This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/fantatata on 2025-03-14 18:28:22+00:00.
Hi! I originally posted on here about ongoing drama, but given I usually lurk I wasn’t fully aware of the 14-day rule. It’s now been 14 days, and I’m back with an updated post. I’ve also had some users help me fill out the gaps that I didn’t remember, so this is a collaborative effort of sorts, given I was told you guys enjoy hearing all of the details! _
So, I’m a user on this website called goSupermodel. It originally started in the mid-2000s as a dress-up forum site for girls (think Gaia Online but more fashion than anime oriented), and later on was shut down in 2015-2016. Back in December 2022 the website returned after an Indiegogo campaign, and it was all fine and good for a short while. The site itself ran on a salvaged code from 2013, which caused a lot of lag on modern hardware, but we were all pleased to know our beloved website from our childhood had returned. Nowadays, while the website is still primarily used by girls, people from all sorts of backgrounds have started using it (I’m a man and I use it, so… I mean. There’s that.)
The site staff was not ready to deal with an adult userbase, and this was clear from the start. While the original site’s run (we’ll call this 1.0) was used by children, preteens and teens, nowadays on 2.0 you’ll find it difficult to find anyone below the age of 20. The majority of us are there for the nostalgia factor. Anyway, back on track — the first two years were already rocky, and I’ve decided to let you guys know about some of the biggest concerns and controversies of recent memory.
Security Concerns
At the beginning of 2.0’s run, given the website was running on code from 2013, there were a lot of security concerns surrounding the website’s address. gSm itself ran on HTTP as opposed to HTTPS, which made a lot of users worried about the safety of their passwords. This itself was already pretty bad and put the staff in a bad light, but since then, it has come to light that it’s a lot worse.
First of all, the passwords were poorly protected. Until at least 7 months ago (to my knowledge), an admin could easily find a password for the account of an user in a simple document, meaning that the passwords were not encrypted. If you forgot your password, it would simply be e-mailed to you in plain text. While some admins claim this was never true, I have received information that this was, indeed, the case. They also kept people’s accounts and alternate accounts, their passwords, e-mails, OS and IP.
If the shoe fits, Early-mid 2023.
Given this situation happened in January 2023, it was difficult to get a hold of the information. I won’t be going as in depth into it as the other sections, but I’ve tried to summarize what happened.
A moderator, who we will call Mod A, stepped forward by leaking the messages sent in the private Moderator group chat. In this group chat, it showcased behaviour by Moderators who bullied others, and how they would target specific users in particular. One of these users was M.
While I have my own personal gripes with M (which includes her stalking a friend of mine, using hidden numbers to call people and even sharing someone’s photographs without their permission), the way she was treated behind closed doors was still gut-wrenching. She had a conversation with another moderator (Mod B), but mod B soon started to ghost her. Soon enough, M received a dm from mod B on-site, about how mod B removed her as a friend and was no longer comfortable interacting with her. This was supposed to stay confidential, but other moderators soon started removing M from their friends lists.
Mod A and user M (alongside other users) worked together to create a long google doc (which was later deleted, though archives of it still exist) which consisted of 35 pages, calling out the behaviour that happened behind closed doors. They would use her actual name instead of her username, which made M feel like this was personal to her (for good reason). M received a ban from the admin team and created an alt account to share her side of the story. After reading her post, an admin personally reached out to apologise to her.
The following is copy-pasted from the archived 35-page document which released in 2023:
[Beginning of copy-paste, names have been redacted.]
“1. The moderators have broken their own rules several times. It’s nothing new that
moderators can be more “free” with breaking the rules, rather than a “normal” player, as they
can simply just apologize for their wrong doings and be forgiven.
Another thing I’d like to mention is how moderators are treated by staff. For example, [A]
was fired due to a rule breach where she had shared some screenshots of what some of
them were saying (which is perfectly fine). But it only applied to her, even though there were
others who were sharing things from the moderator chat, including who they had timed out
and who they hadn’t, which is information we should not be sharing.
- One of the former moderators (who has now been fired) called [M] a "dumb wack
psychopathic idiot dogshit sniffer". Several moderators joined in on talking bad about her,
and nothing was done about it until someone threatened to leak the messages from the
modchat where it was written. The moderator has now been fired, but those who supported it
and joined in on the badmouthing are still active moderators today.
- A former administrator has been caught bullying in the moderator chat several times,
name dropping in an unprofessional way, and being snarky towards people in the forum.
This admin has written nasty things about individual users without anything being done
about it before it was also threatened to be leaked. The admin deleted the moderator chat,
presumably to remove evidence.
- Around March, we were allowed to mention who we recommended to become moderators
in the future.
It is fair, as we may have “more” knowledge of how people are in the forum. But we were
also allowed to mention people we did NOT want to be appointed as moderators. Two of
those people who got mentioned as a “no-go” to become moderators are [1] and [2] , who
are nothing but good girls with good hearts. To my surprise, the moderator who wrote it is a
good friend of those girls (which is extremely strange to do to people you are friends with),
but that moderator got what they wanted and got their best friend appointed as one of the
new moderators. [KI] was also bad-mouthed and bullied so awfully in that chat.
- FROM [4] (one of the people who signed the document) herself: Me and [4] were fooling around in a topic, and I asked her if
she wanted to join the Murder Train game we were playing, and then she answered
something along the lines of "I can’t! Me and my bf have planned playing a special game
later…", she was referring to Hogwarts Legacy, but it did come out as sexual. I took a
screenshot of the message, uploaded it with a dia and posted it on my profile. After a few
days I got a DM from [4] asking me if I had uploaded the pic with dias, and then she
advised me to take it down because the mods had agreed to not allow any pics with anything
sexual. I don’t know if I could get a warning for having the picture up, but I definitely felt like I
had some privilege for being friends with a mod in this situation.
- In January, [C] confirmed via the staff that “[Cheating User]” didn’t cheat in the wardrobe
game, and that he simply was just being insanely good at the game.
This statement made people furious, as we all knew he was cheating which he admitted to
Himself.
People started to bash on [C] in several servers and snapchat groups, and they were
dragging her autism while badmouthing her. [M], who has ADHD herself, finds it triggering
and decides to tell [C] after asking [JS] advice on what to do.
When [M] told [C], she said that she already knew and that she is dealing with it.
For some reason, she went to the moderator chat and said that [M] lied about this all.
How does it make sense that [M] lied, when you said you knew about the situation? And
don’t you dare say you did not say that, we have the whole discord chat saved.
- [C] also lied about [M] sending her death threats. When we asked staff about
this in the video chat we had earlier, they said sorry for assuming these things as they didn’t
have any proof. Funny right, [C] being a law graduate according to her
goSupermodel profile, but still making up such serious allegations?”
[End of copy-paste]
It also came to light in the document that one of the moderators, [I], was bullying the user [P] behind her back. [P] is a bit of a controversial user herself, but the long story short is that she is intellectually disabled and often acts out emotionally. [I] had been badmouthing her in the moderator chat frequently, without the public being aware of this. This was one of the reasons why [I] temporarily lost his moderator badge, which has since been reinstated.
The whole situation was a confusing mess, and I tried my best to summarize it in a way that made sense. It also happened a long time ago, and given I don’t have the best memory, I could only piece this together with the saved document.
The Racist admin situation.
In early autumn of 2023, they hired a handful of new admins onto the website. One of these admins is a user I shall only refer to as K. Pe…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1jbamrw/online_dressup_community_gosupermodel_or_how_to/