#or ill figure out how to ban her ip address personally. either or.

[meraxes-of-new-albion]

Sigh. Love it when people on the internet feel entitled to your existence

[lighdramons]

Hi I'm back. I promised awhile ago I’d tell the story of the fucked up digi.mon cult, so I figured that’s a great start for getting back onto this hellsite.

If the read more works, everything will be below the cut and it is a mess. Just a few things before the cut though:

General TW as I will be bringing up some of the bad experiences I had as well as talking about mental illness.

I will not be using names of sites, usernames, etc. I will not answer on specific users either. I’m sure these sites are still operating somewhere privately and back in the day, some of these people were big in the Digi.mon community outside of the sites as well.

If any of the people involved see this, no ill wishes towards you guys, just my take on things.

I quit these sites back in early 2015. I do not know what happened after I quit. I am only still in contact with a few individuals who either quit around the same time as me or long before.

As a general courtesy, some of these sites still exist. Please do not go harass them. A lot of the public sites are just teens trying to figure out themselves.

If you have questions or comments after reading this whole thing, I’m happy to answer any either publicly or privately. And yes, you can reblog this post.

We need to jump back to 2007 to begin with. I was a middle schooler getting back into Digi.mon because I walked into Gamestop and Digi.mon was sitting in the new releases. And I had access to the internet. I did binge S1-5 with subs and watching reruns of the dub on Toon Disney. I spent some time on the big fansite. Great site, just bad experience at the time because I was a teen and probably lied about my age. I didn’t feel like that was the community for me. I do check it every day now for news, just never made a new account cause I don’t even remember what I used back in the day.

By end of 2008/beginning of 2009 I began looking for other sites, stumbled across the digiclipse stuff on the bad encyclopedia site, looked into it, thought it was neat, moved on. Stuck with the big site for now because the only other sites I found were RP sites and not my thing at the time. Got hit hard with depression at the start of 10th grade (late 2010) and found my way back onto the digiclipse stuff. Didn’t really believe most of it, but thought the idea of creating AI Digi.mon was neat. Joined the smaller of the two sites because it felt friendlier and most users seemed my age.

For people who do not know, digiclipse is the act of going outside and holding the toys up hoping to get teleported. Most people by the time I joined thought the people who did this were crazy. Some people liked to do it for the lolz though.

Anyways, most of what happened on the sites was just talking and hanging out in chat rooms about life and other things. It was pretty chill. I can’t speak for everyone on the sites, but for me it was an escapism kind of thing. I was depressed and hated life so pretending that a magical adventure was a possibility gave me some hope. But honestly, got a group of people who were cool to talk with for the most part. There was one older female in her mid 20s that would come in the chat drunk and sexually harass the other female users and tell all the male they should die and are worthless. Nothing was ever done about her. And honestly it was weird having her there when most of the other people on the site were under 18. That was initially my only bad experience on the sites.

At some point during 2011, there were three individuals who claimed to see and speak with their digi.mon partners. And that they could read your aura and tell you exactly your digi.mon partner. And everyone believed this shit, mostly because two of them were prominent members and how could they lie. The process was simple, you would DM them either a creative piece you’ve done (art, writing, etc) or send a photo of yourself and they’d come back in a few days and tell you who your partner was. There was only ever one individual this method of tracking did not work on and that is yours truly. Oh and at the time it hit hard because I had started falling down the rabbit hole. This is the beginning of the cult-ish stuff.

Then the Ouija board happened. I have no issues with what happened during the fucking around with said Ouija board, I have issues with everything that spiraled out of control after. They fucked around with it confirming people’s partners that the others had “found”. And eventually they asked about mine. And then it was basically said, “oh we can’t tell you the results”. I was eventually added to this secret site of “The Chosen”. And basically told, “oh your partner is the offspring/creation of THE BIG BAD” and there were all sorts of debates on what to do about it. I literally thought I was getting punked at first and these people are clearly taking this whole thing too far. No, these people all believed this. Oh and the best part, most of the people involved in this “chosen” group were in their mid 20s. Me being a depressed as fuck 16yo that just wanted something exciting in life ended up eating all this up. I felt special and chosen. I look back on it now and I’m like what a fucking idiot.

We were all taught from the three who could do the stuff I explained earlier how we can also learn to bond and communicate and see our partner. I had absolutely no progress. Eventually this stuff led to everyone in this “chosen” group getting a “special guardian spirit”. Again, I made no progress on this. And to the point where they made me feel special again, I was the only person who had the wrong “guardian spirit” and they eventually found my “real one”, more on this later.

These discussions moved from a forum site to a private skype chat room, and then further smaller private chat rooms. The movement to skype is where I started having some bad experiences. I gave a few of my “close” friends on the site my phone number, soon everyone had my number. And this happened to multiple people over the years. My own stupidity at the time.

