Tumblr Anti Duped Into False Callout in Black Butler Fandom
Fake Screenshots Cause Confusion and Anger
Pedojacketing
Pedojacketing is a slang term referring to spurious or otherwise not-entirely-honest accusations of pedophilia. The underlying behavior predates the internet, noteworthily having been used historically (not to say that it has stopped being used this way as of 2022) as a method of demonizing gay people. However the term itself is fairly modern, and rose to public consciousness because of how popular aggressively searching for excuses to call someone a pedophile became as a method of getting away with abusing people in public.
- Urban Dictionary submission by Crotchety Olde Man January 20, 2022
On September 9th, 2024, Twitter user Kurophiliac, a member of the Black Butler fandom was made aware of a Tumblr callout post which featured them. Their reaction was of immediate disgust, their statement being that the conversation allegedly screenshotted and used in the callout never occurred at all and that several elements about them gave this away. Kurophiliac mentions in the thread, “These aren’t even our discord usernames or pfps tey got it all from a ss I posted like over a month ago.” [sic]. The call out, posted by Tumblr user bezierballad, featured entirely fabricated screenshots framing two relatively popular proshipper accounts as real life pedophiles, going so far as to completely invent a whole human being (the 5 year old cousin) in order to do so. “They’re saying we are thirsting over Charlie’s 5 yr old cousin (Charlie doesn’t have a cousin and he is aroace)” [sic]
bezierballad (Bez), whose “about me” pinned post on their Tumblr page asserts a DNI which includes “MAP, pedophile, or proshipper” (♪ ♫ one of these things is not like the others ♫ ♪) quickly ended up deleting the original call out post and issuing an apology with the explanation for their actions as far as their current knowledge. According to Bez, they were part of a server which featured “Anonymous Confession” style submissions, one of which presented her with an alleged “confession” in which they claimed to have “infiltrated” a proship server and ended up seeing “serious and concerning stuff” including the sexualization of a “real” child. The anonymous submission goes on to suggest that they are legitimately worried for this child and that they believe that someone should “legit call the police.” As the statement goes on, they mention that they would like someone to make a callout post about these two proshippers but that they’re “too scared” to do it themselves, preferring to remain anonymous to protect their identity.
Bez claims that she wanted to make herself “useful” (more on this later) so she volunteered and received direct messages from someone named “Zex” with the alleged screenshots. From this point, without thinking about whether or not the screenshots were real (to be fair, Bez did not have any reason to doubt these screenshots), she posted the callout post, asking people to “report both Kurophiliac and puppyfan9000” while including the link to the cyber tipline, presumably for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She admits that she “didn’t think about questioning the information provided” and again, to be fair, who in Bez’s position, would even think that someone would provide them fake screencaps about something so obviously heinous? When someone makes claims about something so absolutely devastating about what is believed to be a real child in danger—should the first thing we feel in that scenario be doubt? Bez laments that she went to “extreme measures” [sic] after obtaining the falsified information, opening wishing that she had not taken everything “at face value.”
So why did Zex do this? Bez presents a theory as fact here, though there may be more than a sliver of truth to it: “See, Zex had some past beef with Plato (aka Kurophiliac) and made this whole story about them being a pedo in order to frame them and ruin their reputation.” This was further solidified as a theory when Zex advertised the subsequent callout and added, “I know the author of the callout said not to harass them. But honestly go nuke them. They’re free real state!” [sic]
Zex’s introduction statement in the aforementioned proshipper server claims them to be a trans guy (they/them) from Vietnam, 20 years old, with the handle Mikazuki_Hiroki on Archive of Our Own. They also claimed to enjoy certain commonly known “off-limits” ships in the Black Butler fandom such as SebCiel, Cielcest, and Claudelois. Kurophiliac seems to be completely ignorant of any motive regarding Zex, theorizing that it may have been a random attack but going further in their Tumblr post about the incident to venture a guess at their identity. According to Kurophiliac, there is only one person who would hold a long-standing grudge against them, Charlie (puppyfan9000), and Bez. Not only this but they state, “This individual is a proshipper with a history of going undercover as an anti to stir up trouble and a history of faking screenshots to make antis look bad. This person was also in the server where the original confession/accusation was made.” Circumstantial but persuasive evidence continues, as their account was deleted from the antiship server before the confession and the Zex account joined that server just before—setting up the perfect alias to cover any tracks and to set Bez up as the fall guy after the screenshots are discovered to be fake.
Bez’s apology finishes up with them stating that they “will never make another callout post on anyone. Ever. No matter what the topic is.” which, ironically, places her in a pretty proship standpoint and if there are any antis reading this, I’ll explain exactly how. Antiship requires action. It is not a passive state of being. It is about making sure through words, and actions, that you are on the “in” side of the “in-group.” Show-boating, grand-standing, whatever you want to call it: Anti-shipping is the act of being angry and yelling about it. It’s open, expressed disgust. It’s callout posts. It’s creating servers dedicated to sharing anti-shipping ideologies (very close to radfem, anti-sex work, and anti-porn sentiments). You might say “You’re wrong, JD! Anti-shipping is none of that stuff!” but think for a second about what Bez said about how she felt after the confession post on the anti-ship server (And can we talk about how fucked up it is to have a “confession bot” on a server designed around performative disgust? It’s like a little masochistic confessional but the priest is a bunch of your so-called friends who tell you that you’re a degenerate). Bez stated that she wanted to make herself “useful” after the post, immediately making herself the martyr who would become vulnerable to the proship hordes if only so they could break this horrific story to the world—to show the anti-shipper “friends” of theirs that they were sufficiently brave, to prove that they were useful to the cause of anti-shipping. Why did Bez come to this conclusion that they needed to be “useful” to the in-group? Their…cult, shall we say? Those of us who don’t live within a friend group where these kinds of social pressures exist can’t even fathom that we could allow anything like this to happen but happen it does and more often in spaces where the fear of friendly fire is ever-present. (Hint: if there’s no artillery in your friend groups, there is no friendly fire.) If Bez wasn’t proship before, she has to be now after she stated: “Starting now, I will no longer let silly things like fiction and shipping cloud my judgement of other people. While I may disagree with many people’s opinions on shippings, I will not engage with those people nor will I engage with their content.” [sic] That, ladies and gentlefolk, is proshipping. That’s it. That’s the premise and the execution. It’s as simple as minding your own business and not allowing the fiction someone reads/writes to color how you think of their character. Welcome to the other side, Bez.
Still, it’s extremely important to note here that proshippers aren’t all good people: in this case especially, should Zex turn out to be the person Kurophiliac suspects, that should be evidence enough that no group is a monolith and we can’t depend on proshippers to be honest, accepting, or even decent. We’ve learned this in the past with the absolute bullshit from users such as BoomerSlayr9000, dizdidcurse and everyone else associated with FAIA such as MeowForeveeer who only a few years later was openly thirsting after the Major from Hellsing. (Gurl…) It’s a lesson that should be taken to heart: anyone can be a douchecanoe, even if their immediate social group isn’t based on hate and moral grand-standing. Even if you drove almost six hours to Baltimore to visit them in person before they blamed you for their anxiety while you were getting dogpiled. (Hahah fuck you.) People are people are people. And sometimes…people suck.