theteablogger

[theteablogger]

Will there ever be another timeline update?

Maybe. I'm still keeping an eye on Andy's Twitter, but it's all fashion, politics, long covid, and sparrow stuff. If I see anything that feels sketchy or manipulative, I screenshot it, but right now there isn't much to talk about. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop watching, though.

[theteablogger]

Has there any any indication about Andy showing up to Brandywine, the upcoming LOTR LARP? One of my friends got invited and I'm so excited for her, but, honestly, this feels like something tailor made for Andy to take advantage of, and I'm lowkey nervous for her.

I'm sure Andy won't be there. He had already moved on from LotR while he was still with Abbey in the mid 2000s, and he never retreads old ground--in large part because he's already infamous in every fandom into which he ever dipped a toe. You and your friend don't need to worry.

[theteablogger]

I was recently rewatching the Strange Aeons coverage of Andy's behavior and I was wondering: Has there been any acknowledgement from Jeanine/Turimel that it was kinda fucked up to keep misgendering Andy? Yes, he's definitely the worse person here, but it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth that she's refusing to acknowledge his actual gender, like if someone had called a black or gay person a slur because they did something terrible.

As far as I know, Turimel has never acknowledged that it's fucked up and wrong to misgender Andy, and she's never let go of the idea that using he/him pronouns and his current legal name is a means of obscuring his "true identity". The most she ever did was to say (in a comment on Abbey's Wordpress blog) that she would avoid using any pronouns at all in the comments "in order to avoid Genderwank". She continued to put scare quotes around his name, though, and to do whatever she wanted on her own blog.

[theteablogger]

PSA

I keep hearing rumors that many, if not most, Tumblr staff have been laid off and that there are startlingly few people keeping the site running these days. Losing Tumblr would be awful for many reasons, but the most immediately relevant for this post is that nearly all information regarding Andy's history would disappear, leaving him free to engage in any problematic or abusive behavior he wanted without fear of his targets' being tipped off as to his true nature by a simple Google search. I've worked hard to create a comprehensive resource for anyone looking for information about Andy and I would hate to see it vanish.

With that in mind, I've just finished backing up my Tumblr to WordPress. Yes, they're owned by the same company, but WP isn't hemorrhaging money the way Tumblr has been for years, so it's unlikely to go away. I'm still making some tweaks, but most of the work is done and I'll be cross-posting there (manually, ugh) from now on.

You can find my backup blog here. My regular username and all variations on it were taken.

[theteablogger]

A message I received yesterday, published anonymously and with permission:

I just want to say that even though they're a decade old I just found your timeline parts for Andy that include DAYD and Brittany. As someone who was a freshman in college when I got in that chat and then was slowly sliding out when we lost Brittany, your posts meant a lot to me. I'd let myself forget how bad parts of it were. And few people talk about the people he caught up with the fic and chat so kindly. Most of us were extremely young, lonely, or both and he took advantage of us. We were isolated enough that most of us hadn't heard anything bad about him until the shaman stuff. Anyways. It just meant a lot to me ❤️

And an addendum:

I don't think people realize how many of us who weren't in the inner circle didn't know that people were trying to warn the group about Andy and his past.

I didn't know anything until everything went down with CFC and her kids. At that point anyone who left was getting questioned and harassed by Andy/whoever still was on his side or confused enough to listen to him. One person blocked every single one of us as soon as he heard because he didn't have it in him to sift through and tell if there was another Andy lurking among us.

And everyone who was crawling out pretty much fell back in to varying degrees after Brittany was killed.

That Skype chat was a huge source of community for a lot of people. People were willing to listen to his outlandish stories to a certain degree. I'll never forgive him for the fallout of insisting, once again, on making himself an Icarus.

Details of "the shaman stuff"/"everything...with CFC and her kids" from someone who left the DAYDians over the event. For reference, this happened on Dec 28, 2009, and Brittany was killed on May 7, 2011.

