Not sure how many people were around four years ago for the original drama, but @storyofrachel@hexbear.net was a banned user from early on the site’s history, and I’ve seen quite a bit of speculation recently that a current frequent poster in c/mutualaid is an alt of hers due to having a similar MO and personal details (such as them both living in the same city)
For context, u/storyofrachel was an unhoused trans woman, who frequently solicited money from the community and had problems with substance abuse. She eventually made a post bragging about scamming money from users here (I myself was one of the users who sent her money) and blowing it on drugs (with a picture of the drugs in question) and a
bunch of homophobic slurs (TW: homophobia, self harm).
She later claimed that her account had been hacked, which frankly I did and do not believe. She was unbanned but later banned for other shit which I don’t recall and am unable to reconstruct from the modlog and came back on a bunch of different alts, all of which were banned.
If there’s any truth to this, it is deeply fucked that this person is still here, evading her ban and scamming people four years later. As one of the people who was taken advantage of previously (and, possibly, again with this current user!), people should at least be able to make an informed decision with all available context. If we want this community to function, and I say this as someone who has sent hundreds of dollars to people over the years through this community, we should be able to guard against bad actors who are trying to take advantage of the compassion and generosity of our user base.
Edit: There’s an Instagram with both usernames on it, publicly available. It’s 100% the same person. Not going to post it because I don’t want anyone to get doxxed but yeah.
Edit edit: I’m going to go touch grass now. Anyone who is being willfully obtuse about why I made this post can read it again or any of my other comments in this thread
So as the person who apparently pointed this out to people, I have a few things I’d like to say here.
One, after I posted my previous comment, someone responded to me with more information which confirms that, yes, this is the same person. (I’m gonna be honest, I had assumed it was from pretty early on, given all the things that lined up, so that came as no real surprise to me.)
Two, whatever the story was behind Rachel’s behavior years ago, I have never observed her saying anything unkind or inappropriate since her return to the site. As far as I can tell, she at least learned her lesson on that. I’ve been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and it looks to me like she’s made good on that trust and not been toxic like she was before–in spite of all this drama that has descended on her lately.
Three, and this one is pretty big for me: I have never caught her in a lie on here since she came back. Not once. And as people may have realized by now, I pay pretty close attention.
Seriously, consider her actions in recent weeks, and tell me if this sounds like scammer behavior: First, she voluntarily tells everyone she raised nearly $800 from a single post. There was absolutely zero reason to tell anyone that. Why on Earth would a scammer, whose whole scam depended on making people think they were desperate, tell people they had just received a windfall? And that is of course magnified by the post letting us all know about that $4k. No scammer with half a brain would tell us, and no scammer with even one brain cell would let on that they got so much money and then spent it all inside of a month’s time. If anything, that proves to me that she’s being honest, even to an arguable fault.
And I want to mention that I have caught at least one recipient of my largess here on Hexbear in a lie (it was an utterly pointless lie, too; I had already made clear I was going to provide this person with money, and they then lied to me to make it sound like they had better means to pay it back than they really did, even though I had not asked to be paid back in any way). I have not given that person any money since, even though they have made posts here requesting funds since then. Another user changed their original ask after someone sent them the amount they requested and said so in a comment, which really rubbed me the wrong way. I reported that to mods but never heard anything back, and the post stayed up, but I never donated to that user again either.
By contrast, Rachel made clear that she was spending the money on food, and honestly, I think the small-time donations really were used that way. But even if not, even if she did sometimes buy drugs with that money, well, you can’t give money to a meth addict and expect them not to use it in ways you might not like. And I say that as someone who gave her upwards of $400, all told.
Is it disappointing that she didn’t succeed in making her situation permanently better with that four grand? Absolutely, and it seems clear to me that she’s more upset about that than we all are. But I don’t really agree that her recent behavior makes her a “bad actor.”