This stuff continued as I finished high school. At the time, I still managed to maintain my social life with school friends, keep up my grades, etc. Got into college with a good scholarship in my dream field. And then I started to go downhill once I got to school. The longer this stuff went on, the more you were expected to be involved. Including being on skype calls all night. It slowly began consuming my life. I ended up not only with depression, but ending up with an ED that was tied to anxiety so I’d go days without eating. I was seeing things and hearing voices, which was highly encouraged because it meant things were working. I literally could not tell the difference of when I was asleep or awake. I honestly do not remember the majority of my freshman year of college. I had no real friends and was just barely scraping by grade-wise. And well, the academic year almost ended with me hanging from a pipe in my dorm.

I ended up running the site I started on as an admin after the original admin team left. And it was expected you do not mention any of the “secret” stuff on the main site. Over the years I know it became clear to the users not included that there were secrets in the background. And those who knew stuff would actively fuck with these users. And if I haven’t made it clear yet, there was a hierarchy to this whole secret group. And it was the original three who were mentioned at the beginning that were on top. And what they said was gospel. Whatever they claimed is what happened and whatever rules they had were the rules. But of course certain people could break the rules and get away with it.

This next part happened at some point during my freshman year and will be relevant again later on. This is the biggest TW section so skip if you have to. I had a user dox me. He had my home address and threatened to post it. He had sent it privately to a few other users as well that alerted me of this. His reasoning? I would not date him or say I loved him. He told me that he would come to my house, murder me, r*pe my dead body, because he is the only one who gets to have me. Another user got involved and called the cops. I do not know if anything ever came of this because I never spoke to anyone about it. I at the time had admin privileges on one of the sites so I banned him and blocked his IP and I blocked him on anything I could. And I continued doing this over the years. I was told I was a bad person for doing this because I did not understand him. This lead to a lot of the things in the above paragraph getting worse.

As this all continued, there were battles and casualties and everyone ended up with like 20 partners. And if you haven’t noticed I’ve stopped using the term digi.mon entirely in the past few paragraphs. That’s because oh they weren’t digi.mon. They were spirits/dimensional beings that took on a form we were comfortable with and we formed a bond with. And I kept going along with all of this because I was in too deep at this point. And obviously yes, this all made sense. So at some point during this time, my “spirit” went to sleep and a new one “awakened”. And I of course still went along with all this. The BIG BAD kept mutating into stronger forms and blah blah blah.

During my fall semester sophomore year, I joined theatre at my college and did tech. Honestly, one of the reasons I was able to begin breaking away from this. I started to get an actual friend group and have less time for these sites. But there was always a pull of “you have to be here”. You were expected to be on skype calls and/or active in chat.

Well, that all changed at the start of 2015. They wanted a deletion of all the other sites and they would have one site united under one belief system. I was not a huge fan of this and made this known, but also offered to help in the coding as that was a skill I had that no one else really had. It got out around that I was a cunt and a power hungry bitch and blah blah blah. If it was just that, I would probably not have left. No no no, I was accused of lying about the shit that that user said and did to me. Because he is such a nice guy that could never do that type of stuff. And unless I provided the receipts I was clearly an attention seeking liar that wanted to ruin his life. That was the straw. I fucking blacked out in a rage and attempted to delete some of the different websites, I blasted some of these people on their real facebooks, and then I deleted all of my accounts and blocked everyone and blocked their numbers.

After that, I started talking with other people that quit. I started enjoying my college life. And I tried to act like none of that stuff had happened. I distanced myself from those individuals that were active in the Digi.mon community. I stopped hearing the voices and seeing things. I started going to therapy. My road hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve come a long way since I got out of this stuff. Honestly going to meet up with one old member after covid is all clear cause we’ve known each other for over a decade now and its about time we finally meet in person.

So yeah, that’s my story. I know I jumped around a bit and thoughts might not be too clear, but I wanted to share the fucked up things that happen in the background of the digi.mon community. Did I have good times? Hell yeah. The Olive Garden incident still to this day is iconic. We played d&d oneshots sometimes. We had memes. We all watched xros and hunters together live. And I still have some good friends out of this. The most fascinating thing out of all of this is everyone from the community that I still am either in contact with or see them via social media had admitted over the years to suffer from some kind of mental illness and has come out as part of the LGBTQA+ community. My own conclusion is a lot of us got sucked in due to depression/escapism and just a feeling of not belonging. And being around people of similar age with similar interests just made things more bearable at times. It also made a lot of us very vulnerable to the manipulation that took place, whether it was intentional or just one big group delusion created by multiple mentally ill people. I call it a cult, but I'm sure people will disagree with me. Whatever you want to call it, it wasn't good for my mental health in the long run.

