Mock. Mockmockmock. Mockity-mock-mock

1:21pm: Taylor Hicks wank. No, really.
So... remember Taylor Hicks? Old-looking dude with gray hair that was on American Idol a couple of years back? Kinda sounded like Michael McDonald and danced like your drunk uncle at your wedding? Well, he still has a fandom. Yeah, I know -- I was shocked, too.

There has been a wank brewing for the past few months in the fandom. To keep this from getting too TL;DR (hard to do, since it has grown and mutated into a big blob of failure), I'm breaking this down into bullet points.

• Taylor Hicks is photographed with some woman frolicking on the beach. This woman is later identified as Caroline Lyders, a news anchor from Milwaukee. ...OR IS IT?
• Rumors start to swirl that the woman on the beach is NOT Caroline. This theory, popularized by the blog Making Fun of Your Ass (which will be shortened to MFOYA for the rest of this report), states that Taylor was actually with a high-priced hooker on the beach, but when he was caught, his publicists decided to hire Caroline to keep up appearances as a family-friendly performer.
  
• Other Taylor Hicks fansites, such as TaylorMadeSoul (TMS), post rants in opposition of this theory. TMS is probably the most visible opposition of this theory in the fandom, despite some of the mods supposedly believing in this theory, as noted in this TL;DR post. Unfortunately, TMS is closed to outsiders due to AIDS trolls, so I can't link to these posts here. Other blogs are created to fight the rumors and MFOYA in general, such as Making Fun of Your Asses and The Caroline Lyders Fan Club.
  
• The rumor makes it to Radar and the AOL front page. (Radar Online has a nice summary of the wank up to this point here.) Radar even went so far as to hire a forensics expert, Lois Gibson, to study the pictures. Her opinion? Beach Woman and Caroline are two different people. (See her response to the fandom here.)
• Things finally die down -- for a little while, anyway.

But people can't leave well enough alone, and so this scab starts to get picked at once again...

• Two new blogs pop up within three days of each other -- 15 Minutes of Fame and The View From the Inside. 15 Minutes of Fame is dedicated to "discussing those people who are searching in vain for their 15 minutes" in the Taylor Hicks fandom (What), while The View From The Inside (VFTI) claims to be a view of the fandom from those closest to Taylor (or, well, closer than you, anyway).
• MFOYA picks up on this and is determined to expose those behind these blogs. After posting IP addresses here, they claim to have figured out who is behind VFTI -- TMS mods StrawGirl, Tappanga, and TayVAgal. The View From The Inside claims that the IP evidence is 'shopped, leading MFOYA to post this response.
  
• MFOYA creates TMS Moles, a blog dedicated to exposing the TMS mods as the Cancer That Is Killing /b/ The Taylor Hicks Fandom.
• Much breaking of jurisimprudence  laws commences, including Snacky's Law repeatedly throughout the comments.
• Now there's TMS MoleMole. ...They're just fucking with us now, aren't they?

Did I mention that most of these women on both sides of the wank are in their 30s or older, married, and have children? Most of these women are (as far as I can tell) also relatively new to internet fandom in general, so things like slash are foreign to them (witness the "eww, slash" entry on TMS Moles).

...Well. At least no one's been driven to commit suicide yet?

ETA: TMS Moles do it for great justice.

ETA 2: From Princess Mole in the comments of the above link:

These posts are coming from Fandom Wank. They are actually professional fans (not of Taylor Hicks) with no extra time whatsoever except to post about fans. Back to topic!

Do I really have to point out why this comment is funny? (Guys, don't poke the wank.)

ETA 3: The TMS Moles edit Allie's comment to better reflect their stance. Here's the cleverly edited post, in case it suddenly disappears.


ETA 4: The TMS webmaster says hello.

ETA 5: Thanks to dreamer_marie for pointing out this comment:

yea…saw that all the staff has been demoted at TMS. So does that just leave Adora in charge? Right! That won’t last long. I guess it means we can all go there, start threads, swear in the general boards, reek havoc and no one is going to moderate us? Bullshit!

Because swearing and "reeking" havoc is surely the way to rage against the machine.

ETA 6: Internet slapfight in the comments of the latest TMS Moles post between Princess Mole and Claena, a mod from TMS. Mmm -- more misogyny and fat jokes. Just what I always never wanted.