Troll comments?? 🤷🏽♀️
Sorry, a long post incoming.
I am currently writing a series that includes the main, long-form chattered story, a few shorter stories and some one shots. Without trying to sound too big headed it is doing fairly well in most of its tags.
Back in February I received a comment on my latest chapter. It was written by a guest account, but included a link that led to a work by an account of the same name. It was fairly rude, calling my work ‘overrated and amateur’.
I wasn’t upset or put off by the comment, and I meant to delete it, but life got busy and by the next day, people had responded to said guest comment, coming to my aid and defending me. The guest commenter never responded to any of this.
The more I thought about it, the more peculiar I found this comment and I reached out on an AO3 FB group. People over there were under the same consensus - it was a bot or spam and I should just report it and put comment moderation on.
I reached out to the actual account holder, the one that the guest account was ‘impersonating’ via a comment in their story and they reassured me that it wasn’t them and the apologised and whatnot. They said they hadn’t written or posted anything in a while due to their health.
That was that. I went back to my story, replied to the thread to tell everyone it was most likely a bot and spam. I left the comment thread up again so people (by this point a fair few people had replied to it) had a chance to see my comment.
Then in March I received ANOTHER comment from the same ‘guest’ account. Same name as the author of the real account. This comment was nicer and more polite (and I’m adding I have no problem people promoting their stories in my comment section, so long as it is done politely and respectfully). This comment also mentioned their poor health and cited not being able to move their fingers as the reason they couldn’t log in to their actual account.
A few other readers commented to let me know that ‘the troll’ was back. It got slightly heated (and I use that phrase lightly. It wasn’t awful and I believe it was more a case of crossed wires). I stepped in appropriately and thanked everyone for their support and assured them they were all right (they were) and things got sorted out between everyone. Again, I should have froze or deleted this comment thread then. I did not, and I do regret that. I also still had no turned off guest comments or turned off comment mods because I didn’t want to at this point.
Things came back to light recently because someone commented on the thread, also using a guest account to tell me that the actually account holder had deleted their account and removed their stories from everything because they couldn’t deal with the backlash anymore. This commenter said they would likely not return either, again citing the account holders health and inability to trust. This guest commenter was saying that the account holder had commented on their story to tell them all this.
I had been dubious about whether this guest commenter (the original one, not the second one) was a bot. I accepted their story that it wasn’t them, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. Everyone I spoke to was convinced it was a bot or spam. I wondered if it WAS the original account holder, or perhaps someone imitating them??
THEN I received a comment from a guest account using the name of a friend. A comment promoting their work. My friend assured me, it was not them.
Then today, I received another from the same guest account. Again it was a lovely comment, citing how I had been an inspiration to them and now they’re branching out to wattpad with a link to their wattpad account. Obviously, my friend is upset with this as it’s not them.
And I dont really know what the point in me sharing this is. Maybe to spread awareness that this is happening, maybe to get some advice?? I’m not sure really. I just needed to write it somewhere people would understand. Maybe to see if anyone else has had a similiar problem?? I don’t know.
Going forward, I will be unfortunately restricting guest comments and reporting these guest comments if I can.
If you read this far, thank you. Here’s some cookies 🥰💛