#pseuicide

Oh, those were some GOOD times back then.

To quote myself from last year:

Next thing you know we’ll have a shippers vs. noromos war on Usenet and a famous fanwriter will be discovered to be massively sockpuppeting, and at least six secret lesbian couples will form (and two will break up), and Brandon Ray will mansplain at all of us womenfolk for seven paragraphs, there will be more than five separate discussions of Scully’s characterization in Iolokus, and at least twelve heartrendingly angsty WIPs will be updated, and that one creepy guy will post a fic where Scully erotically eats her own poop, and the Mulderists will accuse the Scullyists of something dreadful, and Erin Blair will post six fics in 24 hours, and I’ll DEFINITELY post something about shortbread or snickerdoodle cookies to get everyone to calm down, and the private e-mail lists will be buzzing about whether Mulder would be a dom or a sub in a BDSM relationship with Scully, and there will be a scandal when someone plagiarizes X-Files fic in the Nanny fandom, and there will be a side conversation about DD’s dick (that has never really ended to this day), at least one fangirl will cry when she realizes everyone else was invited to the big secret fangirl gathering, and everyone will bitch about there no Gossamer update in three weeks, and we’ll end the day with a rousing discussion about whether Mulder/Krycek slash is out of character or not.

This is not even an exaggeration.

But yeah, Evie Whiting. That was some weird, wild stuff, circa 2002ish. I’m going to take the lazy way out and quote from a post a pal of mine made on a message board:

Over on the Idealists Haven messageboard, there was a long-time poster (and fanfic writer) named Evie Whiting, who was much beloved and a sweet, bubbly person. Last year, she suddenly became very ill, and was rushed to the hospital for some unidentified reason. For several weeks, she was able to post tons of messages from her “deathbed”. She then fell into a coma and later died, and all the while through her coma/death, her husband (who was not a regular) continued to post to the Haven, where her friends were devastated and had been sending all kinds of sympathetic and grief-stricken messages of support. Things got very weird after her “death” mainly because he was continuing to post and wallow in all the attention, and when a few people gently began asking whether or not this was all true, suddenly someone who claimed to be Evie’s sister popped up and started attacking people left and right.

The entire thing turned out to be a hoax. Another long-time and well-respected poster received a private email from the dead woman herself; Evie claimed that she had no idea any of this had gone on. In her defense, she spun a convoluted tale about someone using her computer without her knowledge – for weeks! – and that this person had done it to humiliate her. But when pressed for more info, she clammed up and never returned. Ultimately, no one really knows what happened: if Evie was ever even sick or not, or if she had EVER been who she pretended to be - for YEARS. It was so bizarre, and it gobsmacked the scores of people she had befriended during that time. And like you’ve done here, some people became VERY interested in ferreting out the truth (they never did), while others continued to defend her, and still others just wanted it all to go away.

Unfortunately, all the posts and evidence of this disappeared this winter when the messageboard was hacked (unrelated to the hoax), and they had to start up a new one. But I think if you ask any XF fan who’s been to the Haven (the MB) about Evie Whiting, they’ll remember the story. Things have died down, and Evie’s never returned to any corner of the fandom as far as anyone knows, but everyone who was around then remembers the tale. I had never even heard of her before this all began (I’m not a regular at the Haven because I think the site is full of nutters), but I remember it all quite clearly. Her friends were VERY hurt, angered, confused and yet some still defended her.

I just want to add that some of us who were Haven regulars got veeeery suspicious and looked for evidence of her death by checking online obits in Sydney, Australia, where she’d said she lived. Nothing. When I innocently asked her “husband” where her memorial was going to be held so I could send flowers, he spun this crazy tale that since Evie was half-Indian, her body was going to be shipped to India so her remains could be disposed of in the Ganges. This is when our bullshit meters went REALLY off because it was so ridiculously convoluted and most of us were sure at this point that her death was a total fake.(Also, Evie had shared every single detail of her personal life but had never said anything about Indian ancestry.)

Also, in hindsght, Evie had this really unbelivable personal history. She said she was 24 or something and was already a practicing doctor (fake doctors seem to be a running theme in our fandom) and had three children, including twins named Dana Katherine and Fox William. Yeah.

the first couple years it was so real and terrifying to me but after a while that empathy circuit just burns the fuck out

i love and miss my mom though

and right now i’m reliving that loss 

and my bitterness

actually i’m really hurting over it

this is

not a great time to be hammering that sore spot

not a great sore spot to be hammering

Not that they generally care about the harm this does to true sufferers of those and related mental illnesses. The truth is, it’s a form of narcissism. It’s all about them. They are always right, the doctor or expert (who has researched and studied for a decade or more in order to be able to identify specific diagnostic criteria) who flat-out tells you that you don’t actually have the illness you think you do based on a ten-minute Google search is ableist trash, and anyone who questions the legitimacy of their self-proclaimed ‘illness’ is invalidating them.

It’s wrong to invalidate a legitimate mental illness. It’s also wrong to fake mental illnesses and harmful to allow people who fake mental illnesses to go on doing so, because it trivializes the problems faced by people who genuinely suffer from said illness, and encourages awful behaviour. People are not stupid - they’ve realized that Tumblr has created a culture in which they can literally get away with anything as long as they claim to have a mental illness, and that all they have to do is allude to suicide or self-harm to have their inbox flooded with kindness and support. Anyone who condones this behaviour is only exacerbating the problem.

so, once more, for the record: i am not an agent of 4chan, the pigeon shit conspiracy was a joke about how gullible tumblr is, and everything i said about the faked suicide epidemic was true. 

reporting any wrongdoing could lead to the jerkwad suffering terribly in ways that i would object to. i’ve had too many personal experiences with this question to not have had to make a decision on the matter.

if someone says they’re going to kill themselves, they might get shot for refusing to put the knife down when the cops show up. i’m still calling 911 for them. if a family member steals my identity and racks up debt in my name, reporting them might get them thrown in prison because they’re already on probation. i’m still reporting the theft.

if a kid tells his dad that his stepfather is beating the shit out of him, he knows the entire family might melt down in a custody battle. should that possible outcome decide whether the kid reports it or not? even assholes are people. there is no such thing as a villain, and i think we have to be careful with how we as a society distribute consequences and blame when bad shit happens.