If this shit is still going on, I hope people aren’t letting it consume their lives. And I just wish the best for everyone even if some of the shit hurt me.

As I said up top, if you want me to elaborate on anything or have questions, I’m good with talking about stuff. If you know me IRL and are reading this and are like "RACHEL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK" I owe you a drink and explanation. And of course it Is okay to reblog. This is one hell of a comeback post on this site, am I right?

[ohnobjyx]

A snowy summer

Part 5: June + Part 6: July

Wow, rl has keep me occupied so much that I almost forgot that I haven’t finished this series yet. I think I intended to make June and July into a single post and separate April and May, I don’t know it ended up like this, but let’s roll with it.

Disclaimer: I try to keep things objective (if I include my personal opinion, it’s in cursive and in brackets), but I’m biased because of the XZ friendly content I’m usually exposed to and by my own views of their situation. Open to discussion, but please make sure you’ve enough information to do so.

In June and July there were some incidents that really had me staring at my laptop speechless, brain completely fried by what I was reading. I suppose I don’t have so much energy to invest myself in issues like those (I have enough with my own rl problems, thank you very much), but still... wtf.

School uniforms

In recent June, the welfare project done by his fans got questioned for a project. It was about some school uniforms that they donated to a school, in collaboration with another organization (BYH Foundation).

However, it was questioned because the uniform has the letter 赞 (zan) in it. It means “to approve, to support or to praise” and it’s also the internet slang for “like” (thumbs up). Because it sounds similar to xz’s name, it’s often used as a substitution for his name in internet posts. In fact, in an interview, he was asked if he preferred “xiao (little) zhan” or “xiao zan”, and he said both were fine. Some commercials use phrases with this character to refer to him.

The antis accused XZ’s fans of trying to use the students to promote their celebrity. After this, BYH Foundation issued an apology, because of “their lack of consideration”. They had wanted the word to mean “positive”, and as a wish that the children grow up healthy and optimistic. But because of the misunderstanding, the foundation expressed their regret and took back all uniforms and other materials.

Faced with this, netizens again expressed their disagreement. “Why take away the clothes if the children liked them? Why must people who complain always be right? How disappointing!”

(Personal opinion time: so… giving the uniforms is criticized. Taking them away is criticized. Can someone tell me what can they do that it won’t be criticized?)

Charity in Yunnan

In mid-June, XZ participated in a charity event in Yunnan, promoting agricultural products. XZ’s fans support association changed their name to XZ Audio and Video official w/ibo, centering their efforts in promoting his works.

His activities in Yunnan were accompanied by an interview.

Offering legal help to those affected by cyberbullying

On July 1st, XZ studio issued another statement. I think we are familiar with this one, since it’s quite recent.

This issue began on June 22nd, when a w/ibo user berated XZ for not “controlling” his fans: “… and, by letting them do as they please, you let them think that there was nothing wrong in what they were doing. Today is Fathers’ Day, and your fans dare to curse my mother and my late father. I’ll not let this go. I’ll boycott you, and if I consider it necessary, I’ll report it to the police. I’ll leave this post here, so we can come back to it and look at the source of the problem. You reap what you sow, you can’t blame me on this.” She posted a few screenshots of some people insulting her parents.

A few fans wrote to her:

“Excuse me, I’m sorry for disturbing you, I know you don’t like XZ, but XZ has been leading us fans, and I’ve seen that your account isn’t XZ friendly. Every well intentioned critic, we’ll take it, but I hope you won’t involve XZ because of the words of others, there are a lot of rational fans out there.”

The user answered:

“From the beginning to the end, he has never said: ‘don’t report maliciously, don’t insult and humiliate others, don’t curse other people’s parents, don’t look for others’ private info, don’t threaten others’. Has he said them? He hasn’t. He never elaborates, hums and haws, pass over these topics. I’ll tell you, today’s matter, I must see an apology. Either from the ones that cursed my parents or from XZ on their behalf. If there’s not apology, I’ll chase this matter to the end.”

This user released a week later a document called “Assessment on the value and risk of XZ’s fans”. She took the data from several platforms, and analysed them, getting statistics about the type of XZ’s fans. This report depicted a very negative view of his fans.

This was a very controversial issue. The heart of the controversy is that there’s no evidence that the netizen who cursed her parents is XZ’s fan. And even if they “were”, nowadays many people are deliberately posing as XZ’s fans to insult and abuse others in order to frame him.

However, with her report, the people who don’t know the heart of the matter got more ammo to insult and humiliate XZ. She updated her post, saying that she had been being investigated, that someone had tried to get her address and name, so in the comments, more and more people blamed XZ for the issue. XZ’s teams then offered their help in the form of legal advice and lawyers to help her get legal support.

