A Brief History:
Her previous account, Kohaku-Dono, was abandoned after Adam had discovered she had artificially inflated her subscriber counts with additional dummy accounts created by her.
As Kami-chan.x3 once observed in a post last year:
Something very weird happend and it has to do with Subsribers. Kohaku-Dono, just reached 90 Subscribers... in less than 2 days!! At first she had like, 7 subscribers. Now she has 90! If she gets anymore, she might be able to kick Adam of the list! Woot! And she'll be the most subsribed Otakuite! Go Kohaku!
Adam looked into the matter, as we were all wondering how it was this virtually unknown member had rocketed up to the number one spot in just a couple months with few words and a bit of artwork. And indeed, he found well over 100 theOtaku accounts created within the span of the same week, all with no posts, no Worlds, no submissions, and no (or just a few) comments. What they all did have, however, were subscriptions to Kohaku-Dono.
There were lists and lists of members named “poopoo1”, “poopoo2”, all the way to “poopoo10”. Lists of members named “angerpo”, “angerpo1”, “angerpo2” and so on. Lists of members like “hopperto”, “hopperto1”, “hopperto3”, “hopperto4” and so on. All were virtual shells with only a subscription to Kohaku-Dono.
Kohaku-Dono had been caught, and immediately had all her subscribers stripped. Adam was extremely upset and honestly wanted to ban her outright for this. Rather, he accepted the suggestions of other staff for what to do. The e-mail was as follows:
So I talked to James and Des last night to hear their take on what they'd do if she was an OB member and I decided the following:
(1) I've deleted ALL her subscriptions and subscribers, so she's at 0 again and I'll make sure she doesn't get back on the member list
(2) I deleted all the fake accounts
(3) I asked that she write an essay of apology or be banned permanently, since she wasted my time to delete all the fake accounts, I want to waste her time by writing a lengthy exposition
(4) She's on probationIt was a hard decision, I wanted to ban her, we'll see how she writes the apology essay and how she behaves in the short term, hopefully this will be a wake up call
Adam
So those were the terms given. Kohaku-Dono had to comply or she would be banned.
This is what happened back in April of last year. This is what was happening behind the scenes at the site as we worked to remedy the situation. And it looked as though we could have gone on with this and this whole situation could have ended then.
Rather, Kohaku-Dono sent out this message to her subscribers (or, in this possible case, the people she had subscribed to):
Dear Otakuians/Friends, As you know, my subscribers have gone down to nothing. Thanks to all the people who re-subscribed- ah, I don’t even know who to word this letter. I won’t beat around the bush, it’s all terribly depressing, I’ve been PMing Adam, and he hasn’t replied yet. I’m not sure it’s hard to miss a whole bunch of PMs titled IMPORTANT.
Anyway, I’m really not sure what to do with myself so after some intense plotting, I’ve come to the decision to delete this account and start all over again. From scratch. I think that I’d like people to vote for me not because of my status, but because they like my art, and what better way to do so if I’m virtually unknown?
The new username is TwoFacedLullaby, and if you have a dA it the same but with a hyphen between Faced and Lullaby. I love my mysterious sounding names. I think the coolest name so far is ProdigyBombay. I can’t get it out of my head. So anyway, I still want to keep all the friends/acquaintances I’ve made, so I want all of you to visit me, ‘kay? If you do, I don’t want to be known as Kohaku or Kohaku-Dono, I want to be known as me. Nami. So you must visit me, keep in touch! Luff you guys.
Rather than owning up to her troubles, she ducked away, came up with a new cover story for her friends, and tried to start fresh. This is a story I often feel that many of her subscribers never quite caught, even after we broached her (now as TwoFacedLullaby) again with our previous terms.
I no longer have her apology essay where she explained her poor choice of judgement as being in a dark time of her life and seeing this as the only way to find acceptance, but that was her new blog’s introduction for a week or so. And that was that. And she escaped probation. And she made it back onto the members list eventually.
And we let it slide, thinking maybe she had learned her lesson…
