Spinning Links: an introduction to Ms. Scribe

Online communities, including fandoms, can have their own hierarchies and power dynamics. In the early 2000s, the Harry Potter fandom had an Inner Circle of influential fanfic writers, including Miss Scribe. She gained support and sympathy after being attacked by trolls, but it was later revealed that many of her fans and detractors were actually fake accounts controlled by her. This manipulation was exposed in a biography written by Charlotte Lennox called "The Miss Scribe Story." Most people would assume that Spank is something that is strictly kept for real life politics. Spank says is only found in government campaigns, criminal cases, and corporate takeovers. In fact, Spank can be found in many online communities, specifically online fandom communities. Mass-afflushed communities of like-minded people creating together. Oftentimes, they will accidentally instate their own hierarchy. One example is in the Harry Potter fandom of the early 2000s. Specifically in the fanfic sphere, where six authors wrote the same, had big-name fans, known also as the Inner Circle. Fun fact, one of the writers of the Inner Circle went on to become the published author to Sandra Clare. Enter Miss Scribe, a writer who, through her very popular works, managed to rise up through the ranks of the Harry Potter fanfic community to eventually join the Inner Circle. A lot of support was given to Miss Scribe through her dedicated fanbase, as well as sympathetic support after she was attacked mercilessly by multiple trolls. But all was not well, as it would later come out in a post made by Charlotte Lennox. Many of Miss Scribe's fans, and even many of her detractors, were in fact sockpuppet accounts that she controlled. A sockpuppet account is a secondary account that someone runs under a different identity in order to either affirm their position or create fake detractants. Or in other words, online spin. What followed was a long, evidence-backed takedown of a master manipulator that shook an entire community in The Miss Scribe Story, an unauthorized fandom biography by Charlotte Lennox.