So You Think You Can Wank?
Edit for clarification: So You Think You Can Dance is a Fox reality show. The American Idol of dance. Same producers, they even have their own incoherent brunette alcoholic serving as judge. It's one of the higher-rated summer shows, spawned versions in dozens of countries, and has a routinely sold-out road tour. It also has many fans who obsessively ship the dancers and accuse the producers of anything from manipulative editing to vote-rigging to personal vendettas against particular dancers, genres, and fat people. They wank about anything and everything, including the fact that they're wanking.

The players:

Lacey Schwimmer, S3 finalist and virgin sexpot with stinky hair extensions.
Benji Schwimmer, S2 winner who enjoys Mormonism, dying his hair, and taking his pants off.
Laurie Schwimmer, fierce mother bear of Lacey and Benji, aunt to Heidi (S2 finalist who has stayed out of this whole thing).
Hokuto Konishi, S3 contestant, Lacey's boyfriend.
Dominic Sandoval, S3 contestant, Hok's friend.
Lauren Gottleib, S2 assistant to show choreographer Tyce, pretend sufferer of multiple-identity disorder, and S3 contestant.

It's worth noting that hate for Lauren started early due to her connections with the show producers and because of a comment made early in the season where she says she has an alternate Japanese identity called "Misha-chan" and goes to auditions by that name. (Note: she is not in any way ethnically Asian.) Show fans mockingly called her Misha-Chan through the whole season. I admit to taking a keen interest in voting for anyone but her; I didn't vote at all in the final because she wasn't there to vote against. Some were a bit angrier. She is also given to comments like this:

Something happened with my voice and half way through Danny my voice went wayyy up and cracked! Now you all know how much I want to be asian......it was totally an asian moment!!!!!!!

And this:

I get stopped on the street by an asian woman saying "take pictcha" (picture ;), I asked what for and she said....kid you not,,,,,quote, unquote "my asian magazine" WHHHHAT!!!!! lauren=happiest girl in the world!

Hok is mum on the weird Asian fetishism; while he is Japanese by birth and ethnicity, he was mostly raised in England, so that may have something to do with it. It has more to do with fan-hate, which was further encouraged by what some saw as obvious favoritism in editing comments and withholding criticism to try to manipulate the votes - particularly during eliminations. For what it's worth, though, Lacey Schwimmer had plenty of haters from the start because her brother won last season and her cousin Heidi was a finalist; Danny Tidwell, another finalist, is brother to S2's second-place dancer Travis Wall and runs a magazine/dance consortium with one of the choreographers; and S3 contestant Faina Savich is sister to S2 contestant Stanislav Savich. Alison Myers on Associated Content gave a good breakdown of just how much of success on the show depends on connections, whether family or professional. My limited understanding of the dance world is that this is completely normal. You get top people, and they're all going to have connections with a show run by other top people.

Lacey haters don't like the sex-kitten image; they don't like that she's the sister of last season's winner; they hate that her hair smells bad. She uses phrases like "shut the front door" which people find obnoxious and fake. The comments are full of Schwimmer-hate:

Lacey is a joke. have you noticed that she is completely one dimentional and an emotion less dancer? ... lacey is just using her brothers name as a free ride to fame.. but lets face it hunny.. you look fat on tv.

Producers also gave her a favorable edit. During the show, there wasn't really any Lauren/Lacey rivalry, just people who had strong opinions about each of them, and plenty of wank towards and between the dancers and their fans.

UNTIL NOW.

After the show ended, with Sabra declared the winner, the top ten and two alternates went a multi-city tour. It's good entertainment. But if you coop up a bunch of 18 and 19-year-olds in a tour bus for a very long time, somehow, drama happens! Lacey got a torn meniscus somewhere along the way, and Hok had a problem with the discs in his back. So they had to take some time off. To create artwork. LINK NSFW. Lacey then posted this picture on her Myspace, though it has since been taken down. But getting something off the Internet is like trying to squeeze toothpaste back in the tube... Were they being silly? Perhaps. But then more allegations of tour-hate came down the pike.

Including an allegation that Lauren has been physically and emotionally bullying Lacey (who is known to have anxiety disorders), making fun of her hair with other contestants, mocking her limp because of the torn meniscus, and finally after Lacey refused to talk to Lauren, physically restraining her, pushing her, and threatening her. TWoP has helpfully preserved Laurie Schwimmer's MySpace blog about the incident. Security was called. The Schwimmers took it to MySpace, which seems like the smart and reasonable thing to do. People who dislike the Schwimmers chalk it up to "well, if two people saw the assault and did nothing, they must hate Lacey too" as well as wondering why Lacey's mom is using MySpace in this way. Armchair Internet psychologists rush to analyze Laurie because she has dancing turkeys on her site, which are clearly signs of a deranged mind? Someone captures Benji on camera being a jerk to one of the other contestants, which helps the Schwimmer-hate to snowball.

Lauren haters say that they always suspected she was a bully... they just got that vibe, you know? And because she hasn't said anything about it, it's probably because bullies are ashamed of what they do. And her own partner didn't like her, anyways.

Edit: The Livejournal group has the only unconfirmed Lauren-response as well as a complete MySpace breakdown. However, several people have picked apart that the alleged IM doesn't jibe with the order of the routines, so it's probably fake. Also, Mormonism makes you exaggerate. And we have a flounce! (NSFW)

Nobody's suggested the obvious, which is that Lauren is clearly jealous that Lacey is dating an Asian man. And probably calls him "Misha-chan" in bed because isn't Misha a boy's nickname? (/tongue in cheek)