incredible journalism here. also incredibly depressing journalism. god.
I Am A Delight
- she/her
- twitter.com/Varewulf
Old queer trans woman from Norway. Mainly post in English. I write stuff sometimes. Expect bad jokes. Girls and cats are nice.
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in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:
ughhhhh yeah i just read this. it's so. welp!!!
i dunno if it's bad of me or what, but every time a story like this comes out, all I can think about is how much it resembles the kind of insane conspiracy theories fash like to throw at any marginalized person online
I mean right wingers love sock puppeting so they're probably speaking from personal experience
yeah, it's very much "that's what i'd do, so of course they're doing it"
it's more ... my brain gets locked between the instinctual assumption that it must be wrong, because I've seen the same lie told from a thousand mouths of fruit farmers ... and the gut sense that if its true, the discourse is going to be utterly insufferable and only serve to fuel more paranoia to follow.
I still see "jokes" about Rachel Dolezal.
Genuinely going nuts while reading this like wtf drives a person to do this?
attention-seeking, a desire to be part of a perceived in-group, a desire for a constant stream of respect/pity
It's no coincidence he fundraised off of both of the fake deaths in this article imo
caring more about having lots of social capital than how one goes about getting it.
I uh... what? So like, they just never existed? Freaking bonkers...
It's such a weird intersection of like, active scam, but also a lot of work to be just a scam and seems like created possibly actually positive change, all combined with some very clearly weird roleplay stuff. Just so strange. The accessibility community deserves better and I hope the damage can be minimized.
a lot of stuff looks so out of place
dropping the kitchen mixer and getting legs amputated
i'm just deeply confused at how that's presented
i don't know
i'm just staring at everything and nothing really makes sense if it's all was presented in the way the article says
i can't make sense of this, it's so strange to me
That part bothers me so much and I wish they talked more about it. Like... what did he (the sock puppeteer) picture when talking about this? Like I'm not an expert but I feel like even a heavy stand mixer dropped on your foot wouldn't cause enough injury to require amputation, and I'm not sure what convoluted scenario would happen to cause even a hand mixer going at full speeds to injure both your legs to the extent that they cannot heal safely.
It's really baffling as to the thought process going on is here. Putting aside how unhinged the situation is, he supposedly had both the cognitive empathy skills to construct these characters in a convincing manner, as well as the writing chops to communicate effectively enough for each to be recognized individually... Why in the world would you construct these elaborate roleplay scenarios when you could have been building the same respect and genuinely helping by advocating for others as yourself? Was he really playing the long con with plans to garner support after their deaths? Every potential motivation feels equally alien to me
Using a "pen name" would have been okay, but the fella managed to push his identities into positions where people looked for someone with specific disabilities/background to share their experiences, and ran fundraisers over deaths of these fake identities.
Reading the article, it might seem kind of impressive that he was pulling the same trick over and over, though from experience it can take quite a while for someone to come forward and "say it" even when a sizeable portion of a community either knows about it from whispers or is actively suspecting something.
I do not understand the motivations behind such a long form... not even scam, not even grift, like the end goal was advocacy for disabled people... I guess??? But also like why go through this level of high tier effort and also fake multiple deaths and also apparently have like such high level imaginary girlfriends they were basically tulpas, like WHAT?!?
I am currently assaulted by such a profound sense of confusion.
There was the fundraisers around the deaths of the allegedly invented people… but it sure seems like a lot of work.
No no. It was a scam. It's a confusing scam that probably didn't start as what it became, but that's just the nature of opportunity, baby!
Some pervert created a 'persona' of his ideal fetish woman, roleplayed it online, somehow gained traction with this persona, and made the most of it. This guy accepted money and accolades from people under false pretenses.
How could dropping a mixer on your foot lead to a double amputation? Did people not question that at the time? I know it's easy to poke holes in the story after the fact, while reading an article about the holes in the story, but I mean... Like, every single detail about these people is so "of a type." It's not even remotely shocking to learn that they're not real, because they're all drawn from the imagination of the same pervert.
