did offend everybody in my church, I could talk to everybody individually over time—
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: —and like, either mend fences or like, at least have them recognize that—they would at least be recognizing that I was a human, and we would have a conversation, and they’d be like, “I’m not ready to forgive you.”
ELM: I wouldn’t forgive you in this scenario. The podcast would be over.
FK: Right, and that would be fine—
ELM: When you vote for Ron DeSantis, I’m canceling the podcast. [both laugh]
FK: Right, and that would be fine, but like, you know, there would be some people who would be OK and some people who wouldn’t, but ultimately, I would—I would have a handle on the situation, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: On the one hand, I don’t want people to be let off the hook for being assholes, but I do have a real sympathy for people who have no ability to—it’s not just no ability, but no one wants them to—
ELM: Yeah. Right, right.
FK: You know what I mean? Like, what would I do if somebody was an asshole, and like, individually messaged me and was like, “We’ve never talked before, but I noticed you were really upset by this thing that I said, and I’m really sorry.” I don’t know what I would do! [ELM laughs] How would I handle that? What would be—you know?
ELM: Right, right. And I mean, I think that like, you know, compounded with that too, you see so many people who do truly awful things and quote-unquote “get canceled” and then, uh, nothing happens and there are no consequences whatsoever. So, it starts to make—even if they do apologize, or like, try to make amends, or make a little effort at it, right? So there’s a general attitude, I think at this point, of, “It’s all pointless, and there’s no such thing as atoning or apologizing, because none of it means anything.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Even though I’m sure some of these people must mean it, at least a little bit.
FK: They have to, right?
ELM: Some of them.
FK: I’m not saying—not all of them, [ELM laughs] but anyway, at that point, like I totally sympathize with like, “Fuck it, let’s just start a new pseud. Like, I’m done with this.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: “Peace.” You know—you couldn’t see it, but I was like, doing the wash-my-hands gesture.
ELM: The flip side of this too is like, what if you were the wronged party in the fandom that you want to wipe the slate of, right? What if you were the victim of some bullying or something, right?
FK: Oh, dude, yeah.
ELM: And like you literally want to be in the witness protection program of fandom, you need a fresh start, you know.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Uh, you didn’t do anything wrong, but you had a group of harassers who were just like—wanted to be assholes to you, right? And like, the assumption that everyone needs to disclose everything and link their past to their current account—
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: —doesn’t give people the safety that they may need, right?
FK: On the other hand, I mean, you know, I have to say, if I, like—if tomorrow I found out that somebody I had been talking to online was actually Msscribe—
ELM: Yeah? What would you do?
FK: —Call my therapist! [both laugh] Like, I would be—that would be really destabilizing. It would really freak me out, you know?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: I certainly hope that this is not the case, because it would be like—I would find that—and I don’t use this term lightly—I would find that traumatic.
ELM: Sure.
FK: You know? And I think that that’s a reasonable reaction, actually. [laughs] You know?
ELM: Right. How is that on the other hand? In this scenario, you’re describing that you have a—
FK: I’m just saying, if she can never—what I’m saying is like, it’s not on the other hand to what you had just said—
ELM: [laughs] Just an additional point.
FK: Well, no! But, you had said like, “Here’s an alternate—” I said, like, “What about the person who can’t, you know, who can’t atone?” And then you were like, “What about the person who was bullied and needs to find an escape—”
ELM: Yeah, but like—
FK: And I was like, “Yeah, but also what about the person who was like, fucked over, and then the person can’t atone, like—”
ELM: Right, but you have also chosen to keep the same exact name, and to in fact change your legal name to that name, by which Msscribe knew you, right? So.
FK: Yeah, no. She has no excuse. If she talks to me, it is her fucking fault.
ELM: Yeah. Right. I’m not saying that you needed to like, change your name and hide—
FK: If you’re listening to this, don’t do it Msscribe! [laughs]
ELM: Wow, direct line to Msscribe right here. That’s cool. [FK laughs] You know, um, it’s all coming back to—I mean like, you keep bringing up these famous cases, like, [laughs] obviously because you have a personal connection to one of them.
