The Ms.Scribe Story

Is there anything so grand and delicate as web-based drama?  The story linked above, which seems as exaustively researched and as well presented as a book like Bill Carter's "The Late Shift", tells the story of how a woman used sockpuppets and people's own prejudices to rise to the top of the food chain in the world of Harry Potter fan-fiction. Let me reiterate and rephrase that last sentence to make sure you got it: MsScribe created fake online identities, and either attacked or praised herself, as well as attacking and praising others to create a buzz around her online-published stories set in J.K Rowling's Harry Potter universe, more specifically the fan fiction world revolving around LiveJournal.

The idea sounds silly and meaningless, but the article (if it can be called that, since it spans ten chapters and is very long) somehow manages to make it interesting and even dramatic at turns. The comparison with the book above is no joke; there are scenes reminiscent of the political backstabbing that is the central theme of Carter's book. All told, it is one of the more entertaining reads I have run across recently, if you have the time for the whole thing. If not, you can get a decent summary here (found via: making light: particles), which is where I was initially turned on to the story of MsScribe.