ah, HP, how art you the crucible of humanity...

[permetaform]

in reference to a fan with cancer: http://www.4christina.org/

quoted wholesale from here

I am so disgusted I have no words to describe how low and vile, truly evil the fans of heidi8 can be. I've said before about some real gems that I wished they could go about fandom marked in some way, so other people could see them coming and be forewarned. I can't. But I can spread this message as far as I can, which I will do in this journal, my LJ, and my GJ. Because these people display behavior that is so fundamentally gross, they should be shunned.

On LJ, they go by:

* kiwiria
* light_music
* countess_shell
* aome
* deathp4nts

What did they do?

They took it upon behalf of heidi8 of the Harry Potter fandom to troll a dying woman's journal. She has a rare form of cancer, and is in the hospital right now possibly fighting for her life. If she comes home, she will be faced with these heidi8 supporters doing their best to smear her name, and even in some places, calling her illness into question.

this post explains more, with the pertinent links and more information.

More about the wank at cimorene111's journal.

[wank addendum] [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]

The reason why this raises my hackles: it's not hard to post a link, even for someone you dislike. Personally, it's tons easier for me to make a comment than to send off an email; what disturbs me is that so much brouhaha was raised because heidi8 didn't want to post a simple link.

And to me, who links to tons of shit and gets requests to post links sometimes, this is just eyebrow raising in the level of...I dunno, 'indifference'? 'hate'? 'disgust'? that it takes for someone to not even take the 5 seconds it'll take to help out a fellow human being. It's easy; and even if it's posted it just gets thrown into the judgement of public opinion. "BNF"s can't do *anything*; herding fandom is like herding *cats*. The only thing BNF's *can* do is raise awareness, and it's not hard to advertize.

At all.

[edit] the response by heidi8; which, okay is more than a link, but still, it still is just a request for a 'shout out'. Not for anything major, a link, a word, maybe even a pimp of cleolinda's project (the movie parody project).

gah, fandom. you so silly.


The fan with cancer's info page: http://www.4christina.org/

Her ebay page where she's selling the crafts she's been able to make.

From what I can tell, her husband's lost his job and she lost her insurance; I'm not asking ya'll to help if you are already strapped for cash. But, and only if you are able to, help out a little?

[edit] guede_mazaka's looked through her website and found some backing info to this fan's claims.

btw, ya'll have great comments that I want to respond to, but it's 1pm and I gotta run (I'll be back around 10ish)

Comments

[pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com]

I've got to look into this. I've known aome for something like six years now (!) and she, at least, has never struck me as the needless trolling type.

[permetaform]

huh. tell me what you find out, yes?

[pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com]

Okay. I'm just in this for aome because she's my friend. It's actually about 4.5 years (we met in the Roswell fandom during that show's S2), she held my (virtual) hand as I took my first steps in slash *and* as I went through cancer treatment myself, I knitted her baby a sweater, etc.

And what's funny is, I think she got involved for kind of the same reason. I didn't see her saying anything (at least when I was reading) against sapphsmum; I saw her defending heidi8. Her friend.

Just like I'm doing for aome.

I also think it's kind of disingenuous of sapphsmum to poke her head in and say "hi, there, remember me? i was the subject of a flamewar three months ago, but that's water under the bridge. i'd like you to help me." You know?

(she does, after all, admit that donations went up after the first wankfest)

I think the term is "stirring the coals."

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I'm devoting this much energy to this but here's the only place I see aome show up, unless she's one of the utter assholes posting over at Journalfen who don't give their LJ identity out.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Actually, looking at that particular run of posts, I sorta wonder if all those people realized whose journal they actually were posting in. I know if I'm bouncing between several journals following a thread like this that I sometimes lose track. The original post permataform quotes is accusing them of "trolling a dying woman's journal", when at least that thread looks like a wanky but abstract argument that happened to be taking place in the journal in question...

I can't believe I'm devoting this much energy to this

*wince* I know. Trainwreck syndrome, compounded with the hope of finding *some* sanity or sympathy left online...

[bandgeek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kinda saw this before it had become a full-on wank. luna_k pointed me toward Christina's journal because she was asking for help, and I saw the nonsense.

The trolling notwithstanding, I think the thing that bothers me the most is that people would congratulate themselves as great humanitarians for buying a BNF an iPod. Talk about priorities.

[permetaform]

::nods:: dude, yes.

and lets not mention the laptops, eh? ::wry grin::

[bandgeek.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

But anyway, I was thinking about doing some sort of crochet fundraising project for her. At the very least, I thought I might make a poncho or something (everyone wants Martha's right now!) for auction.

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

Could you link to this as well? heidi88 didn't refuse to post a link:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/heidi8/454327.html

[permetaform]

ahhh, thank you for clearing that up, will do. As it stands tho, I don't think it would have been such a hard thing to simply just link to the site again or, simply to cleolinda's page.

meh. wank. ::wry grin::

[permetaform]

wait.

what generation is heidi8 from?

does she understand exactly what a 'shout out' entails? o.0

'cause it's just like a "hey, look at this" not "omg please set up a huge project for me"

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

Heidi is a very recent addition to my flist (last two weeks?) but I think she's about my age. I'm 33.