FK: I’m sorry! [laughs]
ELM: No, but it’s just like, I feel like, if people assume the world is full of Msscribes, I think that they would constantly live in fear. I think people would be changing their names all the time, right? You know. Or people would be questioning people all the time.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Being like, “Who are you? Show me a picture of your driver’s license! [laughs] So I can make sure—”
FK: No, completely! And—completely, completely, yeah. You’re right.
ELM: And I think that most people don’t. And, obviously on the entire internet this is true, I think in fandom it may be a little more true, that people have trouble with boundaries.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I think that people get super excited that other folks like the thing that they love so much! “I need to know you! [FK laughs] I need to be your best friend! I need to read everything you’ve written! And I need to know everything about your—have you written other stuff in other fandoms? I love you so much!” Right? And it’s just like—that’s really hard. And I think there is also, in some fandom spaces—obviously some are toxic, but others have a culture of niceness?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And you maybe don’t, you know, don’t want to be like, “Hey! Back off!” Right? You know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Because that’s not gonna look like you’re a part of the group.
FK: No, you feel like a jerk!
ELM: Right, so I think it’s hard for people to set boundaries without, you know—it’s hard to say, “I wanna make friends, I wanna read people’s stuff, and I want people to read my stuff,” and also to set those boundaries. I think that—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I think this has gotten so much more challenging over the last decade than it was in the first two decades of fandom online.
FK: Oh, yeah.
ELM: Just, because, the cultures of social media and disclosure and identity online have changed so dramatically.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: This is a—there’s a term I learned recently, to describe this kind of situation, um, maybe you’ve heard of it—
FK: Oh no. Here it comes.
ELM: It’s a real mare’s nest, to be honest.
FK: Yeah! [ELM laughs] I have mare’s nest–pilled you.
ELM: Well, that’s a terrible, terrible way to say it. [FK laughs] Goodness.
FK: Well, I mean, I think that one thing that is true—I know I was the one who kept bringing in those famous cases, as you just said, but partially that’s also to say, like, I’m not living my life freaked out by this stuff, and I hope that other people don’t either, because I don’t think that you should, you know?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, I agree with you. That’s not common. That’s not the way most people exist, and to some extent like, digging into where people are coming from and who they are, in addition to sometimes being rude to them, is also like, asking for trouble sometimes. Honestly. Genuinely! I don’t need to know everything about everybody-I-know’s history. I don’t.
ELM: Right.
FK: If they deal well with me and with everybody I see them deal with, then that’s all right.
ELM: I mean, that’s normal. I think it would be incredibly intrusive, if people needed to know every detail about everyone’s history at all times. Like, on what planet do people act like that in the analog world?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: On what planet do you start a new job, and you’re like, “I’m gonna need you to tell me everything about your entire life history.” Right? Like.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, I even think that now—you don’t have a job anymore—I guess you do have a job—
FK: I do have a job.
ELM: But, you know, it’s not that kind of job, right?
FK: It’s not that kind of job.
ELM: Yeah. [laughs] You know what I mean.
FK: I do.
ELM: And I doubt you did this at your old job, but like, at my current job, in the industry that I’m working in, like, people are constantly doing icebreakers, there’s like, a lot of—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —like, affinity groups in Slack and kind of meetups like we’re in college, you know, like, around various…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I love that people feel like they can find that community and support, but to me often that feels like boundary-crossing. I don’t want to share a bunch of personal details with my coworkers.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: That was not in my contract, that I had to disclose a bunch of, you know, personal details, right?
FK: Yeah. Yup. Totally.
ELM: So, I feel like this culture is—I mean, I think there’s a very healthy pushback of this culture online—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —of people saying, “Stop making people be friends with all their coworkers! Stop saying it’s like a family! Stop asking all these intrusive questions!” Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I do think that there are a lot of trends in society that are tending to make people more and more intrusive, and I think some of that comes from people disclosing a lot more on the internet.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Right? And putting a lot more of their lives out there. You know, in the past—40 years ago, as you say—if I went on vacation, my coworkers would probably not see what my vacation looked like, right? I wouldn’t invite them to my house—
FK: Not unless you were the jerk who brought the slideshows to the office.
