What Does Sockpuppet Mean?
Fandom CultureA fake secondary account used to deceive — praising your own work, attacking rivals, or evading blocks while appearing to be someone else. Universally considered bad faith.
Sockpuppet in Practice
The sockpuppet long predates fandom, but fandom history is rich with infamous cases: authors caught reviewing their own fic in glowing third person, ship-war combatants running fleets of fake accounts to manufacture consensus, and banned users returning in flimsy disguises. The defining element is deception — a legitimate alternate pseud or privacy-driven side account isn't a sock; pretending to be an unrelated person is. Communities developed real forensic instincts for detection, reading writing tics and posting patterns like fingerprints, and 'sockpuppeting' accusations remain among the more serious charges in fandom disputes. The term's image — a hand making a sock talk — remains the perfect metaphor.
Example usage
"The five-star comments turned out to be the author's own sockpuppets, and the fandom has never let it go."
Related Terms
Pseud
Short for pseudonym: an alternate byline attached to a single AO3 account. One account can post works under multiple pseuds, keeping different identities organized without separate logins.
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Anon
Short for anonymous — a person posting, commenting, or sending messages without an identifying name. Fandom anons range from shy admirers to prompt-fillers to, occasionally, harassers.
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Wank (Fandom Wank)
Fandom slang for overblown drama and self-important blowups — flame wars, manifesto-grade meltdowns, and the discourse around them. From British slang, repurposed by journal-era fandom.
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Shipping War
Prolonged, often nasty conflict between factions of a fandom over rival pairings — usually ships that share a character. The dark side of caring a lot.
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More Fandom Culture Terms
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