Everyone Loves a Trainwreck: Conclusion

[pirate_anon]

Everyone Loves a Trainwreck: Conclusion

Panopticon lied, distorted, and misrepresented many
things. But in the middle of their randomspacemechanic
excoriation of me, they did suggest one thing that I agree with: I
need to stop doing cultiples work. Because months after their
fght with me, now that I'm reassured of my relative safety and
have room to breathe, I fnd myself wondering: why did they
want to be my friend?

I am not in any of their fandoms. I am not a role-player, a
pagan, or fctionkin. My understanding of my own plurality
comes from a far more medical perspective than Panopticon seem
comfortable with, while their spiritual perspective is all Greek to
me. We both may be plural, but our experiences and
interpretations of that plurality are about as far apart as they can
get. What on earth did they see in me?

I believe that the sole reason that they wanted to be
friends with me was that I wrote about plural cults. That interest
was the only one we had in common. I don't know whether they
saw me as a mark, a projection of who they wanted to be, or a
"big name" who could make them look good, but regardless, I
feel used. Panopticon is neither the frst nor the last repellent
person who has tried to ingratiate themselves with me via my
cultiples work. Everyone loves a trainwreck, and that includes
creeps and predators.

It's true that I've met some wonderful people through this
work. But I've also met awful people. I've been harassed,
threatened, smeared, and professionally damaged, though only
mildly. At Flamecon, I lost money because I had to exhaust most
of my stamina fghting for the legal right to sell my work, to exist
professionally without violence, and not cry in front of my
customers. I had to keep event staff appraised of the threats, build
action plans in case those threats were acted on, and when I went
home, I then had to warn my neighbors not to give any
information about me. It was humiliating, degrading, and
necessary. I still have a note taped to the entrance of my
apartment building, telling people never to let anyone in for me.

All of this was what I expected when embarking on this
work--though I anticipated it from Draven, not Panopticon. What
I didn't expect was the deleterious effects of creating the work
itself. I admit, when I started cultiples work in spring of 2014, I
saw it as a spies game, a place where I could be the virtuous hero
fghting evil. I was a fool. The more I learned, the more I realized
how serious the stakes are. What if a cult leader recognized one
of my sources? What if they took revenge on them? What if a
troll horde descended on someone because of me? What if I got
my facts wrong?

And what about MY motives? Was I in this for the
trainwreck, the spectacle, the freakshow? Was I truly helping
anybody, or just wallowing in flth? I was spending years
downloading hundreds, even thousands of fles on people I
didn't even like! I was digging around in old library stacks,
newspaper archives, calling courthouses and police stations,
making spreadsheets and diagrams and lists. I was tracking their
movements and accounts the way they tracked their victims, and
when I found out that Draven was pants-shitting terrifed of me,
it was like discovering that I'd frightened the weather. What kind
of person was I becoming, that I scared someone like Draven?

Panopticon seems to have seen me as a potential attack
dog. Maybe they were right. Maybe I can become the kind of
person Draven is scared of, if I haven’t already.

But this isn't who I want to be, and this isn't what I want
my work to be; it certainly isn't what I want to spend my research
skills on. And so it's time to stop and move on. It's been a wild
ride, the past four and a half years; thank you for riding with me.
May we all live free of undue influence one day.