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.

[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.

[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

[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...

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Geh fandom wank gives real wank a bad name.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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*

[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*