The Skype chat mentioned was also known as the Room of Requirement and was maintained literally 24/7, with DAYDians (and often Andy himself) always available to talk to each other. It's where Andy did much of his "channeling" of Harry Potter characters and told many of his wildest stories.

It's rare to hear from anyone from this era of Andy's history, and I greatly appreciate that this person reached out. The DAYDians were a tight-knit, international community of caring, creative, intelligent, young people, and Andy was very demanding of their time, energy, and emotions (and occasionally money). The many ways in which he took advantage of them are really unconscionable, and a few of the most vulnerable are still "friends" of his to this day.

[theteablogger]

That's incredibly disturbing. I'm sorry he put the two of you through that.

the state of arrested development he exists in is just fascinating. i'd been wondering if he'd ever try and inject himself into some position of power again considering the state of modern fandom lacking strong massive franchises like he gravitated towards, plus he's not getting any younger. so sure, sparrow language. why not. anyways i do believe animals lead rich, inner lives and have an understanding of the world around them but the idea it translates so neatly into human understandings of language and sentence structure is real funny. we just barely learned to say 'hi' to a whale.

"Arrested development" is right. I just got this message from Abbey:

There was an animal psychic among the WWII X-Men. His name was George. He could talk to our sparrow Kookie Buki. He doesn't have an original idea fucking ever

Apparently Andy regularly used to "translate" things Kookie Buki was saying to him and Abbey. He never changes.

anyways i do believe animals lead rich, inner lives and have an understanding of the world around them but the idea it translates so neatly into human understandings of language and sentence structure is real funny.

This is one of the reasons his whole bird whisperer shtick annoys me so much: it's like he thinks their language, thoughts, and feelings have to translate directly into human terms in order to be meaningful, and that's bullshit. Is it possible that over time, Nuggie got Andy to understand that making a particular noise meant he wanted a worm? Sure. Does that mean that particular noise translates to "worm" or "cup food" (which is a phrase Andy used to use with Kookie Buki, by the way) or any other English word or phrase? No. It could convey the overall concept of food, or of wanting something, or it could be just a random sound that got Nuggie what he wanted one day and so he stuck with it. If it's true that he's asking for the phone and the TV and so on, Nuggie deserves more credit for training Andy than Andy does for "learning his language".

[theteablogger]

I don't know about that, but Abbey has said that Andy repeatedly threatened to get rid of him as a means of manipulating her.

the state of arrested development he exists in is just fascinating. i'd been wondering if he'd ever try and inject himself into some position of power again considering the state of modern fandom lacking strong massive franchises like he gravitated towards, plus he's not getting any younger. so sure, sparrow language. why not. anyways i do believe animals lead rich, inner lives and have an understanding of the world around them but the idea it translates so neatly into human understandings of language and sentence structure is real funny. we just barely learned to say 'hi' to a whale.

"Arrested development" is right. I just got this message from Abbey:

There was an animal psychic among the WWII X-Men. His name was George. He could talk to our sparrow Kookie Buki. He doesn't have an original idea fucking ever

Apparently Andy regularly used to "translate" things Kookie Buki was saying to him and Abbey. He never changes.

anyways i do believe animals lead rich, inner lives and have an understanding of the world around them but the idea it translates so neatly into human understandings of language and sentence structure is real funny.

This is one of the reasons his whole bird whisperer shtick annoys me so much: it's like he thinks their language, thoughts, and feelings have to translate directly into human terms in order to be meaningful, and that's bullshit. Is it possible that over time, Nuggie got Andy to understand that making a particular noise meant he wanted a worm? Sure. Does that mean that particular noise translates to "worm" or "cup food" (which is a phrase Andy used to use with Kookie Buki, by the way) or any other English word or phrase? No. It could convey the overall concept of food, or of wanting something, or it could be just a random sound that got Nuggie what he wanted one day and so he stuck with it. If it's true that he's asking for the phone and the TV and so on, Nuggie deserves more credit for training Andy than Andy does for "learning his language".

