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Essay: Sources, Screencaps, and Citations
Apr. 10th, 2020 07:48 pmSources, Screencaps, and Citations
Series: Essay
Summary: “Electronic documents barely exist but they never stop barely existing.” --E. Saxey
Word Count: 3000
Notes: This isn't part of the usual Patreon poll! Instead, a kindly anon paid for this to help us through the Pestilence! Thanks, anon!
When I first started reporting on cult leaders preying on their fellow multiples, a young plural approached me, saying they’d been a cult survivor and that their abuser was still recruiting online. They gave me a couple dozen screencaps to investigate—“pics so it happened.”
They were lousy screencaps. It was impossible to tell when they’d been made and swathes of the conversation were clearly missing. What had been screencapped was so fragmentary and incoherent that it was hard to be sure what was happening at all, never mind if it was cult recruitment.
When I dug into the live sources, I found all the threatening harassment my little tattletale had left on the “cult leader's” fanfic. The “predator” was in fact the victim; my informer, Panopticon, had been stalking and harassing her online for over a year, and they almost got me to help.
Let’s talk about sources, citations, and screencaps in psychological guerrilla warfare online.
( Bibliographies = SRS BNS )
Series: Essay
Summary: “Electronic documents barely exist but they never stop barely existing.” --E. Saxey
Word Count: 3000
Notes: This isn't part of the usual Patreon poll! Instead, a kindly anon paid for this to help us through the Pestilence! Thanks, anon!
When I first started reporting on cult leaders preying on their fellow multiples, a young plural approached me, saying they’d been a cult survivor and that their abuser was still recruiting online. They gave me a couple dozen screencaps to investigate—“pics so it happened.”
They were lousy screencaps. It was impossible to tell when they’d been made and swathes of the conversation were clearly missing. What had been screencapped was so fragmentary and incoherent that it was hard to be sure what was happening at all, never mind if it was cult recruitment.
When I dug into the live sources, I found all the threatening harassment my little tattletale had left on the “cult leader's” fanfic. The “predator” was in fact the victim; my informer, Panopticon, had been stalking and harassing her online for over a year, and they almost got me to help.
Let’s talk about sources, citations, and screencaps in psychological guerrilla warfare online.
( Bibliographies = SRS BNS )