Actually, misrepresenting herself as a new user and not a new account for someone who was banned quite some time ago is the original lie that you’re missing here. I wouldn’t have given money to someone who called me a f****t and bragged about scamming me in the past. That’s the lie. It’s nice you’ve absolved her, but I absolutely have not.
If it’s her, as you say, she should be banned instantaneously from this site.
as a neutral observation i believe mentioning that you are the new account of a previously banned user is a bannable offense
Ban evasion is still a bannable offense even if you don’t say you’re an alt
yeah but like the whole banning process is a complete joke and the rules on what counts as acknowledging an evasion are completely arbitrary on a case by case basis, like almost all of the power users who’ve been banned just kept / keep posting on the site under a different name that everyone knows is them until they get banned again, wait 48 hours, then just make another account and keep posting
In practice, we have lots of people here who are almost certainly alts of banned users, that have managed to avoid repeating the behaviors that got them banned. Some even take variations on the same username.
I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous. She never said she was a brand-new user, and I don’t think it’s wrong to come back after years away. I understand if you’re not willing to forgive her for using slurs, but I do not at all agree that she was lying by making a new account.
A lie of omission is still a lie. And there’s also the bragging about scamming people.
A lie of omission requires context. Otherwise everyone is lying by omission at all times by not telling everyone literally everything about themselves.
Not gonna try to defend the bragging about scamming people, but it was years ago and I don’t believe in crucifying people for past sins.
Anyway, I’ve been touching grass for the last month or so, and have only been interacting with this site in one way: watching this comm for posts asking for money. That’s the only reason I’m even here in this thread. If you want to hate Rachel, no one is stopping you, but I don’t think that has anything to do with this comm or the rules, and it’s really not clear to me what this post is about other than getting mad at Rachel–I don’t see any proposed rule changes.
My proposed change is that a known scammer who is evading a ban should be banned for the health of this comm, and that allowing someone like this to operate on here makes it less likely for others who need it to get help
That was always the problem with /r/snackexchange and the other real-world subreddits I tried to make. 95%+ of the time it works as intended but without some kind of extra safety step there are people who have no problem punching down or sideways. We were never willing to do top-down user verification due to the privacy concern but that was the essential step that we would have needed. c/mutual_aid is going to have those same pitfalls as the site gets larger, especially if people hear about this place before they do Hexbear more broadly.
Nobody is forcing anyone to give to anyone else here and now that there’s a block button for users it’s even less important to ban people imo. If someone wants to give money to the person constantly complaining their life is a mess because they do too much meth then more power to them, I just block and move on 🤷
Isn’t there a point where you just become an enabler though? I don’t know if you can OD on meth, but if someone abused heroine and a community financed that abuse until the user OD’ed, wouldn’t that kind of be on the community?
I’m genuinely asking by the way, not trying to do some weird debate thing of thinking up some odd hypothetical or some shitty rhetorical framing in order to shame people for helping. The example is just to explain my thought process.
I expect it’s the kinda thing that doesn’t have a clear answer, but I feel like there’s also people who know a lot more than me about mutual aid, who will have a much better answer.
I personally wouldn’t become an enabler bc I don’t give that person money, and it’s not my place to set the morals of another group of people be it the community or the user in question. The original identity of the user is sort of moot imo bc if you read the posts, it’s pretty much what you see is what you get. So if that’s not the kind of content you want to see, block and move on.
The only argument I could entertain is, well, if you have money and youre a communist and this other person doesn’t it’s your responsibility to help them, which I guess would be the case, but you can’t help everyone and there are plenty of opportunities here to help others even if its just sticking to the people I know.
First off thank you for your answer. I am writing this follow-up because I feel my question was phrased poorly and thus led to an answer to a different query than the one I had in my head.
I’m not talking about passing judgement on others, but I can see how that’s what I described with my phrasing. I’m also not talking about caring about what others spend their money on, but again, I phrased it poorly.