I see this as a story about the dangers of being a BNF. One small misunderstanding becomes a huge F_W thing. I find it believable that if I were approached by someone I didn't really know (note that I don't know who Heidi does and doesn't know) and asked to do this, I might not have time *right at that moment* to do it. I might not even respond to the request at all, let alone say if you make a post to f_a I will link to that. But it would't be wank, because I'm nobody. Heidi has two kids and is about to give birth to a third, a husband, a job, a very busy website, and her email-doohicky hasn't been working. ::shrug:: I barely have time to read my flist, let alone post and comment to the extend that I want to, and I don't have the kids, husband, or website to take up my time.

When people on my flist need something, big or small, I help out if I can. But I can't take care of the whole internet. And, unlike many people, I know who is on my flist because I chose them, and I don't automatically friend back.

[ladyjaida.livejournal.com]

I see this as a story about the dangers of being a BNF. One small misunderstanding becomes a huge F_W thing. Yes. Exactly.

[sarahtheboring.livejournal.com]

Not to acquit the trolling (which is badbadbad) or blame the victim here, but the wording of the post quoted in heidi8's entry struck me as kind of vague. She didn't actually ask to be linked. It's about how breast cancer gets too much press and nobody cares about non-"famous" cancers and the kindness of strangers and... actually says nothing about linking at all. I would be confused for a moment too, if I were reading that, and it didn't take long for a moment of confusion to explode into a worldwide hatestorm.

But the silver lining is that through the worldwide hatestorm, people are being directed to the site where they should've been to begin with.

...random nobody's 2c. best wishes to all.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I don't know Heidi or Christina at all, I'm not in the HP fandom, and I'm not taking sides here -- but what I see from Christina's comment and Heidi's reply is a genuine misunderstanding. Christina's very obviously trying to be polite, and her deferential polite language puts her actual concrete request (to post the Amazon link) in the middle of the second comment. Her first comment is an explanation of her need for the link to be posted - but it contains a paragraph that does look like she's asking Heidi to organise something with her real life charity contacts. By talking about Heidi's wide range of "contacts" in a comment to a post in which Heidi is talking about just such a real life contact's charity work, I can see where the misunderstanding came up. It looks like she's asking for a number of things: for some sort of educational campaign on her terrible illness, for that information to be spread on LJ, and for her Amazon link to be posted.

Given that Heidi went to some trouble to direct Christina to what she thought was a more helpful LJ community, offered to alert her friendslist to Christina's post there and said she'd use the Amazon link, I don't think it's fair to say Heidi didn't want to post a link. She misread what Christina was asking, but I think Christina then misread Heidi's "refusal" - the only thing Heidi said she couldn't do was something Christina didn't mean to ask for, but the refusal was read as being for the action Christina did ask for - even though Heidi had offered to do what she wanted.

I think both of them misread each other, both are under medical stresses, and neither deserve to be made targets.

[permetaform]

huh. good points. ::ponders::

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I haven't checked out the links yet, and I don't especially want to get dragged into wank myself, as much fun as it sounds, but I gotta say this from the devil's advocate side. I don't tend to link much in my journal anyway, but I would be really hesitant to link a private charity that wasn't of someone I didn't know personally, if I didn't have time to thoroughly investigate the situation. I've seen enough false charity scams to be automatically suspicious, and while I personally will randomly donate money to uncertain causes, I wouldn't want to direct someone else wrong. Not that I have any idea if that's what happened - the trolling personal journals seems rather outside that? But...

[permetaform]

heidi8 is the same one who massively helped fundraise to get CC 4 laptops (of middle to high-end range).

and it's not hard to go, "would someone take a look at this and figure out if it's something I should pimp?"

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

ah, okay, that gives me better perspective on where the wank is coming from. Geh, messy. (And I really didn't mean to cast any aspersions on the charity's sad circumstances; I've just had a couple close calls with fraud that make me a suspicious bitch.)

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Christina was known to her-- about the time the laptops thing came around she was publicized as a more worthy cause and there was a whole thing about it. I do think you have the right to pimp whatever you want in your journal, and I think Christina should've emailed about it rather than making the huge public thing it's become, but it really wouldn't have killed Heidi to post the link.

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Geh fandom wank gives real wank a bad name.

[permetaform]

::sad nods:: wanking should be a happy thing and not quite so disgruntling.

;D

ooo, btw, took a glance again at the vid and I still think that it's more coherent later.

HOWEVER...what you might play around with is filters. I think one of the reasons why I got so confused in the beginning was figuring out they were separate incidences...or maybe they were overlapping measures? maybe if you color-tint the separate storylines?

[iapetusneume.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. I know how it feels to have a family member with a rare disease where there is no help lines, so once I can get the ability to donate some money (I'm a bit strapped for cash right now myself), I'm going to.

