Just when you think our hobby cannot get any weirder something crazy happens to reaffirm the desperation some people have for attention. The crazy thing in question is the fake death of a podcaster named Christina Campbell. She was part of the podcast Deepstrike Radio and frequent other podcasts like the Overlords.
Here is a better synopsis posted by someone that actually listens to podcasts…
For the past year the 40k podcast Deepstrike Radio has been co hosted by someone named Christina Campbell, from what I have read she has also featured on the Overlords podcast and some others. She was in fact a very good host and proved to know her stuff regarding 40k lore.
When she joined the show last Autumn she participated in the aired auditions and gave her own personal story of how she found 40k. In it she described a horific accident which left her with mental trauma. She maintained this story until two weeks ago when she died. This shocking event got a lot of attention on various wargaming sites, from other podcasts and even Forge World posted about it.
Then last night Deepstrike Radio released an announcement revealing that not only was Christina not dead, but never existed. What’s more, a memorial episode released last week, with Carl from the Independent Characters podcast and Jason from The Overlords contributing, also featured somebody named Alexander who purported to be Christina’s widow. It turns out Alexander was the so called ‘Christina’ using some sort of pitch shifting device, which in turn could mean ‘Christina’ was a male all along. In the two hour long episode each person gave accounts of fond memories of her, believing her to be dead, when in fact she was still alive and was talking with them.
Whoever this person is they have clearly gone to a tremendous amount of effort and in the process fooled a good number of 40k podcasts. Including creating several facebook profiles of herself and family, friends. Doctoring photos to show ‘herself’ with the supposed head injuries. Using vocal devices to portray herself as a male, or perhaps the other way around. From what I have read the other Deepstrike hosts believe they know who he/she is but are reluctant to reveal the information.
While I’m familiar with plenty of internet stories of fake identities etc. I’ve never heard of anything like this happening in podcasting before and think it’s pretty crazy it has happened in the 40k community.
Now pretending to be a woman isn’t new since the Internet age, I am sure many of us have stories of “fake woman” found in every MMO, but the lengths by which this hoax was perpetrated, is well, pretty unbelievable. Anyway here is the official statement released by Deepstrike Radio
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Deepstrike-Radio/224860527566902
http://www.deepstrikeradio.com/?p=1263This is not an easy announcement for for Deepstrike Radio to make, but we believe it is necessary that we be completely honest with the listeners. Several discrepancies have arisen over the death and identity of one Christina Campbell. Upon having the matter brought to our attention, we proceeded to investigate the matter to the best of our ability. We would like to apologize to the community for allowing someone to use our show, and the 40k community as a vehicle for their own (as of yet unknown) agenda. The facts as we know them are thus:1) There was never a person by the name of Christina Campbell participating on our show. Rather, it was an individual using a false identity. We have done extensive checks into Canadian Obituaries and any other references we could find, and have discovered no record of this identity.2) This individual has taken advantage of our show, and the wider 40k community for their own gratification.
3) This person has also engaged in several false online relationships with various individuals in the community (Whose identities we will not disclose) for unknown reasons.
Once again, we would like to apologize for allowing this person to participate on this show under false pretenses. We believed this “Christina Campbell” as a member of the 40k online community for years (predating even this show) to be a creditable individual who would be a valuable addition to our cast.
There are two lessons to be learned from this, one in that while the online community can be a place for lasting and true friendships, it is extremely important to verify that the individuals you associate with are who they say they are. Two, that the 40k community is a caring and inviting one. The community had no reason to believe that this person was false, and did everything it could to be supportive and encouraging. Do not let this individual take this from any of you. Trust that, while these things happen, there is nothing wrong with being supportive of your fellow community members.
We will be back with our regularly scheduled programming next week.
Well I guess people are always capable of anything!
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