Coincidences are a funny thing. Sometimes they’re simply random occurrences of pure chance. On the other hand, the more coincidences you pile on top of each other, the less likely the two events are totally unconnected.
That’s the situation facing us in the disturbing case of the fictitious “NIKKY SYNDER,” a fraudulent Facebook account created back in June of 2016 and used primarily for bashing ALEC PETERS and Axanar. The fake account was updated regularly with photos lifted from the Twitter updates of a woman who was NOT Nikky Synder. In fact, she was a young TV reporter who, at the time, worked for a local news affiliate in Peoria, IL. The 14-month ruse ended this past Tuesday when this young woman was made aware of the fraudulent account using her face and photos and reported it to Facebook.
Before Tuesday, “NIKKY SYNDER” had posted regularly on the SMALL ACCESS Facebook group—having joined on February 7, 2017…a day before the group completed a week-long poll to determine whether ANTHONY SHUH should be expelled for belligerent and insulting behavior. Some suspected that “Nikky” might have been an alias that Anthony Shuh used to stay in the Small Access group.
I made clear in my blog from Tuesday that I was NOT making that accusation:
It’s a horrendous feeling of being violated, made worse by the fact that you can almost never discover the identity of the perpetrator. In this case, we have a suspicion, but even then, we aren’t certain…and I want to state that up front in this blog. We can’t prove anything or even make a firm accusation. Instead, all we have is an interesting series set of coincidences, which I’ll share…along with how the impostor was finally “caught.”
I shared a couple of those coincidences (but not all of them) in my previous blog post. But then Anthony Shuh posted the following comment onto the Fan Film Factor Facebook page, and now I need to spend yet another blog post talking about something other than fan films (don’t worry, things return to normal on Friday with a great audio interview with Vance Major!).
Here’s what Anthony Shuh wrote that prompted this follow-up blog…
Continue reading “Was “NIKKY SYNDER” really ANTHONY SHUH? (follow-up editorial)”