Tuesday 15 July 2014

How to become a famous blogger, in the bad way

I'd never even heard of the blog Halfway to Fearless until the author created a thread about it at Get Off My Internets, intending to increasing her web presence. She achieved her goal, but in ways she probably never expected.

Get Off My Internets is a snark site. The forum posters are highly trained to sniff out BS. So they glommed on fairly quickly that the person who started the thread, was actually the author, Beverly Stevens Peevyhouse. They called her on it. Beverly created some sockpuppet accounts* to cover her trail, and even created one for her husband claiming that Beverly died. Yes, she faked her own death when her lies were exposed. In the meantime, forum posters discovered that Beverly had been stealing recipes and photos from other blogs and posting them as her own. She even watermarked the stolen photos.

Bev keeps popping into the thread under different accounts, not realizing that the site administrator was tracking the IP addresses, and the email addresses used to create each account. Partypants, the site admin, had little patience for this BS and went public with the story, thus guaranteeing lots of publicity for Beverly. The bad kind.

As of this writing, Beverly has deleted the blog, her Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts, and is now back on the thread as yet another sockpuppet.

So - this is how become a famous blogger, in the bad way:

  1. Steal recipes and photos from other bloggers and post them as your own.
  2. Create an account on a snark site using an email address easily linked to your blog.
  3. Start a thread about yourself on a snark site.
  4. When creating sockpuppet accounts, don't change your IP address or email address.
  5. Repeatedly threaten to leave when your lies are exposed but don't.
  6. Fake your death.
  7. Finally admit you started the thread but deny the sockpuppet accounts.
  8. Post in a thread where people have discovered your plagiarism and have no problem calling you on it.
  9. Don't know when to stop.


* Sockpuppet accounts are accounts created to be deceptive. Typically, they're created to praise or defend another account or to carry out a hoax. It was determined that Emily Dirr of the Warrior Eli hoax created 71 sockpuppet accounts on Facebook.

Update - congratulations Beverly Peevyhouse, for winning "Best Flounce" in the 2015 GOMI Awards!

0 comments:

Post a Comment