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impyDollworld is a very odd place. On the one hand, you have dolls. There are so many different kinds and new ones being added every season (and season is a very open ended timeframe in this instance). You've got ebay for your older doll wants, and tumblr doesn't work quite as well for eliminating the doll world's need to converse with one another, so they continue to use message boards and possibly even mailing lists (I've heard rumors, anyway), not to mention good old LJ and maybe DW? Blogs abound and it's very good for those who like to have something to read AND have very pretty pictures every so often. Youtube has a million tutorials for the oddest things and if you want to lose hours of your life, look up myfroggystuff. (Seriously. You will both thank me and curse me for this, especially if you're a doll person or you've got a kid.)
But dollworld brings out the weirdest people sometimes. I'm aware that all fandoms think this, and that people outside of the fandom think this even louder. But you lurk inside a fandom long enough and some people are bound to drive you batshit.
I think the weirdest thing for me, in general, is how quickly doll people turn on one another. Is it a byproduct of how the rest of the world seems to look at doll collectors as "off", so the moment someone steps out of line in any way, the crazy comes screaming out of other people? And, if so, how is it that this doesn't also work on things that are really flippin' scary to have lurking in fandom? How do I activate the "OUT OF MY FANDOM NOW" button? Is there a batsignal of some sort? How do you trip the spidey sense?
For future reference, we're currently discussing American Girl and it's fandom in general here. Above the cut was mostly a general dollworld thing, though the Out of My Fandom moment was/is related to AG.
So.
You've got little miss "black dolls are ugly, I would never own one"// "I never said that! I own Addy!"// "Addy as Felicity's slave..."
Miss artz_annie. While Cass lived in the DC area, after the store up there opened, I kept hoping they'd run into each other because I wanted a vicarious rumble. Annie vexed me so for quite awhile because she'd say the stupidest shit and then get upset when people called her on it (see the Addy comment above) and yet... she never got banned. The people who called her out on it did, but she did not.
Her posting style also used to be atrocious and difficult to read, so that didn't help much either. That changed, or I just stopped really noticing when she posted aside from memorizing her sig/AV so that I could run and scream if need be.
I still cackle when someone will say something like, "Well no one would have an all white collection, or say something bad about the black AG dolls, right?" and someone else will cough politely and do everything short of actually call annie down to the floor for her previous comments.
And when they do flat out call her on them, she suddenly has no memory of them (even when links are given) and we're all so mean and how can we be so mean and she's gonna tell her fiancee all about how mean we are and... yeah.
Cass still asks if Annie's pulled any stupid shit every so often. :P
jamichdapa
(currently going by Jami's Lusty Plastic Lasses because half the people who changed their names for Talk Like A Pirate Day never changed back)
But she seems so knowledgeable, always weighing on EVERYTHING, you say. Um, yeah. That's part of the problem. I don't recall the earliest time she earned the arched eyebrow of "please tell me you're joking" but she's said some problematic things in the past that had initially put her on my mental ignore list.
And then she changed things up and started styling herself an all knowing AG guru. I'm unsure if this was an intentional shift or simply something that occurred over time. Thing is, she's wrong just as often as she's right and even when called out on it, with proof given as to how she's wrong, she will stubbornly stick to her 'opinions'. Her reading comprehension is iffy at best, and it's best to take a lot of what she says and fact check it because she is forever mangling her facts. She'll start with something accurate and then bring in a lot of BS and she'll gloss it over with things that sound possible and, if you're lucky, she'll attribute parts of this to people who have a pretty good track record with things and then... you've got 14 other people repeating this as gospel when it was flawed to begin with.
It irks me. Thing is, she's very good at making what she says sound plausible enough that you find yourself wondering if maybe, just maybe, she's right. Until you trip over the BS and then you wonder why no one calls her out on this anymore.
If your eyes have glazed over, let me try an example.
Let's go with this: Someone asks about the likelihood of AG introducing a new character (historical) during the same year they're retiring an older character. Jami will wheel out the charts and lists and links and quotes from people with impressive track records and say "Nope, ain't gonna happen, although who's to say what AG will do in the future? I mean just look at this only related because it's AG example!"
And someone else will come along fifteen posts later and point out that technically Ruthie came out the same year Samantha did, and suddenly she changes gears and it is TOTALLY A THING, Y'ALL. TOTALLY.
Current proof of lack of reading comprehension: Person A says they ordered Molly, who is currently on backorder until December 12th. Then they want to know if it's possible/likely that AG will cancel the backorder and she will be left with no Molly.
Answer? AG almost always fulfills its backorders. It doesn't tend to take them for orders it does not plan on filling, so backorder with confidence. I did mention that sometimes an item will go on backorder so long that you'll have to re-opt in to staying on the list (Kit's desk and her typewriter both spent like a year on backorder and if you didn't opt to stay on the list, you were bumped from the list, but they did email/call to verify) but that as of the last few years, AG takes your order, you will get your stuff.
