# 16

I found a perfect thing to write and this is the perfect place.

There is online drama happening sometimes and I don't want to write about it in the comments, just fueling the fires. But I want to express my thoughts.

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The latest piece of tiny drama is the cosplayer who made an online poll about her next cosplay, but then started blocking people and hiding their replies.

From the perspective of outsiders:

1. She runs a poll.
	1. Meaning she implicitly made a deal
	2. She gets high engagement with her post - people commenting suggestions, people voting with their likes, which drives the algorithm to recommend the post to more people, which ultimately grows her audience.
	3. It's not for free - people are giving their engagement because they believe she puts something on the line. If a silly cosplay wins, she will be the butt of the joke.
2. She hides replies and blocks people.
	1. The cost of the public poll - "if a silly option wins, you have to do it" is happening.
	2. She deflects and doesn't want to "pay" this cost.
	3. People feel scammed - they figured it was a fair internet game - "I give you attention, you do silly thing", but now that it's come to this, she refuses to do the silly thing.
3. People riot. People are different.
	- Most of what I've seen was just people taking light jabs at her. "I will cosplay but I won't block anyone, haha" or leaving comments asking why she plays the internet game unfairly.
	- This is the internet. Surely, there were a few people who took it too far and harassed her in the DMs or something.

In the end - people feel justified in their outrage because they feel scammed, even if a tiny bit. The cosplayer privates her account and is "defeated" - the offended community now doesn't like her, but she wasn't in that community anyway, so it's not a big loss.

But!

From the perspective of the cosplayer (as far as I can tell):

1. She runs a poll.
	1. She acknowledges the deal. The most popular option was SpongeBob, which is a silly cosplay.
2. She had certain expectations
	1. She has personal rules, which might be known in her community, but not outside of it - no cosplaying of real people, which in this case also includes their avatars. Game/anime characters = OK. YouTuber who uses a character as the avatar = NO.
	2. People would suggest and vote on things individually. Common mistake, covered in many cases of online polls being overrun by a coordinated group.
3. People bring their followers
	1. Quote tweeting and saying "hey guys, vote here, let's make the cosplayer cosplay our character" is probably fine in current online world, but it makes sense how it could feel unfair.
	2. The cosplayer definitely doesn't share this opinion and thinks it's unfair.
	3. She feels targeted by some outside community that bands together and wants to capture her poll and make her cosplay someone she doesn't want to cosplay.
4. The cosplayer defends herself
	1. She stops the unfair capture of her poll and gets back to her own community.
	2. She sees the outsiders as some weirdos that keep targeting her for some reason while she just tried to defend herself, so she blocks even more of them.
	3. The crowd doesn't stop and she privates her account.

I think the cosplayer was in the wrong, because it was her job to set expectations. She could have explained her rules if that was the main reason she didn't want to cosplay the characters.

Maybe I'm wrong and it's all different. But, at first I was thinking "ha, that's what you get for being unfair", meaning "you get a few jabs in the comments". But then this topic seemed to grow, and I'm sure she already regretted making the poll.