[theteablogger]

the state of arrested development he exists in is just fascinating. i'd been wondering if he'd ever try and inject himself into some position of power again considering the state of modern fandom lacking strong massive franchises like he gravitated towards, plus he's not getting any younger. so sure, sparrow language. why not. anyways i do believe animals lead rich, inner lives and have an understanding of the world around them but the idea it translates so neatly into human understandings of language and sentence structure is real funny. we just barely learned to say 'hi' to a whale.

"Arrested development" is right. I just got this message from Abbey:

There was an animal psychic among the WWII X-Men. His name was George. He could talk to our sparrow Kookie Buki. He doesn't have an original idea fucking ever

Apparently Andy regularly used to "translate" things Kookie Buki was saying to him and Abbey. He never changes.

anyways i do believe animals lead rich, inner lives and have an understanding of the world around them but the idea it translates so neatly into human understandings of language and sentence structure is real funny.

This is one of the reasons his whole bird whisperer shtick annoys me so much: it's like he thinks their language, thoughts, and feelings have to translate directly into human terms in order to be meaningful, and that's bullshit. Is it possible that over time, Nuggie got Andy to understand that making a particular noise meant he wanted a worm? Sure. Does that mean that particular noise translates to "worm" or "cup food" (which is a phrase Andy used to use with Kookie Buki, by the way) or any other English word or phrase? No. It could convey the overall concept of food, or of wanting something, or it could be just a random sound that got Nuggie what he wanted one day and so he stuck with it. If it's true that he's asking for the phone and the TV and so on, Nuggie deserves more credit for training Andy than Andy does for "learning his language".

[theteablogger]

the sparrow stuff really skeeves me out. he knows just enough about linguistics and ornithology to make his ludicrous claims seem almost reasonable. it feels like the first step on an unreality rabbit hole that will lead his audience to be willing to believe increasingly bizzare things

Yeah, I'm keeping an eye on things in case this continues to escalate.

I want to clarify a couple things, in anticipation of talking points Andy may use (and has kind of already used in his response to my initial post):

At no point did I cast doubt on the idea that sparrows or other bird species have language. I am well aware that people have been studying this for some time.

Andy suggested that I said he was projecting "personhood" onto Nuggie, and I feel like that's a pretty loaded statement. Humanity (the state of being human) is different from personhood, and I don't know enough to say with confidence whether animals should be considered to have personhood. I'm not a biologist, zoologist, or ornithologist, so I can only speak to what I know anecdotally. Like I said, I've lived and bonded closely with a bird before. I know firsthand that they are intelligent and emotionally complex and have distinct personalities. I have never and would never suggest otherwise. What I said was that Andy was anthropomorphizing Nuggie, which is projecting humanity onto him.

[theteablogger]

Useful information from an actual linguist.

This is another old behavior pattern of Andy's: throwing around information from Google research and/or something he read on the subject years ago, just authoritatively enough for a layperson who doesn't know his background to assume that he knows what he's talking about. Oh, and throwing in a little self-deprecation at the same time, to make him look humble.

You may have already noted this, but Andy's claims on twitter about being able to understand what his sparrow is saying (and thus sparrow language in general) seem to be ramping up in unbelievability- apparently yesterday the bird was able to communicate that it didn't want its conversation with other sparrows recorded and shared. Andy makes mention of several of his followers who have apparently been having FaceTime calls with the bird. There's at least 5-6 of Andy's followers who consistently comment on the bird updates and show no credulity, expressing how much they want to be able to communicate with the bird like Andy does. It's probably not the biggest deal, but the whole thing has just been giving me an odd vibe. Feels like Andy once again making friends/followers by demonstrating abilities and knowledge no one else has.

