I realize this title is a bit like Confessions of an Opium Eater in some circles. For others it’s like revealing oneself to be a member of Opus Dei or the Rosicruceans. For still others, it’s the equivalent of espousing Satanism. For the real lowdown, keep reading, but don’t expect the DaVinci Code.
Before he had his own website, the person known as DJG put up his own graphic cartoons on another website. I enjoyed them—Susan Boyle landing her space ship, driving around in her little 3-wheeled car (this was long before the Peugeot) and dousing her tormentors with anti-paparazzi spray. (Edited to Add: Since the paparazzi now play nice with her, she plays nice with them.)
However, for some obscure (or perhaps non-existent) reason he was banned from that site, and put up his own. I say non-existent because this may have been one of the early examples of a dementor attack—spreading lies about an innocent person, so others take action against that person.
Here I will take a short break to explain my use of dementor, for those of you who haven’t heard it before. In the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, "Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them... Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself...soulless and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."
It is a quicker and easier way to describe a cyber-bully/cyber-stalker who torments people across the internet. It’s far more dangerous than a troll, and it’s MO is different. A troll pops out from under the virtual bridge, grabs your attention with something nasty, and then runs back under the bridge to hide. A dementor slithers through your computer screen, convincing you it’s a friend, then fills you with lies and sets you on a path to hurt others, returning again and again to keep you on that path. It projects its own evil on to its victims. I wish it were mythological, but it isn’t. I and many others have been its victims.
Which leads me back to DJG’s website. The particular dementor I am familiar with, has specialized in tormenting Susan Boyle fans across the internet, dividing them and turning them against one another. It has been quite successful in demonizing one particular website, that of DJG. Why it picked that one, I don’t know, but there it is. It has convinced hundreds of people that this site is evil, and wants to take over and devour other Susan Boyle fansites, particularly the largest one, susan-boyle.com, and its forum.
Since I’d heard some of these lies repeated by creditable people, I took them for granted. However in the period while we were discussing collaboration with the administrators and moderators in purchasing susan-boyle.com at auction, it became apparent that rancor between the two sites was going over the top. Mean posts and PM’s on both sites, fueled by the dementor, were dragged from one to the other. The level of distrust was incredible. The staff of susan-boyle.com did not want member ownership of the site for fear that the “DJG’ers” would seize control and take down the site. They demanded that we accept no loans from any “DJG’er” lest they renege on the loans and leave us holding the bag. Once the site was won at auction they were going to “clean out” all the troublemakers/DJG’ers and prevent any more from joining.
At this point I started getting uncomfortable. Who WAS a DJG’er? How did you define them? Names were named and they did not compute. Anyone who was “contentious”, that is brought up and defended ideas the admins & mods did not approve, was a DJG’r, even if they weren’t members of his site. Members of his site who always behaved politely at susan-boyle.com were also DJG’ers. Finally I asked if DJG’rs were only defined by the staff’s paranoia. This question was not welcome. I believe this was the moment when I began to fall from grace.
Webster’s dictionary defines “walpurgisnacht” as
1) the eve of May Day on which witches are held to ride to an appointed rendezvous
2) something (as an event or situation) having a nightmarish
quality.
On July 18, 2010, the forum.susan-boyle.com went through its own Walpurgisnacht. In the eyes of the staff, blinded by the dementor, lchris, Citroen Lady, the infamous DJG’res and myself were the witches riding to an appointed rendezvous. In our eyes, we faced the second definition. Members were locked out of areas they were previously in. Others were given access to places they had no permission to enter. Members and former members had their status changed as banned or unbanned or in purgatory awaiting unbanndment. Member’s names were changed. Over 100 incidents of unauthorized changes (I was the owner and sure didn’t authorize them) in the control panel and/or database were made and reported to lchris, who spent a 36-hour marathon trying to correct them..
At the same time hateful and outlandish accusations were made against us by staff and members. Staff abandoned their posts during this time of chaos. Lchris and I were harassed and insulted by people who as far as we knew, had no reason to hate us. We were totally bewildered. WTF was going on?
And who stepped in to help? The contentious people. And who stepped in to defend us in the posts? OMG, the DJG’rs! People I had fought with in threads in the past! Friends had become enemies and enemies had become friends. My entire view of Susan Boyle fandom turned inside out that night. And that was the point at whicht lchris and I realized that something strange was going on. Ultimately it led to the influence of the dementor. It felt like it had sucked the soul out of our forum that night.
That was when we turned the focus of our investigation to finding the creature behind this. That is our priority, in fact our obsession, for the last 4 months. Eventually we’ll get it. Then the healing of the rifts in Susan Boyle fandom can begin in earnest.
Finally, back to the title. A while after Walpurgisnacht I got an invitation to rejoin DJG’s forum. And it has its own name, which I’ll use from now on—The SusaHumor Forum. So I did. With some trepidation, because I still had some residue of the poison the dementor had spread. When I got there I found people who were funny, outspoken, intelligent, opinionated, irreverent –just like so many people on the susan-boyle forum. In fact some of them WERE on the susan-boyle forum, just like I was.
Sure there was anger, and bitterness and suspicion. I understood that after what lchris and I had been through, and what we’re still going through. But I think that once we clean off the filth from the dementor, all our different fansites can return to harmony with each other.
Hey now, hey now, Susan, get over here! We want you to be a channel of our peace!
