A fight is being fought between Facebook and the drag and trans communities. People on Facebook have been reporting drag queens and trans people, interchangeably, for having fake profiles. When the original battle lines were drawn with Sister Roma and Facebook on opposite sides, it was potentially going to effect my world eventually. But, it hadn't hit anyone in the Maine drag community that hard.
I now understand the reason why Sister Roma fought so hard, and has continued to fight, and increase awareness that this is happening.
Over the last few weeks, the trend has hit the state of Maine. And, many of them are starting fresh with like pages, because some douchebag decided that it would be fun to start screwing with people.
I have thoughts on who and why, but I will keep them to myself, because I have no proof. But, the fact of the matter, is, a lot of drama has been going on in show casting for a couple of upcoming shows. People have gotten mad at each other, and then, in an odd timing incident, people started getting reported to the Facebook police for having fake accounts. Over the last week, I have watched a majority of my friends try to fight to keep their names.
It all came to a head, last night, when I was on my way home from work. Then, it really hit home. I stopped to pick up a couple of things at a convenience store on my way to go pick up dinner. In the 10 minutes or so it took for me to go from one to the other, Shaunna Rai had posted something, and then, been reported and had her page removed for identity theft. Dan's page had been reported for identity theft as well, and he very nearly lost both accounts. So, when I went to look at the tagged post, it was unavailable. (At that point, I still had no idea that anything was going on.)
I picked up dinner, and went home. I was greeted at the door, with a slew of information, and a lot of misplaced anger and hostility. None of it was directed toward me, at least. But, taming Shaunna or Dan when they're angry is a feat in itself. Calming both at the same time...Good luck. It's pretty much impossible.
We ate, while I let Dan vent about what had happened. When it became clear that Shaunna's page was no longer even viewable, things began to sink in, for me.
Shaunna's career spans more than 20 years. Every picture that she had or had been tagged in has been lost. Every poster...gone. Every conversation she had going in regards to upcoming events was lost. It was like, in a matter of 10 minutes or so, Shaunna had been lost in a fire. Every bit of online history on Facebook is gone...and nobody had any way of contacting her, and she had no way of letting her almost 5000 followers know what had happened.
So, the best chance of getting Shaunna Rai back up and running, was to create a like page for her. Because she was trying to put out spot fires in group and individual chats, and was pissed off enough that she could have spewed forth fire if she had tried, she didn't really want anything to do with the creation of the new page. So, it fell to me to get it all set up.
Fortunately, with the blog being a like page, I more or less knew what needed to be done to set up Shaunna's new page. Then, it was up to me to show Dan how to run the page from both the computer and the page manager app on his phone.
There are a few things that I know he's going to hate about it...first and foremost, the fact that they seem a lot less interactive than, say, your average personal page. And, you have to remind your audience to click for notifications to be alerted when something new is posted.
But, there are also things I think he's going to like about it. Biggest is that you can schedule posts ahead of time, so you can have your page running even if you're not around. (And, if he agrees to it, I can become an admin, and fix up some of the typos on the page, so people can't claim that they need a translator.)
However, even with the new page, unless we can get in touch with everyone whose pictures were on Shaunna's old page, that part of her history is gone. And, she's not the only one. Cherry Lemonade was the first Maine Queen to lose hers. Prodigy Diamond, Sheneeda Diet, Shaunna Rai and Envy Chanel have all had to start fresh. And, a number of others are still in the midst of fighting to keep their names and histories.
The reason I started this blog was as a way to keep track of the history of Maine drag since I became a part of that world. But, unfortunately, that only goes back 4 years. Anything prior to that is gone.
I don't usually get angry, but this really has me pissed off. I don't get violent, but I want to hit stuff or people. I want to make whoever did this understand that this was in no way okay for them to do. I want them to understand that if I find out for sure who it was that they will be called out as a traitor, publicly.
Whoever it was that did it, obviously doesn't care about friendship. They've earned themself a spot in the special hell created for drag performers who caused themselves to be iced out by every other performer in the area. I hope it was worth it to you.
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