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Off Topic / Re: Actitivity on that MLPArena
« Last post by Snapdragon on Today at 02:27:43 AM »
and the whole "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" doesn't work if someone mistakes you for someone else online.
Totally agreed! And it's so easy to impersonate other people online, too, especially popular figures. The argument doesn't hold water IMO (although it tends to come up in discussions about privacy online and off) because it's just a fallacious argument to try and get people to hand over their privacy for fear of looking shady, when in reality privacy is such an important right, and one we have to fight for even if we aren't "the bad guys" that a lack of privacy is supposed to protect us from. I shouldn't have to tell people my real name or give a photograph in order to discuss my feelings about Hasbro's oversaturation of the Mane Six in the repro toylines!
Taffeta, it's really scary and sad to hear your story, and I'm glad that it sounds like that person was eventually found out in the end, and you didn't give up on ponies entirely. I've seen people get bullied out of the fandom (or at least the public parts of the fandom, like the forums) by some really nasty behavior over my many years reading and posting. And it's totally understandable, but also so sad, that people could be bullied away from enjoying something that's so sweet and relatively harmless like MLP. (I always hope they can continue to enjoy MLP in private, since you don't really need a group of fans to buy toys you like!) That said, I have seen some of the same behavior from faux-popular folks, similar to your example of customizers, who sometimes attract a bit of a cadre of fans willing to White Knight for them to the point of harassment. It's definitely an issue in the G4 fandom on a larger scale, but unfortunately we're not immune to it on the G1/vintage collector side of things. It's wild to me, because at its peak, the G4 fandom could have several hundred to low thousands of people who were fans of a 'famous' artist or musician; but in the vintage fandom, aren't we talking about more like a couple dozen fans, at most? And that's worthy of going to battle for? That's so silly to me! It kinda helps to put things in perspective, even though it only takes one 'crazy' fan to make you afraid for your safety, as your example illustrates.