And I mean pervert. You don't dig yourself a hole this deep unless this is your fetish, and those are your checkboxes. I've met guys like this. I've worked for guys like this. They lurk in the cracks of fetish sites, just waiting for a chance to rope other people into their maximal attention fantasy. They'll tell you they're immigrant women with really specific medical problems, and nobody else wants to talk to them because of it. They'll tell you they're posting from inside a closet because if their husband finds out they're on a porn site he'll beat them. These guys want attention, and moreso, they want to be a person who they imagine will get the most possible attention and sympathy. The more you indulge it, the more absurd it will get. So this whole situation seems like a pretty natural progression for the type, if indulged to the tune of financial incentives to continue. What are they supposed to do when they have the attention they wanted, and at such scale? It's not like they're going to give it up, and they can't give it back.
This was a sex thing from the start. It's amazing it had a continue phase, but I'm sure nobody was more shocked than Craven. The advocacy stuff grew out of a need for verisimilitude for the fantasy, and more importantly, provided a means to gain access to more marginalized women, and their stories. Those deep, personal stories. Disabled women of color would never tell him, but they'd surly tell his deaf, Black, therapist girlfriend. And she can rearrange them into profound articles about video games. And he can jack off to them. Everything's coming up pervert!
I assume the thrill of being caught in the lie plays into it as well. Some kind of broken shame/affection switch. You can tell he's a bad writer because his solution to being painted into a corner is to kill off one character and invent a new, archetypically identical one to take it's place. Good chance to change up the fixations of the fetish model too. Check a few different menu boxes from his kink list until he's bored of those. Good chance to spruce up the tragedy too. Stage three cancer? How awful! Why, that could advance at any moment! How EXPENSIVE that could be!
It's a fucking a tragedy that a social need as real as disability advocacy in games was seized on by a person so disgusting. But nobody ever needed this man, or his fake girlfriends. He was an aggressive parasite, imitating the succor of community organizing. He was swallowed, and infested the community. He's been discovered, and all that remains is to hunt him down and kill him. If the community has the power to do that, it has the power to actually organize and fill the gap he slipped into. But you have to kill these guys. Parasites are remorseless, and can't be allowed to exist. I don't think there's any other lesson to learn from this.
You don't dig yourself a hole this deep unless this is your fetish, and those are your checkboxes. I've met guys like this. I've worked for guys like this. They lurk in the cracks of fetish sites, just waiting for a chance to rope other people into their maximal attention fantasy. They'll tell you they're immigrant women with really specific medical problems, and nobody else wants to talk to them because of it. They'll tell you they're posting from inside a closet because if their husband finds out they're on a porn site he'll beat them. These guys want attention, and moreso, they want to be a person who they imagine will get the most possible attention and sympathy.
This is such a good way of putting it. Somewhere between typical sexual roleplay and (at least the popular conceptualization of) Munchausen syndrome
why are there so many white dudes that feel entitled to affirmative action, like that one marvel editor that pretended to be Japanese specifically to take advantage of a diversity push. There's also countless anecdotes i've heard about white south africans who describe themselves as "african" on US college admission forms who probably think they're the funniest people alive when they do this.
God, I have incredible amounts of examples of telling people my Grandfather was Lenape and people replying "Oh yeah, I'm also part Indian!" about a Native ancestor from 150 years ago. Like, I have severe trepidation anytime I have to weigh whether or not to click the "Two or More Races" checkbox for being roughly a quarter native but easily white passing whereas I have known people who have "Family Lore" about a native ancestor just milking it to get scholarships and grants. Same people would also use it to deflect criticism about being white.
Do you think he realizes how much he comes across as a serial killer in his fictional alternate universe where these women are real. I would be seriously worried for the safety of the third "girlfriend"