Overview

The 2012 Wikipedia Fobos-Grunt episode (also known as the BDSee Saga by Encyclopedia Dramatica) refers to the overlooked controversy about the activities surrounding the failed Russian Fobos-Grunt spacecraft on Wikipedia. Originally created by far-left members played by Russia's Kremlin, the alt-right would take advantage of it, both on-wiki and off-wiki.

This controversy, along with Gamergate, helped create the Internet culture that ultimately propelled Donald Trump into the U.S. presidency as one of the most reactionary and extremist ever elected, and raised the issue of digital technology addiction.

Background

Baba Vanga's "Prediction"

At some unknown time, blind Bulgarian lady Baba Vanga was claimed to have "predicted" Fobos-Grunt and its aftermath that led to this episode on Wikipedia.

She reportedly said on PravdaReport^[1]: "Numerous catastrophes and disasters will shake the world. The mentality of the people will change. They will be divided by their faith…"

This prediction, like many made during her life, is vague, making it possible to twist any arbitrary event that matches the description.

The Failure Itself

In November 2011, the Russians managed to get a space probe, called Fobos-Grunt into low Earth orbit, just short of their goal of getting into Mars. Thanks to incompetence, coupled with Russian President Vladimir Putin corruption and inadvertent sabotage, according to Space Safety Magazine^[2], it plunged shortly thereafter into the Pacific Ocean.

According to Space.com^[3], the spacecraft's untimely demise set off a flurry of conflicting media reports and conspiracy theories. Unexplainable.net^[4] said that Putin himself speculated over the Phobos-Grunt conspiracy.

One of these conspiracy theories, however, surprised nobody and interested at least two people at the most, one of whom was Starkiller88, a sockpuppet of Bryan Seecrets, as the Encyclopedia Dramatica article^[5] pointed out.

Notable Developments

On Wikipedia

The Administrators' Noticeboard/Incident report on Starkiller88^[6] detailed the long-term vandalism and trolling involving Starkiller88 and and another Wikipedian who goes by the name of BatteryIncluded, who has a long history of incivility, personal attacks and harassment. It exploded when he added the information to the Phobos-Grunt article with a reference to a state-run news site, part of the Kremlin's mouthpiece for Putin's agenda spewing out fake news. When the editor added the fact that no further Fobos missions were planned, an edit war happened.

Eventually, he started adding claims about an allegedly planned Anonymous operation, entitled "Phobos-Gone" aimed at taking down the Fobos-Grunt website, and conducting vigilante acts to "bring those responsible for the failure to justice." He also created four redirects relating to the alleged campaign, before admitting in broken, near unreadable prose during the resulting RfD discussion^[7] that he himself made the whole thing up in retaliation for an incivil post that BatteryIncluded made on his talk page after he had repeatedly stonewalled requests to cease being disruptive. Making this point also appeared to have been the cause of his insistence that there would never be another mission to Phobos. Being a figment of Starkiller's imagination, this article met with the same fate as many of his previous contributions, speedy deletion.

The next AN/I thread (originally a Wikiquette assistance thread)^[8] said that Starkiller88 got indefinitely blocked, and he pleaded to the administrators before engaging in a harassment campaign on BatteryIncluded. He was banned shortly thereafter by unilateral action from Dennis Brown and Boing! said Zebedee with personal attacks and disinformation on his own talk page. BatteryIncluded gave him a kitten with a death threat disguised as a message to "get well", which means "go die".

Phobosgate didn't end on Wikipedia, but continued to be the influence on not only the encyclopedia, but also the entire Internet.

On Encyclopedia Dramatica

Starkiller88, banned from Wikipedia, joined Encyclopedia Dramatica as BDSee. He tried his best to fit in by understanding ED:101 and making that fact abundantly clear. He then made a lot of pages and articles, and made an attack article about BatteryIncluded.

As his unemotive antics became more of a burden to the wiki and he met with more resistance, BDSee started making warnings and pleadings, but was showered with kittens and invective, and banned twice. Before getting banned, he even tried to redeem himself through this article by inserting more vanity edits, and after getting banned he tried to edit this article once again by pointing his finger at BatteryIncluded.

Despite getting unbanned from ED days ago, Starkiller decided to rejoin ED for Saturday kicks in September but not before getting his sockpuppet banned only a few hours later.

On OhInternet

At this point, Bryan decided head over to OhInternet. Anything he creates or even touches on any wiki would easily meet the standards, including ED, so it's pretty obvious he's doing the exact same thing now that he's moved onto bigger things, a part of being an anti-Russia and anti-Putin agenda.

A cruel irony to this left-field saga is now those douchebags have to put up with him, and we get to document it. As seen on his OhI talkpage, he isn't even capable of responding to, or handling, the most polite criticism over what he writes in a timely manner. He sticks out among other users of the site, which really is saying something.

RationalWiki on "Headless Chicken Mode"

On October 3, 2017, CJ-Moki posted a photo on the saloon bar^[9] of a tweet claiming that RW stands with Putin because it is dismissing #Phobosgate, they claim to be a made-up from his own imagination as a conspiracy theory claiming that Phobos-Grunt butterflied into the Trump presidency.

Two days later, multiple rants about Phobosgate were posted on the talk page. As a result of a block on harassment by Bigs which may have been unjust, he completely exploded on him, claiming it is "abelist [''sic''], divisive, hateful, anti-liberal, anti-progressive, right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, and racist bullshit." He also claimed that Putin, Russia, and the Kremlin all fabricated stories about him specifically.

At the same time, RoninMacBeth posted a message on BatteryIncluded's talk page^[9] and BatteryIncluded responded with a personal attack without mentioning of a liberal snowflake, and that Starkiller88 cried when Fobos-Grunt failed and crashed.

He left for a week and then returned, and was permabanned by CJ-Moki before being unbanned for a chicken coop case to decide. The case ultimately ended in his probation, with several restrictions being placed on him. Ultimately, he violated this seven times in one day after nearly two weeks of inactivity, and was subsequently permabanned by CJ-Moki once and for all.

Search Interest

External References