[Thread: Fandoms]
I was called by a long lost friend's parents today. A bit of history, she was involved with the fandom(?) of a popular sports team for the past year or so. The involvement grew so intense that she was engaged with the fandom-things for better part of the day ->

She administered multiple social media "fan-accounts" for the team and the players, had a huge "friends-group" within the fandom itself etc.

In the last few weeks, she almost stopped speaking to her parents, and lost all the contact with her friends in the lockdown. ->
3 weeks ago, somehow a (alleged) rumor spread within their fandom circle's social media that she is a "mole for the opposite team" (or something like that) and she faced everything from abuses to rape threats (was reported to authorities. More on that later) ->
From what the description sounded like, the harassment was really worse than what political social media has (in my experience of hot takes in the past year)

Anyway, 2 days after this rumor, their "fandom team lost to opposite fandom team" on some online contest thing. ->
She was blamed by the "friends" in the fandom "for conspiring" and this person went into a literal shock.

Couldn't speak, couldn't eat, lay in bed all day, didn't even get up to visit the restroom and was deaf to everything. FOR 48 HOURS. Had to be taken to a doctor. ->
Parents were clueless to what happened until a week ago when they finally opened her phone. Police complaints was filed for mental harassment and criminal intimation. ->
Now in this case, the team most likely didn't even know these folks' existence.

However, I have personally seen many people with large followers base endorsing such social media fandom gangwars. ->
There's no moral conclusion on preach to this thread.

I don't even know what to feel about this. This is just so unexpectedly horrendous.

I just felt it was a very important thing which y'all should know. Maybe prevent a friend from falling that deep in the rabbit hole (?) Idk.
@threadreaderapp unroll

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