This is an expansion on a post I made before the holiday season last year that has come to be more and more meaningful as time goes on.

Real BNF = someone who has genuine, demonstrated ability as a writer/artist/organizer and who has been around a long time (ten years is "long" ... two years is "not long"). Suzi Lovett is a real BNF, Susan Matthews is a BNF, EPS/lil_shepherd/all-her-pennames is a real BNF, Kathy Resch is a real BNF, Alayne Gelfand is a real BNF, etc. ((I will add that I've met a couple of REAL BNFs who are also jerks but have excluded them in this instance.))

Faux BNF = This requires two identifications: They are (1) Someone who writes endless awful, unedited (truly), un-beta'd (really) creative typing. They often write in response to challenges/prompts or solely to take part in post-and-praise circle jerks. They do not attempt to make anything of their work because they know their little coterie of sycophants will fall in to praise them. Together, they set upon those who fall outside the circle. This is the second necessary element: (2) Someone with a big ego who writes solely to have "followers" praise them. This secondary element is often augmented with sock puppet/troll personas which are very easy to spawn (and thus hide behind) on LJ.

Here is an excellent site about sociopathy/online bullying aka "active mobbing", which is what psychiatrist call the Faux BNF/sycophant bullying phenomenon.

I'm excerpting the following few paragraphs from the above UK link in the hopes those who participate will recognize themselves (although I know they won't).

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My friends Lyn and Annie have suffered as a result of it. Various other friends of mine have also. And I have ongoing problems (although now mainly low grade) with a few faux-BNFs I have mentioned (and others I haven't). I mainly ignore them, but it is an annoyance I shouldn't have to deal with.

The problem is the sociopath at the center of these hubs will not care about their behavior. They rarely have a conscience of the kind we speak of. They only care about perpetuating their rumors against those who would take attention away from them.

I'll be posting more about this problem from my perspective in the next few days, but I'd like to throw open the topic to any of you who've had similar problems. I'm going to remove the anon posting ban for the immediate period so that you may post anonymously if you prefer. Fandom bullying has become a real problem lately.

ADDED: I need to point out that I'm not for a moment criticizing casual, just-having-fun fan fiction writers. As I've said before, weekend tennis players don't have their games critiqued so neither should casual fan fiction writers. I ONLY include these post-prompt, etc, writers IF they also meet the arrogant/bullying/circle jerk definition also. I've written from prompts before. Whatever you do to have fun is your business. It's only the people who use such circles to harass others that I have a problem with.