Yes, his allegedly deep connection with sparrows has been getting weird for quite a while. He says he can understand some of their language, enough to relay things that the flock outside his house is talking about and things that Nuggie communicates to him. On top of that, Andy has written about things like Nuggie watching movies and musicals and following every emotional beat, to the point of showing the characters his malformed feet to offer encouragement when they're lacking confidence. Andy is anthropomorphizing the hell out of that little bird. Meanwhile, his followers praise him for knowing sparrows better than ornithologists do.

I've lived with a parrot before, for many years, and I bonded very closely with him. I agree that birds are much smarter and more emotionally complex than most people realize. But they're not humans. Their thoughts and feelings are not exactly like ours and we have no way to know exactly what's going on in their heads. Projecting onto them can lead to misunderstandings of their behavior and needs. Andy seems to be taking good care of Nuggie, from what I can tell--bearing in mind that we only have his word for it--but that doesn't mean he's right about everything.

Here's the thread you mentioned:

Here's Andy in November, writing about Nuggie's "phone flock":

Here's a thread from October, featuring Andy's musings on sparrow language. Friendly reminder that he is neither an ornithologist nor a linguist.

Note that at the end, he specifies that he's not Dr. Doolittle and doesn't speak or 100% understand sparrows' language...but he's still claiming a level of understanding that no one else has.

And here's Andy in August, wishing that he could communicate effectively with Nuggie and then having an actual conversation with him:

Those are some awfully complex ideas for a member of a non-human species to understand and respond to appropriately.

I'm not trying to suggest that Andy is forming another cult based around his bird, but like you said, Anon, it's notable that he is once again positioning himself as someone who has a special ability that no one else has. He's also repeating an old pattern in making himself the sole conduit to communicate with someone who holds a great deal of emotional significance for people. Back in the day, it was any of 160+ "others", and later, the DAYDverse/Harry Potter characters; now, it's a rescued sparrow with a disability, whom a lot of people apparently find inspiring.

[theteablogger]

Andy has read my post:

[theteablogger]

You may have already noted this, but Andy's claims on twitter about being able to understand what his sparrow is saying (and thus sparrow language in general) seem to be ramping up in unbelievability- apparently yesterday the bird was able to communicate that it didn't want its conversation with other sparrows recorded and shared. Andy makes mention of several of his followers who have apparently been having FaceTime calls with the bird. There's at least 5-6 of Andy's followers who consistently comment on the bird updates and show no credulity, expressing how much they want to be able to communicate with the bird like Andy does. It's probably not the biggest deal, but the whole thing has just been giving me an odd vibe. Feels like Andy once again making friends/followers by demonstrating abilities and knowledge no one else has.

Yes, his allegedly deep connection with sparrows has been getting weird for quite a while. He says he can understand some of their language, enough to relay things that the flock outside his house is talking about and things that Nuggie communicates to him. On top of that, Andy has written about things like Nuggie watching movies and musicals and following every emotional beat, to the point of showing the characters his malformed feet to offer encouragement when they're lacking confidence. Andy is anthropomorphizing the hell out of that little bird. Meanwhile, his followers praise him for knowing sparrows better than ornithologists do.

I've lived with a parrot before, for many years, and I bonded very closely with him. I agree that birds are much smarter and more emotionally complex than most people realize. But they're not humans. Their thoughts and feelings are not exactly like ours and we have no way to know exactly what's going on in their heads. Projecting onto them can lead to misunderstandings of their behavior and needs. Andy seems to be taking good care of Nuggie, from what I can tell--bearing in mind that we only have his word for it--but that doesn't mean he's right about everything.

Here's the thread you mentioned:

Here's Andy in November, writing about Nuggie's "phone flock":

Here's a thread from October, featuring Andy's musings on sparrow language. Friendly reminder that he is neither an ornithologist nor a linguist.

Note that at the end, he specifies that he's not Dr. Doolittle and doesn't speak or 100% understand sparrows' language...but he's still claiming a level of understanding that no one else has.

And here's Andy in August, wishing that he could communicate effectively with Nuggie and then having an actual conversation with him:

Those are some awfully complex ideas for a member of a non-human species to understand and respond to appropriately.