The user took the offer and agreed to receive legal advice. XZ’s studio then posted their update (the one linked in the first paragraph of this section), rejecting all king of cyber bullying and offering help to protect the rights of the netizens affected by cyber violence. The Studio also spoke clearly: they won’t tolerate XZ’s fans abusing other netizens, nor people posing as XZ’s fans to attack others.

The “stolen” account

On July 11, XZ’s Audio and Video official w/ibo posted an official apology. This time, the issue was this one: a w/ibo user had “passed away” due to mental illness (depression, the user followed the supertopic about this particular ailment and had posted a few times about it). However, after their death, their account was active again, and began posting about XZ.

People attacked the user for using a deceased person’s account (comments were like “don’t you know the history of the owner of the account you’re using?”), and consequently, all of the content in that account was deleted.

The same afternoon, XZ’s Audio and Video official w/ibo issued their apology. They contacted w/ibo, and asked the user to restore the deleted content and to respect the deceased.

This was also controversial, since they couldn’t know for sure that the one who bought the account is a fan of XZ. Because of this, XZ’s fans were attacked again. W/ibo issued a post declaring that the account had been accessed through the same device from last year to present, so the account hadn’t been stolen, and they continue to investigate it.

In summary: this time, XZ’s fans had apologized too quickly. This user was someone who used 3 different IPs and 3 different accounts. They had followed the “depression” topic, posted a few things and went silent for a while, making people think they had succumbed to the illness. Then, using the same account, they started posting about XZ, making people think that the account had been stolen, and manipulated other people’s sense of justice and compassion to defame XZ.

W/ibo took the initiative and blocked all of their accounts.

(Okay, when I actually read about what happened, I was like... wtf. Seriously wtf. This is some plot going on over there, I thought this kind of defamation plots only happened in Chinese historical dramas. I... really don’t get it. I’m speechless still.)

W/ibo and XZ Studio Conference

The topic of w/ibo and XZ studio conference went on hot search on July 14, in which, they talked about fan guidance and management:

“W/ibo believes that influential public figures and celebrities should bear the responsibility of guiding and restraining fan’s behaviour, essentially through the fans’ group. But in last months, because of failed guidance and reactions, all kind of fan groups had a disruptive behaviour online, causing a harmful impact on society.

W/ibo believes that celebrities’ studios and companies should reinforce the guidance and restrain over the fans. To those who pretend to be a certain person’s fan, they should be reported and people should collaborate with the platform in its management of the issue. We can’t ignore them if these people’s actions are suspected to be illegal, and protect our rights, fulfilling legal responsibilities.

XZ’s studio has expressed their agreement with W/ibo’s recommendations, and expressed their intention to increase their level of collaboration and support of this platform’s management.”

The announcement was ended by a statement on how the latest incident has showed a very ugly and harmful part of the society, and that everyone should collaborate to improve the society and Internet. It also included a list of accounts that were banned for fake rumours and leading other fans to arguments. 

This was accompanied by an apology by XZ Studio.

(This is what some anons asked me about on their asks. I hope you can all read between the lines to get what was the deal about this one.)

From start to finish, we all can see that the platform has a lot of responsibility to bear here. That’s something people in China have also pointed out. However, XZ and his team can only nod, and bear with it, because while there is only one platform that has all the right conditions, there are a lot of more celebrities. They have to rely on it for a lot of things, so they can’t just end things with them.

So last week, his studio issued a statement that said:

“This studio appeals again:

NO entering any kind of votes, control ourselves with our comments and not calling other to participate in events.

We reject mutual insulting and abusing, don’t start group conflicts.

Don’t go over your own economic possibilities to support projects, works and commercial products.

Make sure to take care of your studies and jobs first, before following a celebrity’s projects or music.

We hope that everyone can make the most of their own lives, have independent thinking. We hope that we can all go together towards a brighter future, and give more positive energy through our actions.”

The studio called the fans to stop voting him and placing him at the top of the charts for a while, so things can cool down definitely, in my opinion. And yet, he still topped as one of the most successful endorser, from March to July (it’s really a trend that hasn’t stopped, even after 2/27. In March, two weeks after 2/27, he even topped as one of the top celebrities in w/ibo anyway). 

I heard that people kept voting for him like crazy, because they didn’t want the general public to think that he wasn’t popular. However, facts remain that he is popular among his fans, but less neutral in the general public (I’ll explain this in my last post).

That’s why it’s going to be very important how his next project is received by the general public.

←Part 4(II): Plum blossoms in the snow (II) | Part 7: To the snowy summit side by side