If I give financial aid anonymously to someone , whom I know abuses drugs which can kill them*, and I know this person is stuck in a pattern of financial aid they needed for housing or food on drugs instead, and I keep giving them money whilst they complain that their drug habit has gotten worse, and they then OD…
IF all of this in this very long and needlessly complex hypothetical happened, would I not then be some kind of enabler? Isn’t there a point where me giving money unconditionally to someone who spends it on harmful and addictive narcotics (who complains about their habit) becomes hurtful instead of helpful?- I specify this to make it more extreme in order to more clearly phrame what I am asking about, not in order to eliminate nuance or grey zones. Its easier to draw the line here than with less harmful drugs, and I feel like that’s a bit of a pitfall of a discussion which isn’t really what I’m trying to ask about, but I also feel the need to acknowledge that by making it about OD’ing I am phraming the discussion in a certain way. So therefore this footnote.
wtf is the intention behind making this post, except specifically trying to drive the user in question off the site because she did some fucked up stuff 4 years ago and called you a rude word, because it’s oviously not an intervention or attempt to help her.
like is it out of some concern that the people who voluntarily gave her money while fully aware of her situation were too stupid to realise that there’s a chance she might misuse it or is it just some way to make sure you never have to see her posts again? because there’s a much easier solution than the whole “i just think you guys should know” style call out post shit to the latter:
I think I’ve been pretty clear elsewhere in this thread
My proposed change is that a known scammer who is evading a ban should be banned for the health of this comm, and that allowing someone like this to operate on here makes it less likely for others who need it to get help
there’s been nothing to suggest that the user is maliciously using the mutual aid comm or whatever since she came back, if she had been actively trying to scam people why even mention getting the 4k donation and then messing it up when there was no way it would benefit her and actually led to multiple threads of shit like this? everyone on this site likes to act like they believe in rehabilitative justice until they see someone they dont like not being nailed to a wall or some shit for something they did years ago.
and if anything’s going to make it less likely to get help, its massive call out threads like this on people for using the mutual aid comm while having a drug addiction and using the blank cheque they got given poorly
edit: you’re transparently not doing this to help other people out, either people donating or people receiving, it’s so obviously just a ploy to get someone you’ve got a chip on your shoulder about either kicked off of or made to feel completely unwelcome on the site (and put in a much worse financial position) for shit they did years ago
Part of rehabilitative justice is restoring the harm caused to the community and making amends. Care to point out when that happened?
I dont think that a homeless meth addict who also needs to buy hrt should be expected to pay back money she spent on her meth addiction so that she can afford to eatHow about an apology or any kind of acknowledgement of fault? Is that also unreasonable or is anything less than a free pass acceptable?
Feels like your idea of “rehabilitative justice” is that someone who wasn’t even around when the harm took place (you) will declare everything is cool now if she decides that enough time has passed. Not really what I think of when I hear the term
lol, i always wondered what happened to her. i can’t believe A) its been 4 years and b) i never heard the story of how she got banned
her posts always irked me. even taking them at face value and not being skeptical of her intentions, i was confused at why the community kept rallying around someone who constantly sabotaged herself so much. she’s not someone who is ever going to stop using, because deep down she doesn’t have the desire to.
“Getting someone to stop using” shouldn’t be the goal of anyone here looking to do mutual aid online. There are specialized services that help with that and if you want to help people stop using go work with or volunteer at those services.
The goal here should be to keep people alive long enough to make the choice for themselves to seek the help they need. Assuming they even have access to those services, which many unhoused folks with addictions do not or cannot access those services for various reasons.
You aren’t going to get someone to stop an addiction by posting at them. All you can do is help them stay alive long enough to hopefully choose to find help
It’s so gross and protestant brained when people look at mutual aid and direct giving like they’re somehow morally responsible for trying to fix or control a person’s behavior. Like yeah they might spend the money you give on shit that won’t directly benefit them, sorry we live in such a sad, fascist society that one more good feeling seems more productive than attempting to get out of a bad situation. We’re just trying to keep people alive, not perform rehab.
ooooohhh i get it she was one of the bad ungrateful addicts see that’s why i always give to my local church because then i know they’re good people who deserve it