And... seeing a dying woman's journal get trolled like that has to be one of the most vile things I have ever seen. If her friends wished to defend heidi8's "honor", I wish they would have done it somewhere else. I've seen other situations (not this extreme since someone wasn't dying) where two people wanted to tear each other apart in a flame war, but had enough sense to take it off their friend's LJ and go to one of their own. While that wank was a bit ridiculous as well, at least everyone involved in that particular flame war had enough sense to go elsewhere.

Also, thank you for posting the list of those individuals who were the leaders of Teh Trolling. Those are the kind of people I never want to deal with, and banned them from my personal LJ as well as three communities I run.

[permetaform]

np. ::hugs hard:: best of wishes for your own situation too, that's why I specifically emphasized to not give if your wallet can't handle it, giving shouldn't come out of guilt.

[cicer.livejournal.com]

Mmmph! *drools* Icon love!

[stormcloude]

Wow, am I ever glad I'm not in HP fandom. Not just because of this, but laptops and ipods? Jeez. Get a job and live within your means like the rest of the world.

[permetaform]

aheh. HP fandom is...funny like that...

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I checked out her site--she's got photocopies of tax forms and med diagnosis papers. Too blurry for me to read, and I wouldn't be able to interpret them, either. But googled the kind of cancer she says she has. Came up with:

this

this.

this

So it's definitely rare, definitely can be fatal, and since it's in the salivary gland, I can easily see it spreading to involve the digestive system in general. Which might explain the gastric bypass surgery she's having, though don't quote me there--my medicine's not that good.

If you can't open the pdf (second one), lemme know. I'll email you a copy.

[permetaform]

OH YOU *ROCK*.

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

I'm still trying to figure out the gastric surgery angle--am pretty sure it wasn't originally intended for weight loss, and it's not that hard a jump from salivary gland to gastric cancer. But am not sure.

Also, fic? Do with it as you will:)

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

Hey, just got more info, including an explanation of why she's having gastric bypass surgery. Have been helpfully enlightened about the gastric bypass the cancer-patient is having. In addition to the cancer, she's been diagnosed with 'impaired fasting glucose,' which could be a sign of impending diabetes (info here) and is suffering from obesity and hyperlipedemia (basically high cholesterol), which puts her at advanced risk for a fatal stroke. Added to the chemo treatments and the usual recommendation to change diet and exercise to lose that weight, one may not work fast enough and two, may kill her before the cancer does (exercise of necessity stresses your body, and while a healthy person can tolerate that without problems, she's obviously nowhere near in good condition). She also has a condition called spondylosis, which is a degenerative disease of the spine and causes problems like pain, weakness, motor impairment, etc. Medication can relieve the pain, but only temporarily. Weight loss would help alleviate it more permanently by reducing the strain put on her backbone. Hence gastric bypass surgery could probably be her only logical recourse.

[reposoir.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. I think your post has cleared some of this up for me, Permetaform. Sometimes this stuff is so convulated I get confused about WTF people are hinting at on their LJs mentioning it.

I'm going to step back and not get involved, but I said it once on a fandom wank thread and I'll say it again: I have no probs with people helping out FRIENDS, but if you're going to pimp on your LJ to hundreds/thousands of people to give money for one "charity" (though I hardly consider an iPod or 4 laptops a charity), you'd better be prepared to pimp them all out once the floodgates have opened.

*sighs and shakes head*

[snowyheart.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I've been following this through f_w, and it's just disgusting how some people are acting about this.

Good on you for (gasp!) posting links and bringing this to your readership's attention.

[toxictattoo.livejournal.com]

This is a question I have, maybe you or someone reading can help me.

How would the clicking on the Amazon link from her page help her? Does a percentage of your purchase go toward her or something?

I'm not being a dick, I'm honestly curious in how that works.

[winter]

Yes, that's the way the Amazon affiliate thing works. You see it often on fanpages - the links to the source material on Amazon will have an affiliate ID on them. No extra cost to you, a few pennies for the affiliate.

I personally used the Amazon honours system to donate. Amazon already has my credit card, so I'm more confident about that than PayPal.

[toxictattoo.livejournal.com]

[nods] I thought so. If people don't want to donate their hard-earned cash to someone they don't know/a source they don't trust, that's their thing.

But I don't see what would be wrong with using the link the next they (I) go to Amazon.com to buy stuff. No extra cash outlay. I get my stuff, I help someone, it's all good!

Although, I did donate as well. [grin]

This whole wank is just mind blowing.

[laizeohbeets.livejournal.com]

What annoys me is how everyone is acting towards this. I know there's scams, and I know there's real things, but it's not even that hard to donate $1 or $5. (Sure, if you're a poor college student living from paycheck-to-paycheck, or unable to pay for things on your own, it's undertandable) $1 may not seem that much, but if 1 million people donated $1, it would be a million dollars.

If someone isn't sure about donating because they think it might be a scam, then they should just go walk on by, and leave it be, not lambast someone for it. Wow, the humanity of some people. *shakes head*

[cyprinella]

Wow, the humanity of some people.

I consider it a distinct lack thereof. You gotta wonder what crawled up their ass and died.

[ladyjaida.livejournal.com]

Bah I was writing an email to you, permetaform, trying to explain my stance on this but my computer crashed three times and I suppose it wasn't meant to be. *weeps*