ELM: Yeah, right! Like, I don’t—who would do—to the office! Right? You know, whereas now we might be Facebook friends. Maybe they would see all that. They would know what my family looks like, or whatever.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And that would never have happened in the past, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Sometimes you might have work friends, and they might meet your family, but like, they’re not gonna see your like, personal vibes, you know?
FK: Right. They’re not gonna like the picture of your like, you with your extended family.
ELM: [laughs] Right. Right.
FK: And like, great, glad you love the Christmas photo with all my nieces and nephews in it.
ELM: [laughs] So I feel like there’s just like this—this sits within some broader contextual stuff, here, that is—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —has its positives too, but.
FK: It does, it does. Well, I mean, I guess this is another case in which I feel a little bit like, I’m seeing the way I’m going to be an elderly dinosaur, like, in advance.
ELM: OK, that sounds so cute. I just imagined like, a brontosaurus—like a cartoon—I know they’re not—
FK: Yeah, that’s gonna be me.
ELM: I know they’re not things anymore, I know that they like, don’t exist, actually.
FK: No no no, but we still—we—yeah.
ELM: To us, like Pluto—
FK: To us they’re real.
ELM: They’re real. And I just imagined a cute little line drawing brontosaurus with like, little granny glasses, and a little bun.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: It’d be so cute.
FK: So like, you know. In like—
ELM: You do have a long neck.
FK: —40 years, right? Like, this is gonna be the way in which I am a curmudgeon, and that’s fine, like, I’m gonna be like, yeah.
ELM: You’re gonna be fighting in the Climate Wars in 40 years, Flourish. You’re gonna be like, walking through the ravaged desert with like, with a machete.
FK: Like Mad Max style.
ELM: That’s what it’s gonna be like. Yeah. I’m sorry to tell you.
FK: All right, well we—OK. All right, in 40 years, yes, we will not be worrying about this, but if we were, [ELM laughs] I can see the way I could be a curmudgeon. And I’m kind of OK with that. You know? Like, I’m not ready to say that there’s nothing good about, like you were saying, that culture of more sharing and so forth, but I think there is something that we’re losing if we give up on real pseudonyms that are not connected to each other. I’m gonna stick around for them. I like it.
ELM: I thought you were gonna say “I’m gonna stick my neck out.” I just wanted to go back to the brontosaurus.
FK: Like a brontosaurus!
ELM: Obviously, I’m gonna stick my neck out for the right to create new pseuds. I’m gonna create a new one, actually. I’m just posting it on here. Here’s some info. Because I promised to write a fic for a friend, and I want my X-Men account to just be the X-Men. I dunno.
FK: Reasonable.
ELM: That’s just the vibes I want. You know?
FK: Reasonable.
ELM: And like, people—like I said, people have connected my pseud to my real identity. It’s fine, you know. I also get why people wouldn’t want that. It is what it is, but like, I don’t know. I just feel like, as someone who has created a fresh pseud within the last few years, create as many pseuds as you want. Like, go wild. You know?
FK: Go wild.
ELM: To get to that final fundamental question of the voicemail, this idea of linking things, this idea of leaving a trail, being allowed to start something new—yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree with this—our voicemail leaver, that a lot of people are pushing back on it, but I would push back against that. I think that that’s fundamentally unhealthy—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —for people to kind of insist that people disclose that, right? People are not Msscribe. Msscribe is a special, unique snowflake.
FK: [laughing] Yeah.
ELM: With many facets, many little twinkly sides of—
FK: Unfortunately, many facets. [laughs]
ELM: Icy, sharp sides, right. But like, the Msscribes of the world are few and far between, and if you go through your life assuming that everyone that you don’t know the full story of is like that, I don’t know. You should probably call your therapist.
FK: Yeah, I mean, it sounds flippant, but I actually think that’s good advice, because I think that, you know, I mean, it’s not a bad idea to—I don’t know. Try and work through those anxieties! Genuinely! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, it is an anxiety, and I acknowledge it for what it is, and the place of fear that I think a lot of folks are coming from is at the root of so many conflicts that we have.
