latest in fandumb
May. 23rd, 2020 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davemerrillSo there was a thing that happened this week over on the twitter and the YouTubes.
A YouTuber who has "yaoi paddle historian" in her bio made a video about a year ago in which she spoke of the worst injury reported from a yaoi paddle. According to her source, at an Otakon between 2005-2007, somebody hit somebody else with a yaoi paddle so hard that it shattered his pelvis. The victim is "still in a wheelchair" and the perpetrator was arrested and went to jail.
This video went live, got about 700,000 views, and it was months before anyone who was attending conventions at this time saw it and thought, hey, this is a pretty serious thing to have happened, why didn't I hear of it?
It came across my twitter feed and I agreed, I know a lot of people in the con scene, I know the guy that was con chair of Otakon at this time, we'd talk about something like this, we don't think it ever happened. That was the general consensus on twitter.
The YouTuber was put in the mix and they defended their video by saying that they trusted their source, and even though there was zero corroborating evidence - no names of victim or perp, no arrest record, no hospital record, no Otakon record - she was standing by the source.
Then the official Otakon social media account got into the act. They said, and I quote: "So official Otakon account here: This story is entirely fabricated. It's not true. It's a fake. There was never a hospitalization injury due to a yaoi paddle, or assault charges. Please don't spread unfounded rumors like this."
Faced with this, the YouTuber did the right thing, she took the video down. Meanwhile, her source, which is the guy who sells doujinshi at anime cons, you know the guy, he is really loud about the doujinshi he's selling, he used to sell the yaoi paddles, this guy decides he needs to weigh in. Maybe there's some fire to this smoke after all?
No such luck. Doujinshi vendor says that he had heard "stories" about people getting hurt with yaoi paddles - which he was selling at the time (!!). At this time, anime conventions were waking up to the inherent problems of selling what are essentially fraternity paddling paddle blunt instruments to thousands of excitable teens who are liable to whack each other with them. So anime cons were preventing the sale of yaoi paddles, in much the same way they prevent the sale of other potentially dangerous objects.
So, when he was prevented from selling yaoi paddles, the doujinshi vendor was asked "why can't you sell them" and he replied with "because people are getting hurt" and that story, like all unverified stories, grows in the telling until it becomes "somebody got his pelvis broken and he's permanently disabled and the paddler went to jail". And he kept telling people this story without any thought as to whether or not it was true, how it made Otakon look, how it made fans of yaoi or of Japanese animation or comics in general look, he just needed a story to tell people.
He couldn't just say "The con said I can't, ask them" and go on about his business. No way.
Anyway, that's HIS story, that it was a story HE was told and he was just passing it along. Way to throw your YouTuber friend under the bus there, guy.
And the moral of the story is, fact checking is your friend.
Anyway one bonus is that I got to hear about Mercedes Lackey getting super paranoid at 1996 Dragoncon, in a story that involves body armor, bodyguards, mysterious black-clad figures, and the requisite beating and arrest that leaves no reports of any kind... https://fanlore.org/wiki/Mercedes_Lackey_-_%22The_Dragoncon_Report%22?fbclid=IwAR3FSaMBrS8UYcqjHmldAAruofYew8-DrrMbPEyVIV3fRICYQuV_wdy1rwM
A YouTuber who has "yaoi paddle historian" in her bio made a video about a year ago in which she spoke of the worst injury reported from a yaoi paddle. According to her source, at an Otakon between 2005-2007, somebody hit somebody else with a yaoi paddle so hard that it shattered his pelvis. The victim is "still in a wheelchair" and the perpetrator was arrested and went to jail.
This video went live, got about 700,000 views, and it was months before anyone who was attending conventions at this time saw it and thought, hey, this is a pretty serious thing to have happened, why didn't I hear of it?
It came across my twitter feed and I agreed, I know a lot of people in the con scene, I know the guy that was con chair of Otakon at this time, we'd talk about something like this, we don't think it ever happened. That was the general consensus on twitter.
The YouTuber was put in the mix and they defended their video by saying that they trusted their source, and even though there was zero corroborating evidence - no names of victim or perp, no arrest record, no hospital record, no Otakon record - she was standing by the source.
Then the official Otakon social media account got into the act. They said, and I quote: "So official Otakon account here: This story is entirely fabricated. It's not true. It's a fake. There was never a hospitalization injury due to a yaoi paddle, or assault charges. Please don't spread unfounded rumors like this."
Faced with this, the YouTuber did the right thing, she took the video down. Meanwhile, her source, which is the guy who sells doujinshi at anime cons, you know the guy, he is really loud about the doujinshi he's selling, he used to sell the yaoi paddles, this guy decides he needs to weigh in. Maybe there's some fire to this smoke after all?
No such luck. Doujinshi vendor says that he had heard "stories" about people getting hurt with yaoi paddles - which he was selling at the time (!!). At this time, anime conventions were waking up to the inherent problems of selling what are essentially fraternity paddling paddle blunt instruments to thousands of excitable teens who are liable to whack each other with them. So anime cons were preventing the sale of yaoi paddles, in much the same way they prevent the sale of other potentially dangerous objects.
So, when he was prevented from selling yaoi paddles, the doujinshi vendor was asked "why can't you sell them" and he replied with "because people are getting hurt" and that story, like all unverified stories, grows in the telling until it becomes "somebody got his pelvis broken and he's permanently disabled and the paddler went to jail". And he kept telling people this story without any thought as to whether or not it was true, how it made Otakon look, how it made fans of yaoi or of Japanese animation or comics in general look, he just needed a story to tell people.
He couldn't just say "The con said I can't, ask them" and go on about his business. No way.
Anyway, that's HIS story, that it was a story HE was told and he was just passing it along. Way to throw your YouTuber friend under the bus there, guy.
And the moral of the story is, fact checking is your friend.
Anyway one bonus is that I got to hear about Mercedes Lackey getting super paranoid at 1996 Dragoncon, in a story that involves body armor, bodyguards, mysterious black-clad figures, and the requisite beating and arrest that leaves no reports of any kind... https://fanlore.org/wiki/Mercedes_Lackey_-_%22The_Dragoncon_Report%22?fbclid=IwAR3FSaMBrS8UYcqjHmldAAruofYew8-DrrMbPEyVIV3fRICYQuV_wdy1rwM
