Offseason #1

[coalcube]

Use this post for any exchanges running from January onwards into the first quarter of the year. Try to keep final Yuletide thoughts in the last coal post of 2019 for ease of conversation.

Coal Friending Meme
2020 NYR Collection + 2019 App
Yuletide, Exchanges After Dark, & FFA Discords.

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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It happens more frequently than you might think. My sock and I pretended to date in one fandom. You learn to tell when someone is lying when they say 'oh no, we're married/friends/pure strangers who happen to share interests.'

[(Anonymous)]

Pretended to date? That seems like a weird level of commitment.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, that's just full on mental illness. Even worse than referring to your second account as another person, like "she offered other fandoms than I did" (though that's really bad and creepy too).

[(Anonymous)]

I think "my sock offered different fandoms" is fine, but a whole elaborate set of interactions is just a lot of effort to put in to maintain a charade. Maybe not mental illness - it could just be compared to RPing - but certainly a little odd.

[(Anonymous)]

Why?

[(Anonymous)]

I would guess because they want to have a sock that has the same interests/fandoms as themselves but don’t want to deal with people like OP exposing them for it. Also like others gave said, it is just RPing. If this was real life I would question the amount of effort needed, but switching accounts online just to maintain a fake identity is the lowest/most tame level of catfishing. If they were having anon discussions, “both” identities were on a live chat at the same time, or whatever I would be like o.O

[(Anonymous)]

I still don't understand choosing to date your own sock. Switching accounts to have separate activity, sure, whatever, but pretending to date?

[(Anonymous)]

maybe bc of shared fandoms? my socks request my overflow fandoms so we never “interact” but if you 1) share all fandoms 2) like the exact same stuff i kinda get why your sock being a sister/sig-other/bff makes sense. it gives you breathing room if you accidentally blur the lines on your lies. “i just went to spain!” “wow crazy, fangirl69 was there too right? i remember her mentioning it earlier. what are the odds” “uhhh yeah, that’s my wife! we went together lol” “cool i had no idea you guys were married”

[(Anonymous)]

I really don't know if someone pretending to be friends/dating their socks is really more frequent than two friends with similar likes signing up for the same exchanges. Because it's just natural to talk your fandom friends who share your likes into doing the same exchanges.

That and there are at least two exchange regulars out there whose tastes are ridiculously similar to mine. I don't know them! But looking at our letters you could easily think one of us is the other's sock.

[(Anonymous)]

That reminds me of the exchange participant who copied my DNWs word by word. I checked out their letter because they wrote for me and I had never encountered their username before, so I wanted to know who they were. They were clearly a sock, and for all intends and purposes, they looked like they were MY sock, but they 100% weren't. That was super weird. (But I loved the gift they wrote for me, so I didn't really care.)

[(Anonymous)]

Someone copied my uniquely worded likes and specific prompts in a fandom of few where it was really obvious that they had.

It annoyed me, because typing up letters takes time and swiping mine isn’t exactly a good way to make me feel like writing for you. If you can’t even be bothered to come up with your own words for why you like the fandom, why should I believe you actually care about it? Even more than that though...I have no interest in writing my own prompts? If I did I would have written them already.

So I avoided that person and have them on my never treat list, lol.

[(Anonymous)]

Oof, I think I would have been tempted to contact them and ask them to change the wording on the prompts.

[(Anonymous)]

It wasn’t worth the potential wank for me. I really just considered them as I would my own sock (never talked to them, aren’t in the market to treat them, make sure I don’t offer the fandom so I can’t match to them) and called it a day. I guess they either don’t care about making people feel eh at their actions or they’re someone who thinks like “I would love if someone copied my letter because then I know we like the same things and I can treat them endlessly!” so they don’t see their actions as potentially discouraging to the very person they consider most likely to appreciate it. It could also be that they see that I get a lot of treats that are amazing and so they grabbed my letter hoping it would get the similar results.