Criminology Major Becomes Private Investigator to Find Friend’s Preteen FanFiction.Net Account

While many of us tend to block out the horrifyingly cringe experiences of our hormone-charged middle school years, some students are still unable to outrun their demons—because they know how to swim. Those daily update YouTube blogs, trashy DeviantArt pages and angst-ridden 4chan accounts are all making their way to the surface as a true reminder that, much like childhood trauma, the past never really goes away. One student has capitalized on the deathless nature of the web by starting up a side business to track down students' most mortifying, embarrassing and horny fanfics.

“I stumbled upon this very specific skill set by accident. My ‘Chad’ of a roommate drunkenly confessed his past as a closeted Star Trek fanfiction writer. Next thing I know, I’ve dug up 150,000 words of Spock/Kirk smut, several thousand followers and commenters and a biweekly update schedule that lasted for nearly five years straight,” recounted investigative sleuth extraordinaire Paul Holmes, expressing his deeply personal experience with an air of mystery and suspense. “Honestly he deserves all of those followers; his work is pretty good, and we’ve begun to bond over hunting down other secret fic writers. I’ve actually decided to re-make Catfish for fandom-based porn writers. I’m taking my otherwise useless skill and turning it into something totally legitimate and profitable just for the drama” 

“He’s like if Sherlock Holmes were real and alive today, but instead of solving murders, he just knows how to skim disturbingly specific fanfic tags,” said Susan Myers, a third-year English major who created a series of self-indulgent Twilight/High School Musical crossover fics back in her middle school days. “I hired him to look into the friend I made in creative writing last semester. She made a passing remark about writing ‘reviews’ on how Harry Potter should have ended when she was younger, and I just knew she had to have a fic somewhere online! In 2014, she wrote a fic called ‘Harry Potter and the Exploration of Ginny Weasley’s Chamber of Secrets.’ After forcing my eyes to read that, I sincerely wished you could Obliviate yourself in real life too.” 

Perhaps this cyberstalking is too personal and prying, or perhaps you truly needed to know that your roommate has actually written some pretty sick Glee zombie apocalypse AU fics. Regardless, let this serve as a reminder to properly bury the dumb shit you dumped on the Internet when you were younger. With all this in mind, perhaps it’s time for the Eggplant staff to come clean…

We were the real co-authors of “My Immortal” all along.