Jami comes along, after I posted my answer, and says that the backorder dates mean nothing and she could come in earlier or later and it's totally possible you won't get Molly til next year because that's happened before.
Which is great to know, but a) not how their backorders are currently working (if anything, everything is shipping freakishly early to the point that people have called foul on it) and b) not the question at hand.
READING! It's not that hard.
She's also the same person who doesn't seem to realize that the New York store (the one closest to her, I believe) is not indicitive of the entire purchasing patterns of the entire company's customer base.
Then you've got Taffy Cheerful who has a thing for dolls' "rhumba panties" and having his dolls stand pigeon toed:
https://picasaweb.google.com/105064489314911719286/TakeYourDollToWork03#
Taffy is one of those guys you side-eye long and hard. I wish geocities still existed because oh, the humanity. The humanity.
Not sure if Jami was the person who sparked this annoyance or if I'm mentally blocking someone right now...
Oh, and let's not even begin with the lady who calls her dolls morsels, mmmkay?
And now I remember who sparked this in the first place: QNPoohBear.
She has an opinion on almost everything, and her opinion is wrong fairly often. :P Only she's sort of a mod so people actually listen to her and when she's corrected (like putting shoes on backwards, or doing a hairstyle so wrong that not even a child would think this was 100% legit) she freaks out.
She flips out when kids in her family want to play with her toys but instead of doing anything about it or listening to suggestions, the same thread keeps popping up until someone eventually says, "shit or get off the damned pot, bitch."
Her pictures suck (and I admit this is rich coming from me, but trust me, they suuuuuuuuuuuuck) and she is absurdly proud of being an AG fan but not liking anything Mattel does. Mattel dolls are evil! Evil, I say! Nothing new is good! Nothing!
Pardon me while I roll my eyes out of my head, down the hall, and out the door. Jesus, woman. You are grown and you still do not see the problem with wanting new stuff but never buying the new stuff they do put out? Or that not everything new is the work of the devil? I mean, I can understand hedging your bets on new stuff, letting the chips fall and all, but eventually, if you want the line to continue, you have to buy new stuff from the company.
Also, and this one is petty as hell, she keeps going on and on about PM Felicity's eyes not being laser green. Um, yeah. Yeah, they were. Haaaaaaaaaave you met HTA? She's PM and her eyes are the same shade of green used on Lyssie then and you know what? She and Mattel!Lyssie have the same eyes, aside from the eyelashes.
THE SAME EYES, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
She's got other people believing this nonsense! Guys. They're the same eyes. THE SAME EYES. Now, if you say that since PM dolls have softer eyelashes in a different color, the disconnect between the eyes and the lashes is somehow softer and lends itself to a more natural appearance? Yeah, I'll buy that. Otherwise, SAME EYES.
But dollworld brings out the weirdest people sometimes. I'm aware that all fandoms think this, and that people outside of the fandom think this even louder. But you lurk inside a fandom long enough and some people are bound to drive you batshit.
I think the weirdest thing for me, in general, is how quickly doll people turn on one another. Is it a byproduct of how the rest of the world seems to look at doll collectors as "off", so the moment someone steps out of line in any way, the crazy comes screaming out of other people? And, if so, how is it that this doesn't also work on things that are really flippin' scary to have lurking in fandom? How do I activate the "OUT OF MY FANDOM NOW" button? Is there a batsignal of some sort? How do you trip the spidey sense?
For future reference, we're currently discussing American Girl and it's fandom in general here. Above the cut was mostly a general dollworld thing, though the Out of My Fandom moment was/is related to AG.
So.
You've got little miss "black dolls are ugly, I would never own one"// "I never said that! I own Addy!"// "Addy as Felicity's slave..."
Miss artz_annie. While Cass lived in the DC area, after the store up there opened, I kept hoping they'd run into each other because I wanted a vicarious rumble. Annie vexed me so for quite awhile because she'd say the stupidest shit and then get upset when people called her on it (see the Addy comment above) and yet... she never got banned. The people who called her out on it did, but she did not.
Her posting style also used to be atrocious and difficult to read, so that didn't help much either. That changed, or I just stopped really noticing when she posted aside from memorizing her sig/AV so that I could run and scream if need be.
I still cackle when someone will say something like, "Well no one would have an all white collection, or say something bad about the black AG dolls, right?" and someone else will cough politely and do everything short of actually call annie down to the floor for her previous comments.
And when they do flat out call her on them, she suddenly has no memory of them (even when links are given) and we're all so mean and how can we be so mean and she's gonna tell her fiancee all about how mean we are and... yeah.
Cass still asks if Annie's pulled any stupid shit every so often. :P
jamichdapa
(currently going by Jami's Lusty Plastic Lasses because half the people who changed their names for Talk Like A Pirate Day never changed back)
But she seems so knowledgeable, always weighing on EVERYTHING, you say. Um, yeah. That's part of the problem. I don't recall the earliest time she earned the arched eyebrow of "please tell me you're joking" but she's said some problematic things in the past that had initially put her on my mental ignore list.
