*boggle*
Trolls and conspiracy theories and stolen foxes... if this one's not an April Fool's joke, it's a wank for the ages. If it is... okay, it's still pretty damn wanky. But it's very complicated. It's a labyrinth of wank, only without David Bowie's pants. So bear with me here...

See, hothead is a fairly well-known contributer to the various feminist communities on livejournal. She's known for being a take-no-bullshit radical who rules her community, feminist_rage, with an iron fist, banning anyone who could remotely be construed as a troll.

Yesterday, _she_devil posts in feminist_fatale that she and another regular, catwoman980, suspect that hothead is a troll. She also posts about it in her journal. They claim that Hothead's IP address matches that of an antifeminist Yahoo profile they found that was deleted soon after, and also matches that of a troll, saucyinterloper, who has been posting to the various communities with brief, cryptic messages about stealing foxes. (Saucyinterloper also seems to have another identity, libertariangurl, who posted to feminist a few days ago about how "all women want to be primarily wives and mothers" and is now stealing foxes too.) Supposedly, hothead defriended catwoman980 and _she_devil with no explanation as soon as they asked her about the coincidental IPs.

In response to these accusations, Hothead locks down feminist_rage, and leaves a cryptic "don't panic, email me if you want details" post in her personal journal. People collectively go "what the shit is this?"

Then, the wank spills over into feminist, thanks to maclyn. People seem to have divided themselves into the "omg we've been betrayed!" camp, the "stop slandering her good name, you evil conclusion-jumpers-to!" camp, and the "uh... still, what the shit is this?" camp. Some think it's an April Fool's gag, some think the timing is coincidental. I have no idea where I stand, so I'll just stand back. And point. And laugh.

ETA: Possible admission that the whole thing is a setup from catwoman980. Watch this space for more wank. (Once upon a time I was going to get something done today rather than just sitting here and watching the carnage unfold. So much for that.)

ETA2: Yeah, gag. hothead admits "guilt" here, here and here. I sense this may still get wanky, as some people seemed pretty offended.