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
ELM: In fannish spaces, and in the rest of the internet.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But this assumption that—the desire for control, and the desire to kind of squash out anything that seems threatening, even if that threat is a total fiction, you know? Um.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So, yeah. I think that these are real anxieties. They’re real issues. They’re not just the internet. They’re not just fandom, and they’re things that people should probably really deal with, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I think the tendency for people to be dismissive of that, and say it is just fandom, is often downplaying people’s real anxiety issues that they probably need to find some way to work on.
FK: Well, on that, uh, heartening note, I think that we’ve pretty much come to the end of the podcast!
ELM: I don’t know what to tell you. People should like, you know, seek the mental health professionals. I’ve done it in the past. I can tell you. You are doing it currently. It’s—
FK: I am.
ELM: —something that’s important for people’s brains and for their lives.
FK: Yup. All right, well on that note, I guess we should talk about how people can continue to, uh, have this extremely edifying and uplifting podcast, which totally helps you with your anxiety.
ELM: Oh my God. Yes. That was—
FK: And that’s by supporting us on Patreon. [laughs]
ELM: That was the—one of the absolute clunkiest transitions this podcast has ever achieved.
FK: You know you love it.
ELM: No. I dislike. Thumbs down.
FK: [giggles] So you’re gonna refuse to talk about Patreon now, or what?
ELM: I’m gonna change my name and not tell you my new name. [FK laughs] I’m just gonna leave. Not gonna link ’em together. So, it’s patreon.com/fansplaining. That is the way that we make the podcast. That is how we pay for our hosting fees, that is how we pay our transcriptionists, who are doing, as always, a wonderful job. And there are a bunch of different levels you can pledge at. $5 a month, we read your name in the credits, or we don’t, if you say you don’t want that.
FK: [laughs] Or, we can read some other name, or we can read, you know, like, an in-honor-of.
ELM: Yes, we can read anything you—not anything you want, but we can read almost anything that you want. I think we have a right of refusal.
FK: Yeah, we do.
ELM: Ah, would you—if someone wanted to pledge $5 a month, and have you say, “Harry Styles sucks,” would you do it?
FK: I would say it, and then I would say…“I crossed my fingers!” [ELM laughs] Or something like that. Like, something very juvenile.
ELM: “Psyche!”
FK: Yeah, “Psyche!” Exactly. You got the vibe. All right.
ELM: Yes, yes.
FK: Anyway, there’s other [ELM laughs]—there’s other delightful rewards you can have as well, including a lot of special episodes that we have recorded, and we have a Tiny Zine that comes out every once and a while for people who have pledged $10 a month, and a really cute Fansplaining enamel pin. So, run do not walk, and pledge to Patreon. If you have the money and the inclination.
ELM: In fact, you probably don’t need to move at all, because you probably are either holding your phone or you’re on your computer.
FK: Right, and—
ELM: Move those fingers. [laughs]
FK: —if you don’t have the money or the inclination to give us money, we totally understand that. Uh, and you can also help us out by spreading the news about this podcast, or by writing or calling in. 1-401-526-FANS is the way to leave a voicemail, like the one that we had on the show today. [ELM snorts] You can also write to fansplaining@gmail.com—stop laughing at me, Elizabeth.
ELM: It’s too easy.
FK: Or you can get in touch with us on Tumblr. The ask box is open, anon is on. Or on our website, fansplaining.com. There’s just, you know, a variety of ways.
ELM: A huge number of ways. And, you can be anonymous, or as almost all our letter writers are, pseudonomynous—pseudonymous—
FK: Oh my God! Pseudonymous.
ELM: Pseudonymynous.
FK: [laughs] Pseudonymous.
ELM: Nope.
FK: [laughs] All right.
ELM: That’s as close as I’m gonna get.
FK: On that delightful note, Elizabeth, I think we’ve come to the end.
ELM: Yeah, we’re definitely done. Uh, so thanks once again to our voicemail leaver. Folks, call in, leave more voicemails. We love having other voices on the podcast. We really appreciate it. Uh, so yeah.
FK: All right.
ELM: OK, well.
FK: See you later, Elizabeth.
ELM: OK, bye, Flourish!
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