And then she changed things up and started styling herself an all knowing AG guru. I'm unsure if this was an intentional shift or simply something that occurred over time. Thing is, she's wrong just as often as she's right and even when called out on it, with proof given as to how she's wrong, she will stubbornly stick to her 'opinions'. Her reading comprehension is iffy at best, and it's best to take a lot of what she says and fact check it because she is forever mangling her facts. She'll start with something accurate and then bring in a lot of BS and she'll gloss it over with things that sound possible and, if you're lucky, she'll attribute parts of this to people who have a pretty good track record with things and then... you've got 14 other people repeating this as gospel when it was flawed to begin with.
It irks me. Thing is, she's very good at making what she says sound plausible enough that you find yourself wondering if maybe, just maybe, she's right. Until you trip over the BS and then you wonder why no one calls her out on this anymore.
If your eyes have glazed over, let me try an example.
Let's go with this: Someone asks about the likelihood of AG introducing a new character (historical) during the same year they're retiring an older character. Jami will wheel out the charts and lists and links and quotes from people with impressive track records and say "Nope, ain't gonna happen, although who's to say what AG will do in the future? I mean just look at this only related because it's AG example!"
And someone else will come along fifteen posts later and point out that technically Ruthie came out the same year Samantha did, and suddenly she changes gears and it is TOTALLY A THING, Y'ALL. TOTALLY.
Current proof of lack of reading comprehension: Person A says they ordered Molly, who is currently on backorder until December 12th. Then they want to know if it's possible/likely that AG will cancel the backorder and she will be left with no Molly.
Answer? AG almost always fulfills its backorders. It doesn't tend to take them for orders it does not plan on filling, so backorder with confidence. I did mention that sometimes an item will go on backorder so long that you'll have to re-opt in to staying on the list (Kit's desk and her typewriter both spent like a year on backorder and if you didn't opt to stay on the list, you were bumped from the list, but they did email/call to verify) but that as of the last few years, AG takes your order, you will get your stuff.
Jami comes along, after I posted my answer, and says that the backorder dates mean nothing and she could come in earlier or later and it's totally possible you won't get Molly til next year because that's happened before.
Which is great to know, but a) not how their backorders are currently working (if anything, everything is shipping freakishly early to the point that people have called foul on it) and b) not the question at hand.
READING! It's not that hard.
She's also the same person who doesn't seem to realize that the New York store (the one closest to her, I believe) is not indicitive of the entire purchasing patterns of the entire company's customer base.
Then you've got Taffy Cheerful who has a thing for dolls' "rhumba panties" and having his dolls stand pigeon toed:
https://picasaweb.google.com/105064489314911719286/TakeYourDollToWork03#
Taffy is one of those guys you side-eye long and hard. I wish geocities still existed because oh, the humanity. The humanity.
Not sure if Jami was the person who sparked this annoyance or if I'm mentally blocking someone right now...
Oh, and let's not even begin with the lady who calls her dolls morsels, mmmkay?
And now I remember who sparked this in the first place: QNPoohBear.
She has an opinion on almost everything, and her opinion is wrong fairly often. :P Only she's sort of a mod so people actually listen to her and when she's corrected (like putting shoes on backwards, or doing a hairstyle so wrong that not even a child would think this was 100% legit) she freaks out.
She flips out when kids in her family want to play with her toys but instead of doing anything about it or listening to suggestions, the same thread keeps popping up until someone eventually says, "shit or get off the damned pot, bitch."
Her pictures suck (and I admit this is rich coming from me, but trust me, they suuuuuuuuuuuuck) and she is absurdly proud of being an AG fan but not liking anything Mattel does. Mattel dolls are evil! Evil, I say! Nothing new is good! Nothing!
Pardon me while I roll my eyes out of my head, down the hall, and out the door. Jesus, woman. You are grown and you still do not see the problem with wanting new stuff but never buying the new stuff they do put out? Or that not everything new is the work of the devil? I mean, I can understand hedging your bets on new stuff, letting the chips fall and all, but eventually, if you want the line to continue, you have to buy new stuff from the company.
Also, and this one is petty as hell, she keeps going on and on about PM Felicity's eyes not being laser green. Um, yeah. Yeah, they were. Haaaaaaaaaave you met HTA? She's PM and her eyes are the same shade of green used on Lyssie then and you know what? She and Mattel!Lyssie have the same eyes, aside from the eyelashes.
THE SAME EYES, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
She's got other people believing this nonsense! Guys. They're the same eyes. THE SAME EYES. Now, if you say that since PM dolls have softer eyelashes in a different color, the disconnect between the eyes and the lashes is somehow softer and lends itself to a more natural appearance? Yeah, I'll buy that. Otherwise, SAME EYES.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-11-27 09:01 pm (UTC)I don't know how you stand it - I could only take so much IY before I ran screaming into the night. ANd the only reason I'm back is because the wanksters and trolls finally moved on to terrorize something else!