I'm not trying to suggest that Andy is forming another cult based around his bird, but like you said, Anon, it's notable that he is once again positioning himself as someone who has a special ability that no one else has. He's also repeating an old pattern in making himself the sole conduit to communicate with someone who holds a great deal of emotional significance for people. Back in the day, it was any of 160+ "others", and later, the DAYDverse/Harry Potter characters; now, it's a rescued sparrow with a disability, whom a lot of people apparently find inspiring.

[theteablogger]

Sorry if this is not the place to post this, but after reading a whole bunch of things about Andy, I just can't help but wonder, has he ever had any diagnosis for Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder or anything like that?

Prev anon: Okay i searched your blog and found posts where you talk about refusing armchair diagnosis and Andy himself refuting similar accusations, very sorry, i should have searched further back first.

Not a problem, Anon! This is a fair question, as Andy has lied about his diagnoses so many times and in so many different ways. It's easy to miss because it's buried in so many pages of comments now, but Abbey shared several years ago that Andy was diagnosed in her presence with both ASPD and NPD. Yes, he has specifically denied having been diagnosed with these disorders, but I find Abbey to be much more believable.

[theteablogger]

The Playbook

A little over a week ago, Andy posted some advice for people on how to "convert" people from MAGA to more progressive ways of thinking. It reads as a cult leader's playbook for drawing people in, converting them, and keeping them around. Andy says outright that these techniques have been used by "every kind of cult and regime through history", by "the worst grifters in the world", but conveniently omits to mention that he's used them himself.

If you're still wondering how Andy got such a tight hold on Abbey, Diamond, and so many others, this is it.

[theteablogger]

just a note that Andy is on Bluesky @ craftycatdad and following some of his usual patterns regarding virality

Yup. He hasn't posted much because Bluesky doesn't have an option to make posts private, but he's parked his username and made his usual comments about not wanting to go viral.

[theteablogger]

Did you post this? https://tf-talk.dreamwidth.org/1365.html?thread=1726549#cmt1726549

Nope. I mentioned that video in part seven of the timeline and I guess someone else found it.

I thought it was interesting mainly because Andy makes such a big deal about how skilled and experienced he is in the kitchen, how he's allegedly worked for renowned catering companies, etc., but fails hard at a very basic element of food safety. Plus the whole, "kosher salt is the same as sea salt" thing, which even I know is incorrect.

[theteablogger]

I've recently received a few asks about the liquidation sale happening at the costume shop where Andy used to work. Basically, a combination of factors including the pandemic, the strike, debt, and the sudden death of one of the owners made it impossible for the surviving owner to continue running the business. Now the investors want their money and have demanded that he liquidate the shop's inventory and equipment. Before the sale began, the shop had over 400,000 costumes and items of vintage apparel in its inventory; I'm not sure what's left now. The major concern is that whatever doesn't sell is going to be sold by the pound to the rag house and will most likely end up in landfills. Despite no longer being an employee, Andy has volunteered to handle the social media side of things and is tweeting almost non-stop about the sale.

The sale is legit. Yes, Andy has a decades-long history of lying and catastrophizing, but all of the above is true and has been publicized on various media outlets. I cannot vouch for every detail that he shares about people showing up or not, how much money they need by whatever date, etc., but the basic story as I've summarized above is accurate.

I got one ask from a person who's considering being a remote volunteer for the sale--I don't know whether you want me to publish your tumblr name, so I'll answer here. There's no reason to worry that you'll put any shoppers at risk by volunteering to help with the sale. Andy won't be there and he isn't getting any money from it. You would be the only one potentially at risk, as you have to contact Andy via social media in order to volunteer. I generally advise people not to reach out to Andy, but I also understand your reasons for wanting to help with the sale. Ultimately, it's up to you. Whatever you decide, I would not recommend staying in touch with him once the sale is over.