Chapter 9 – The Unravelling of the Sockpuppets

@gottiewrites 25/08/14

Today, it’s time for another @silentwakes update. You all kicked off in the comments about my cliffhanger at the end of the last LiveJournal chapter – sorry, I couldn’t resist! Hopefully this answers all of your burning questions.

---

Events of August 2010

In the immediate aftermath of @silentwakes’ crowdfunding efforts, @lillyletters gained eight new friends in the Loch & Ness fandom. This was a big deal for her, because @lillyletter, as seen in her profile archived in August 2010, only had three followers total. She was what I would have called a lurker if I didn’t know better. A few of her new friends must have been curious about what kind of person can casually donate thirteen thousand dollars to a complete stranger, because @effiemeral wrote this super-locked-down post a day after her donation was revealed.¹

Is anyone else getting alarm bells about @lillyletters? Her account is only two months old, and she just kind of started posting out of the blue. Do any of you remember seeing her username commenting anywhere before?

Maybe she just made a new account under a new name, I don’t know. After she friended me back, I had a look at some of her archive and in a review of Loch & Ness book 6, she mentioned a headcanon theory about Lyra’s college years from @helena’s fic Innocence. I’m pretty sure that fic is friends-only?! And @lillyletters is not friended with @helena. So how did she read that fic if she’s not on her flist?²

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a hint of a sockpuppet here.

Comments

@mswriter I am SO glad someone else said this! I’ve been totally thinking this ever since her donation. It’s super dodgy.

@nessiesgirl If it’s a sockpuppet, that means the real user must be someone on @helena’s flist. Would you like me to do some sleuthing?

@effiemeral Inboxing you now.

If you aren’t aware of the term, a ‘sockpuppet’ is a throwaway account set up to post under a fake identity. It’s usually used to comment on other people’s blogs. The idea is that it’s like a hand puppet you use to speak with, instead of using your own mouth. @effiemeral had good instincts – here is @lillyletter’s first ever blog post, dated only a month earlier:

Hi guys! New account, but I’ve been in fandom for a while. It just took this long to get an invite code!

I’m Lilly, I’m thirtymumblemumble and I live in Montana with my husband and sons. I discovered the Loch & Ness books at Christmas and I read them all in a single week. I have a countdown on my calendar of the number of days until the last book comes out. I honestly can’t believe it’s nearly over.

My thoughts on L&N, let me show them to you: I ship Lyra/Jayden but I don’t mind other ships, especially if Fang is involved (that is one hell of a man, ‘nuff said). I loooove anything with a fake relationship, that is my ultimate guilty pleasure.

Please friend me, I’d love to meet more of you now that I can actually post! (And concrit on my fics is not welcome, thank you.)

– Lilly

@nessiesgirl and @effiemeral started investigating, and they managed to find a recent comment that @lillyletters had made on a post in the @lochandnessfans community. They got in touch with the mods, who gave them the IP address that @lillyletters had posted from.³ The IP address wasn’t from Montana, as Lilly had claimed, but LA – where @silentwakes lived. @silentwakes was one of 110 people who were friended with @helena’s account, so he was one of the only 110 people who had access to the fic “Innocence”, which Lilly had quoted. Out of those 110, 67 lived in the USA, and @silentwakes was the only one who lived in LA. @nessiesgirl was furious about all of this, and left a call-out comment on @silentwakes’ latest post:

Do you know @lillyletters in real life? I would expect a donation of that size to come from a family member or close acquaintance, not some stranger on the internet.

@silentwakes replied within an hour:

No, I don’t know her! Weird, right? I’m so grateful though. ❤

Thirty minutes later, @lillyletters made a new blog post:

I thought I’d share a photo of me and my boys! Here we are on our summer vacation this year. As you can see, I have the worst sunburn. It’s still a bit flaky on my shoulders, ugh.

My boys spent the whole time digging the biggest holes in the sand that they could and eating four ice creams a day (as expected).

Attached was a blurry photo of a woman in a blue swimming costume, sitting on a beach with two small boys laying against her sides. Google reverse search wasn’t available as a function in 2010, but when I ran a search today, I found the same photo on a blog post from 2009 by a Mormon housewife from Kansas. @nessiesgirl and @effiemeral wouldn’t have known that, though. This is just an assumption, but I suspect that Rob had an inkling that @nessiesgirl had somehow worked out who @lillyletters really was, and was trying to cover his tracks by posting a photo of ‘her’. He googled ‘American housewife’ and chose a picture from the image results. Even if his intention here wasn’t to put @nessiesgirl off the scent, this whole series of interactions is rife with connotations. As a test, @effiemeral commented on @lillyletter’s post, saying that she liked her swimming costume, and asking where she went on vacation. ‘She’ replied that they went to California. At this point, @effiemeral and @nessiesgirl could have given up, and decided they were just being paranoid. But then @silentwakes made a new post, saying this:

Thanks for all your love on my new art. I’m going offline for a few days while I’m in New York for a college trip.

I leave tomorrow at 9. Don’t post too much while I’m gone!

At ten a.m. on the dot the next day, @lillyletters commented again on a @lochandnessfans community post, specifically replying to a comment made by @nessiesgirl.

I love your icon, @nessiesgirl! Did you make it? Can I steal it?

Again, this is speculation, but I don’t think it’s a leap to assume that Rob was making a point of posting while @silentwakes was ‘offline’, to prove a second time that @lillyletters was not him. @nessiesgirl obviously got this hint that that’s what he was doing, because she immediately logged the IP address of the reply to her comment. It was the same one as last time, located in LA. She replied to the comment with this:

Hah, of course! So, are you still on vacation, @lillyletters? You must be getting a great tan!

@effiemeral went a step further. She made a blog post, which she left public:

TO SOCKPUPPETS AND THEIR OWNERS

We know what you’re doing, and you’re not welcome in the L&N community. Please stop.

This is a nice, chill fandom. I’d rather we didn’t strive to take the crown of wankery from the supernatural fandom, y’all

From Effie, cosigned by @nessiesgirl

Comments

Anonymous hee, I think we’ve got a long way to go before we get to the spn plane of crazy. who is this about? Who is this about? *curious eyes*

@nessiesgirl We probably shouldn’t say, but they recently made quite a big donation to themselves….Massive attention-seeker.

Anonymous WELL WELL WELL.

Anonymous Why would someone donate money to themselves? I don’t work for the IRS or anything but that seems pretty dodgy if you ask me….

@silentwakes was less on-a-school-trip than he claimed, because within fifteen minutes of this post going online, an anonymous commenter posted on @effiemeral’s call-out post:

Anonymous dick.

@effiemeral *waves* Hi @silentwakes/@lillyletters! How’s the weather in LA? Or, wait. Is that Los Angeles? Your IP address is confused.

After that, it was all-out war. But we’ll get to that soon. So, to recap: @lillyletters was a fake account created by @silentwakes himself. Which means that when he claims that ‘Lilly’ sent him a thirteen grand donation, it was a lie to get attention. I’ll leave it there for now. I’ve got more Girl Scout-adjacent things to be getting on with. – gottie

---

Footnotes

July 2010:

Effiemeral: why are you doing this to me?

Effiemeral: hello? Are you really just going to ignore me too?

Effiemeral: we both know you’ve made this up. I just don’t understand why you’d bother.

Effiemeral: great. bye, then. screw you, I guess.

Silentwakes: sorry.