Bandflesh

Bandflesh was a popular, but controversial Bandom anon meme. An anon on Fail_Fandomanon described it as "pretty much gossip-central for late '00s bandom people that weren't on fbr_trash.".
According to the Fan History Wiki, the original community was created on GreatestJournal on 5 June 2007 as an offshoot of lol_meme and moved to JournalFen on 10 December 2007. The anonmeme probably moved to band_flesh on February 14, 2009,The last post in bandflesh was on February 14, 2009; the first post on band_flesh was on the same day: NEW COMM OFFERS A FRESH START FOR BANDFLESH! BUT HOW LONG WILL THE HONEYMOON PERIOD LAST? A HARD-HITTING INVESTIGATIVE REPORT and the last post in band_flesh was in April 2010.wayback machine link, archived May 18, 2011. The last post visible is dated Apr. 11th, 2010, and has only 932 comments, far short of the 5000-comment limit that was reached in all previous posts. It looks like the comm started slowing down in late 2009: posts were filling up every few days in October, but November had only two posts fill up, and December's post didn't fill up for two months. The community went offline with the rest of JournalFen around April? 2015—some posts appear in the Wayback Machine, but the threaded comment discussions were mostly not saved. A version of the comm was also created on Dreamwidth and is still online as of 2022 (though inactive since 2013): reflesh.
Bandflesh included many in-jokes, overuse of capslock, post spelled as poast, commentfics, reviews of Bandom Big Bang fanfics, and many other things that have been lost. The community's name was originally "a typo or autocorrect for 'bandslash' that became an in-joke."FFA comment, 2014-11-29.
As of 2008, bandflesh was mostly friendslocked, with all RP posts and discussion posts after reaching the comment limit being locked due to "being linked by a celebrity gossip blog early in our lifespan. That definitely made us less eager to be public knowledge.", June 11, 2008 In early days, all community members were effectively mods and had the password; this backfired later when someone used the password to delete all archived discussions.
==Bandflesh Constitution==
From the community info page, circa August 2008:wayback machine, 26 August 2008.
==Origin==
In June 2008 a bandflesher described the origin of the community thusly:
==Wank History==
According to Fail_fandomanon, bandflesh was a good community for the first year, but "Never has a comm imploded quite as spectacularly and horribly as bandflesh." Later, an anon explained,
A commenter in 2009 suggested that bandflesh's wankiness might have resulted from its increased popularity:
===June 2008 Controversy===
Beginning in June 2008, bandflesh became a recurring contentious topic within Bandom and bandflesh-related posts began to be linked in fandom wank and metafandom. 
In June 2008, bandflesh wank was written up in a Fandom Wank post, bandom_wank. An anonymous commenter summed it up as,
Mary apologized,Awake & unafraid (archived link), posted to livejournal 12 June 2008 but the incident had already inspired a lot of meta posts about anonymity, some of which were rounded up in metafandom on June 11, and June 12 as well as criticism of the comm. 
====Criticisms of bandflesh====
In a popular post, ficbyzee roundly condemned the community as a whole:
And fairestcat made a post about the damage knowing about the community did to her ability to trust her fellow fans.
Many other fans left comments on ficbyzee and fairestcat's post talking about their own concerns with Bandflesh.
From Stele3:
From sharpest_rose:
From Jezrana: 
From lim:
And narceus questioned why any of the posters at bandflesh ever thought it would remain secret.
====Defenses of bandflesh====
Multiple bandfleshers came out of the anonmeme closet to defend the community. From quettaser:
From kalpurna:
From Shoemaster:
From dreamyraynbo:
===November 2008 Deletion===
In the early days of Bandflesh, the password to the community was freely given out to all community members, a choice that many bandflesh members came to regret.
On the night of November 18, 2008 in North America, and into the next morning, someone with the password methodically deleted every post and comment in the bandflesh community.
Waking up to the news on November 19, Bandflesh founder drunktuesdays posted in shock:
Some Bandflesh members, such as m0rganjames and just_katarin, were reading the community at the time and watched the deletions happen live:
Bandom fans who didn't frequent Bandflesh, as well as prominent fans from outside Bandom also expressed their shock and horror at the action.
From Giddygeek:
In a post titled "and the crappy week award goes to bandflesh," seperis commented:
However, the comm itself was not deleted and was up and running the next day.wayback copy of bandflesh post dated 2008-11-20 21:39:00
===The Bandom Trigger Warnings Debate===
In mid 2009, there were complaints in namespace about the community allowing "anonymous attacks on explicitly-named people, on their stories, on their ideas, on them."on bandom as a fannish community, or: what the hell, people? by kudra2324 on livejournal, posted 2009-07-06. archived Some of these attacks may have been spillover from the Bandom Trigger Warning Debate (2009), started by a Bandom Big Bang fic by arsenicjade in June 2009; when the warnings wank started, arsenicjade had already been a regular target on bandflesh. See On bandom as a fannish community, or: what the hell, people? and On Being A Village Elder: An Essay On Community Responsibility.
==Further reading==
* untitled livejournal postarchive.is by ficbyzee (June 8, 2008)
* The place with the thingarchive.is by quettaser (June 9, 2008)
* TRUE CONFESSIONS by kalpurna (June 10, 2008)
* That wank thingarchived by narceus (June 9, 2008)
* Because I keep leaving basically the same comment everywhere. by giddygeek on livejournal (November 19, 2008)
* and the crappy week award goes to bandflesh (archived) by seperis on livejournal (November 19, 2008)
* bandflesh stuff, you can scroll by drunktuesdays (dreamwidth mirror of a livejournal post) (November 19, 2008)
* on bandom as a fannish community, or: what the hell, people? by kudra2324 on livejournal (July 6, 2009)
==References==
Category:Meme Journal Communities
Category:Bandom Journal Communities
Category:2007 Communities
Category:2000s Communities
Category:Social Media Feature-Wank Wednesday