which i am so not even a part of, but totally would have been, had this happened a few months down the road, or if something similar had happened in some other fandom i was heavily involved in. also, i have been doing a lot of thinking about fandom/fanfiction/interwebs in general because i wrote a paper on it this summer, so anyway:
common logic tells us that the internet is fake, because it's a series of constructions: because people have control over the images they're projecting of themselves. that nice girl who invites you over could be a gross old man who wants to rape you, etc. etc., because it's assumed that when the opportunity arises, everyone will lie about themselves. and to some extent that's probably true-- god knows i lied about my age in fandom for years. but experience tells everyone who has ever participated meaningfully/extensively in an internet community that the internet is totally real. real connections are made with people; real, meaningful work is produced and shared; real emotions are at play. the emotional risk is lessened because there's still about three thousand smokescreens between you and the other person, but it's still there. the problem is, though, the internet is real: people do the same dumb shit, make the same mistakes, and are the same people they are in real life. and in big communities, there's going to be cliques-- whether you call them BNFs or make secret communities for them, they exist. it's exciting to be a part of it, and it sucks to be outside of it, just like in real life. so when shit gets real in internet comms, the way it just did, shit gets fucking real, but people who've never been a part of an internet community don't really ever understand that. there's a shame factor about "emotions on the internet," so sharing those hurt feelings and betrayal in "real life" is pretty much not happening-- so people seek out new internet communities, they get bigger, and the same things happen.
basically, it sucks that people are getting/got hurt in this whole debacle, and pretending that ontd_ai or ANY sizable community is a place where "SRS BSNS" isn't allowed and shouldn't be encouraged is stupid. even if the point of the community is lightheartedness, the srs bsns is the connections being made between people.
aaaaand i just wrote this whole thing because i have ten more days left of vacation and very very little to do with my time. lalala, i'll shut up now.